Report: Meetup #6 - Silicon Halton Model

Keeping with tradition, Chris and Rick gave a progress overview of the accomplishments since the March meetup:

• We opened with a round of applause as Silicon Halton reached another milestone today (at Milestones), namely, this was our sixth meetup, the 1/2 year mark!
• Linkedin membership grew another 20% over last month
• We annouced two drafts of the Silicon Halton badge.  Members had asked about a logo to place on their business card or web site.  Ttwo versions were submitted for consideration, and everyone was asked to review the drafts found here and vote by May 18.

Another pending milestone is Silicon Halton's first exposure in print with SnapOakvillecoming out to today's event.  Travis from SnapOakville said the story would be in the May 1st edition, distributed in businesses throughout Oakville.

The Program

Rick kicked off the workshop with a very brief presentation on what he learned at Communitech’s EnableU  "How to build a hi tech cluster” event in March.  Noteworthly points were:

• Silicon Halton is not alone in Ontario, Canada, nor North America.  Every city, town, community and every edge-city is striving to reinvent itself with a tech flair.
• The belief that Silicon Halton must create a unique value proposition and have audacious ambitions.
• The need for a Silicon Halton tech ecosystem.
  
  

Here is the slidedeck for Rick's prezo:

View more presentations from Silicon Halton.

The prezo nicely led into the workshop where we had people provide input to our business plan.  We asked members for input into:

• Next 12 Month Objectives
• SH Value Proposition
• Types of SH Membership
• Core offerings to SH members
• The ugly topic of revenue generation

Results will be shared.

Community

• We learned of initiative to bring to Oakville in October. You can follow the initative on and Mark Mulholland’s TEDxTwitterFacebook
• Interesting to have a local person with Provincial-level "politicial asperations" come out and introduce herself.
• We "Got to better know a Halton hi tech business" of Linda McIntosh.
  
  

1000 Words

Words can't do justice to communicate the connectidness and uber networking that is taking place at the events. Slideshow below or see the pix directly here.

Thanks

The list of people and companies we need to thanked is pleasantly growing, growing to the point were we now risk missing someone. That's a nice problem to have.

• Thumbs-up to Oakville for the use of their venue.  Milestones is truly a gem of a restaraunt hidden in the back corner of the entertainment complex, directly opposite SilverCity Oakville movie theater.  Check them out.  Milestones
• Kudos to Travis Riggin @ SnapOakville.com for coming out and snapping some pictures for the Snap Oakville news paper.  We learned that Snap Oakville has a circulation approaching 25,000.  Watch for us in the May edition.
• Thanks again to Nancy Forsyth's The UPS Store 342 for printing the May flyers (please circulate).
• Hi-five again to Ryan Gamble for capturing the event in digital stills.
  
  

Recap Video

Here's Rick and Chris giving a kick recap on how the night went.