Membership

Roundtables provide members with an opportunity to meet, network, and exchange information and expertise with peers in a focused environment. Regular attendance is expected to create a group of recognizable and reliable contacts able to share challenges and lessons learned, further growing skills and companies!

Current Roundtables:

• CEO
• Advanced Manufacturing
• Business Development
• Marketing & Product Management

Have a question about our Roundtables or want to join one? Please contact Robert Bennett at rbennett@viatec.ca.

VIATEC offers a free Business Coaching Service to support regional innovators, business owners and entrepreneurs in knowledge-based industries via Zoom, email and telephone. You're the perfect candidate if you need assistance with:

• Discussing alternatives and options
• Identifying your primary need and your next steps
• Business start-up and growth
• Developing or updating your business plan
• Information about programs, sources of funding and services for research and development
• Identifying the gains and risks of exporting and linking to export markets
• Assistance with human resource issues, and/or
• Partnering with other businesses within the region.

For more information or to meet with a Business Coach, please contact Rob Bennett.

Tectoria
In the same way that New York is referred to as “The Big Apple”, Victoria has come to be known as “Tectoria”. Tectoria is a brand name, created by VIATEC to emphasize the significance of the technology industry in this city.

Technology is Victoria’s #1 industry with a $4.06 Billion Annual Revenue, a $5.22 Billion Economic Impact and over 16,775 employees across 995 high-tech companies - and growing!

The original purpose of the Tectoria brand was to help the local population become aware of just how big tech in Victoria really is. The end goal, and what we’re already well on the way to achieving, is to make Technology and Victoria synonymous.

Investor Summits, Trade Missions and Outreach
VIATEC constantly has its radar on, searching for opportunities for members and the local tech community as a whole. Whether it’s connecting investors with startups and early growth companies, coordinating exclusive member offers to events of interest, partnering on events and initiatives or helping spread news of its members, VIATEC is constantly working for its members and to help the local tech sector grow.

Event partnerships
VIATEC regularly partners on events that are of interest to the local technology community either by helping to promote, serving on panels, giving guidance or through sponsorship.
Each year, VIATEC also participates in local Career Fairs as an effort to educate students about Greater Victoria’s technology sector and its job board. In typical VIATEC style, the booth usually stands out with robots, flashing lights and a LOT of orange.

Some of the Career Fairs you can find VIATEC at:

• Camosun College Trades & Technology Career Fair
• UVic High-Tech Co-op & Career Fair
• RRU Career Development Conference
• BCTECH Summit
• SXSW (Austin, Texas)
• Virtual Career Fairs

With current conditions putting a halt on large in-person events, VIATEC is exploring new virtual offerings and targeted digital marketing for candidates… nationwide! With more and more companies being open to remote workers and many wanting to relocate here, there are plenty of hiring opportunities.

A big part of getting the word out about “Tectoria” is getting the tech industry great exposure in media (print, online and radio). We want the world to know all the great things happening in this city, and we want Victoria to be known for more than just tea and flowers.

VIATEC does this by:

• Serving as a spokesperson for the industry
• Assisting media in finding local experts to interview (One of those experts could be you!)
• Suggesting stories for coverage
• Sending press releases on your behalf (Available by request)
• Writing blogs and member profiles to bring a spotlight to our city’s entrepreneurial spirit
• Making A LOT of noise at our events so they’re tough to ignore.

What can you do to help? Keep innovating and succeeding! We’d love to brag about you and help your business thrive in order to grow the technology sector even bigger.

Want us to share something on our news page? Have a good story or know a person that should be featured? Contact info@viatec.ca

Attracting and retaining talent is still a challenge faced by our members today. VIATEC has made this a key focal point and has taken steps to address this challenge through the recent completion of the 2018 Compensation Study, which summarizes the latest recruitment and retention practices, compensation structure and programs, benefits and salary ranges within Greater Victoria’s technology sector into a report that will help companies make more informed HR decisions. In addition to this study is the Economic Impact study which breaks down the size and impact of the Greater Victoria technology sector and helps us forecast goals and helps us see the reach our sector has.

One of the many benefits of being a VIATEC member is taking advantage of exclusive discounts from other VIATEC member companies. Get the VIP treatment around town and make all your friends jealous (We're working on a flashy gold card you can whip out for extra satisfaction).

See Member Offers.

If you have an exclusive offer you'd like to add to the list, please contact info@viatec.ca.

If Victoria’s current $4.06b tech sector and its 16,775 employees were one entity, we’d be a Fortune 500 company (or at least close!). The majority of companies this size offer training and development programs to nurture and retain their top performers. VIATEC is applying the same approach to build the leaders we need to nurture and grow our sector.

We’ve secured an investment from Western Economic Diversification (WD) and Innovate BC to develop leadership training and resources to aid in the emergence of local anchor companies. Our goal is to develop the capability of our leaders to grow their teams and businesses to the next level. VIATEC offers curated leadership learning programs for Founders, CEOs, Executive and Emerging leaders. We also support member companies in identifying programs to suit their specific needs.

To learn more about our current programming, contact Lindsay Richmond, our Director of Leadership and Learning, lrichmond@viatec.ca.

We’d like to thank the on-going support of our members since 1989. For every membership dollar VIATEC receives, we are able to leverage that 7x and we turn the $300k in annual membership fees into over $2.1 million.

This means we are able to invest time, money and resources into events, in-depth studies and analysis, peer groups, promotional efforts, and media relations while also unlocking program funding from the Federal and Provincial government. This includes relationship-building with other community organizations and being able to pass along co-op funding information.

Thanks to your support, Victoria is now known as a tech town and we are attracting new talent and leadership, along with assisting entrepreneurs with building new companies and scaling up the existing ones. It’s made a huge difference and it’s because of support like yours.