The Next New VIATeC

Dan Gunn

In January of 2009, I was meeting with the VIATeC board for our annual review of our member survey results and strategic planning. Part of this included breaking up the 14 person board into smaller teams of three or four to brainstorm possible new initiatives for VIATeC. Each team was to pick their best new concept and then pitch it to the group to be voted on.

One of the groups (which I believe consisted of Mike Shannon of Streelight Intelligence, Don Safnuk of Corporate Recruiters and Gary Eisenstein of Falcon Software) advocated for the creation of a VIATeC LinkedIn group. I admit I was unsure of how this might benefit our members but I committed to creating the group to see what would happen.

I have been a LinkedIn user for a long time, maybe seven or eight years, but that was the result of simply accepting connection requests from members and colleagues. Even from this passive use I had about 75 connections.

When I saw how quickly I could create a LinkedIn group and start connecting people I was converted…social networking is easy and powerful. I now have about 700 LinkedIn connections.

Even though the board had already approved a strategic plan and budget for the coming fiscal year I requested that they reopen discussion to allow me to pitch a significant initiative focused on social networking and how VIATeC could embrace it. Forgive the pun but the board got "on board" with the idea and we committed major time and financial resources to building a socially enabled platform for our members.

Immediately we created a Facebook Fan Page, several Twitter feeds, a Youtube Channel, Flickr photo stream and invited everyone to our new LinkedIn group. I like to compare these networks to Baskin Robbins, whatever flavour you want we now have it. Organizations can't just send letters and emails anymore because their customers or members are all different and have varying preferences on how they receive and process information and thanks to all these new formats their expectations have changed.

This was a great start but we wanted customized features and more robust capabilities in some key areas and that is why in tandem we have been developing the web site you are now visiting.

Some key new benefits:

Increased profile for all members
- Check out the new dynamic driven content in the company profiles. We are pulling in your current news items and job postings, allowing members to recommend each other, pulling in the most popular social feeds and you can easily edit your own content anytime.
- Gone are the stale, static pages typical of a old school directories. Now, customers, investors, future recruits and policy makers will now have a rich, up to date, set of content to review that truly tells them about your company.
Enhanced ability to connect and network
- This isn't all about the companies but also about the people within them. There are 13,000 people working in tech companies in Greater Victoria and if a company is a member then all of their staff will have access to the site.
- You are part of a community and now executives AND staff can leverage that community by creating an account that allows them to post questions, share best practices, attend networking and education events and to let the VIATeC team know your areas of interest.
- Of course we will continue to hold networking events but you don't have to wait for an event to meet your fellow community members. If they have an account on our site you can request the ability to connect with them based on similar areas of interest, recent forum discussions or shared customer markets.
Answers and knowledge when you need it
- You are busy and can't go to every event and you can't always wait for an answer. Now you can post questions in the forums or search the knowledge centre for video archives of past seminars, white papers, research reports or audio interviews. Over time we expect to build a sizeable repository of information needed to start, grow and mature a technology company in Greater Victoria.
The content you want
- When you create your user account you will be able to tailor your profile and provide us your specific areas of interest. You don't need your inbox cluttered with information pollution that may, or may not, be relevant. By knowing your areas of interest the site will sort your dashboard content to show you new items that are specific to your wants and needs. You will still get the occasional email from us but now they will be tailored to your interests.
Ongoing improvements
- We've spent a year getting this site ready but we know it won't be perfect so we have set aside time and budget to keep refining this platform based on your feedback so don't be shy and tell us how to make this work even better for you.