The Old "New VIATeC"

In March of 2005, I was given the opportunity to run VIATeC at a time when VIATeC was faced with many challenges. This came after working at VIATeC for the previous four and a half years in a variety of roles. An experience that helped me secure the job and provided the basis for a new approach to serving our members. 

In the previous 15 years, VIATeC was heavily funded by government to the tune of 70 to 95% of our total budget. Ask any company or organization that has a single client making up a majority of their revenue and they will tell you that it is fraught with peril. The "big" client has a disproportionate level of influence over what you focus on and so much buyer power that you find it very difficult to push back or say no.

In 2000-01, the revenue mix started to change. Not because we had started to expand other revenue streams but because government funding was no longer available. VIATeC's annual revenue dropped from over $1m to $351k and the staff size dropped from eleven to two. Believe me, the VIATeC team was not standing idly by while this happened. It was obvious that we needed to increase all other revenue streams to survive and many things were implemented including the hosting of an annual HR conference, the hosting of monthly business management seminars, the creation of the VIATeC awards and Island Tech. If not for those efforts, the decline in revenue would have been faster and further. Naturally, we also asked more of our members and sought new members.

We quickly learned that doing what the government required for all that funding meant that we had focused on the wrong customer. We had dedicated our resources to fulfilling our obligations to many government agencies which meant we weren't spending enough time with our members understanding their opportunities and challenges. As funding was drying up we had less staff resources to meet expectations which compounded the challenges as those left kept their head's down meeting all the commitments. As you can imagine, when we turned to our members for more support they were not as enthusiastic as we hoped.

We had not been focusing on the most important client; the people building tech companies in Victoria. So, when we asked for additional support it was met with a luke-warm reception. While this all sounds quite dire, and believe me it felt dire, something very positive happened. VIATeC evolved.

Thanks to a dedicated volunteer board and a lot of hard working staffers, past and present, VIATeC survived its near death experience. Before being offered the job as Executive Director of VIATeC, Greg Caws (then board member and volunteer interim CEO) challenged me. First thing in the morning on a Friday in 2005 he said something like, "Dan, we are not sure you are up to the job and you have until the end of the day to show me what you would do if we put you in charge." I committed to meeting with him at 3pm that day to share my ideas.

At the time I was discovering just how important guiding principles and/or values were to effective organizations. I don't remember who or what turned me on to this but, I am confident it was over a coffee with a member or perhaps a recent VIATeC hosted seminar. Regardless, I believed that knowing your core values was imperative to running an effective organization, especially if you want to make a difference. I still have the notebook with the single page of notes I prepared for that day and the title was "Quality over Quantity". This single page was the nexus for the core values we still operate under today; Quality, Community, Contact, Focus and Collaboration. In future entries I will elaborate on these but let's get back to the "New VIATeC" theme.

The one pager also included some major operational changes and it was enough to persuade Greg that I would be effective in the role and he set out to persuade the rest of the board. If you know Greg then you know he is very persuasive and the following week on February 25 I was offered the job of interim COO for a six month trial period which later resulted in my appointment as Executive Director at the AGM that September. As soon as I was given my shot as COO I started meeting with members…lots of members. After all, Contact was one of our new core values and understanding our members while building lasting relationships was part of that. I'll be honest, I expected it to take up to two years to change perceptions of VIATeC. I still remember most of those meetings and in particular Mark Grambart, CEO of Contech, saying, "Dan, I'm the CEO of a tech company in Victoria. Of course, I'm an idealist and I love the new core values for VIATeC, how can we help." Turns out that perceptions and support began to improve almost immediately.

We either improved our events and services or eliminated them if we couldn't make them better, the Vancouver Island Tech Park provided us new space at a reasonable rate and we started implementing the plan.Currently our annual budget is holding steady at twice the size it was in 2005 and we strive to ensure that it comes from an even mix of memberships, sponsorships and government/project funding.  For the next three years I often heard the term "The New VIATeC" and it was great to know that our members felt we had improved our model and we enjoy increased relevance.

Well, welcome to the Next New VIATeC. My next entry will tell you all about how we are continuing to evolve five years later and how this new web site is the fulcrum of our next evolution.