Website Web Design Winnipeg Manitoba

Like many Canadian cities, Ottawa hardly escaped unscathed from the 2000 dotcom crash and last year's more recent economic downturn.
However, the city is determined to hang onto its IT talent pool and attract more foreign investors.
"We've learned some hard lessons from the last tech bubble and were able to apply them to this recession to prevent an exodus of IT talent," said Blair Patacairk, senior consultant for foreign direct investment and business development at the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation (OCRI).
OCRI is a member-based economic development corporation that aims to advance the region's knowledge-based industries and institutions.
Lessons learned
Encouraging tech professionals to stay in Ottawa despite business closures is crucial to this strategy, Patacairk said.
The OCRI officer was part of a team that recently returned from a mission in Barcelona aimed attracting international wireless companies seeking to expand operations to North America.
"Whenever you talk to foreign companies, the first thing they ask is 'what type of talent pool do you have?' I tell them, the best kind there is."
He said there are about 78,000 to 80,000 people working in the local tech sector. The city's wireless sector includes more than 200 companies and more than 18,000 employees.
Numerous tech companies in Ottawa folded up or severely cut operations in the wake of the dotcom bust.
However, the city managed to prevent a major hemorrhage of IT talent by encouraging entrepreneurship and SMB startups said Patacairk. "An interesting thing happened. When the large companies closed down, we saw many smaller IT companies emerge."
These smaller firms, he said, became the developing ground for more tech professionals, who would later join the workforce of larger companies.