Lunch Academy EP 016 - Innovation in Snowmageddon Guest Starring Jamil of Innovate BC

Welcome, everybody. This is episode 16 of Lunch Academy. I am your co host, Sam, and as always, star of the show on this miserable day.

Hello.

Hello.

Hi, everyone.

The camera's over there. I noticed we have more eye contact today.

Hi.

Yeah. For those that you don't know are listening retrospectively. It is pouring outside. I am drenched. And our guest is also drenched. So welcome Jamil.

Hi. Glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

No problem. So you want to probably move a little bit closer to the mic. I'm going to make you lean forward there. But Jamil, actually, what's your full name? See, I am not prepared.

Jameel Kareem.

Jameel Kareem.

Mr. Kareem, we talked about this, that we're going to call him Sir Kareem on the show.

Sir is fine. Or your honor.

Your honor. Okay, we'll, we'll, we'll try to do that. We do have some honorable gifts for you later on. But Jamil has been working with Innovate BC since 2017. Right. What is this about?

Been in communications for 10 years.

You got to figure he's only been communication with other people for 10 years. What happened before that?

Like, what is a career in communications mean? Are you just really good at talking to people?

Yeah, actually it's incredible to think what a, like, career in communications is. If I think back to when I graduated, which seems like forever ago, like I've done pr, journalism, freelancing, project management, and now I'm here at Innovate bc. I taught English to preschool students.

Really? For how long did you do that?

About two years.

Wow.

Okay.

I didn't know that.

Great form of birth control if you're ever looking for it. I was like, oh, my God, I could only have.

I never won children ever.

But to answer your question, a career in communications is pretty much anything you want to put your mind to. It seems like it's awesome.

Awesome. We're going to dive deeper into that. But first I hinted towards it. What's the weather report? Shadee?

Oh, yes. Okay. Weather forecast for this week is actually, Guys, there's faith. Even though it's really shitty out today. Am I allowed to say shitty? Whatever. We swear every time.

You just compound it by asking.

It's rainy and gross and half rain, half slush, half snow out there. So. But stay, you know, stay strong because over the weekend we are going to get some sun on Saturday and Sunday and a lot of sun on Monday.

So really ice up the snow.

Yeah, yeah. Let's hope for some. Below, above Zero weather, so that we don't have.

But it was. It was snowing crazily last night. Like, you know, I was wondering. It's like, okay, can Shadi just do this show without. Because I live in Coquitlam, so. So it's much bigger trek than for you guys. And I was thinking, like, oh, shot, I can do this show. It's no problem. I'll food ora using some food, and we'll call it a day. Then it started raining, and that was. I mean, it worked out, right? Like, the conditions of the road are much better now. People are driving a little bit more sane.

Last night, I parked a car to go and left it there for like, three hours as I was meeting a friend for dinner. And then turns out that car to go was still there, so I booked it again. And I had to get people to push me out of the parking spot because the car to go couldn't go over the snow that had accumulated around it.

Yeah.

And it was so funny. Like, I got three people off the street to just push my car to go.

Vancouver people dealing with snow should be its own TV show.

I feel like.

Yeah, compared to the rest of Canada, we're so soft.

I feel like that is. That is a reality. We're just not prepared. Right? And then we have these mental freakouts. And I remember, like, on Monday and Tuesday of this week when we were having those big snowstorms, like, I was having anxiety not knowing what it was like outside. When I got outside, it was the fastest trip home I've ever been home. Because I feel like people got so anxious, they just decided to just hide out.

There was no traffic.

There's no traffic at all. And the roads were clear. Like, I gotta give kudos to the folks on the road. Like, they did a pretty good job cleaning up the road pretty fast this time. Sometimes it's not so good, but this time I gotta. I gotta give them some props, give them some podcast daps. But, like, it was just crazy. It's just, like, mentally we're not prepared for this. And, like, I was born in the East. I was like, this is why I moved.

It's so funny when it's snowing outside and I'm at home, I need, like, another layer of protection. Like, I'll just go in bed, you know, extra layer of protection from the snow, just to make sure I don't interact with it.

Can't mentally. Deal. Well, guys, that's your weather report.

An extended weather forecast.

We are all softies and can't Deal. That's the report.

You're from the east, though. Yeah. Anyway, so before we get kind of get too deep into it, I have. I have a little bit of gift for you guys. So, as you guys may know, there was a recent. It's not a holiday, but it's a public event.

Yeah.

Can you guys take a guess which public event?

What?

Which public event was recent?

Chinese New Year.

Yes.

That is actually the right guess. I was thinking you guys were gonna talk about Valentine's Day, but no, I skipped Valentine's Day.

You know what? I just literally forgot Valentine's Day happened at all.

We are sad people. That is what we were discovering. Valentine's Day is canceled due to snow. I'm jumping back a little bit to lunar New. So before that, we were doing some brainstorming or I was doing some brainstorming about, like, what I could bring for you guys to enjoy today. And then I found out that Jamila is vegetarian. And I found out that, you know, Chinese people are not very respectful of vegetarians.

Frankly speaking.

You know what? I texted Sam texted me, being like, can Jamila eat meat? And I was like, jamila's vegetarian. And then his response was, are eggs vegetarian?

We'll let it slide here, I feel like.

Because I feel like I was looking for something that was flour related.

Right, right.

And. And I had the gut feeling that they used, like, egg to mix in with the flour. So.

And then.

So I did. I didn't know. Right. It was like a vegetarian thing. But then they said made with egg. I was like, that's. That's weird. Like, like every. Every other menu on the item is already meat. And then you have this one veggie item, and then you make it with eggs.

Well, I appreciate the.

This is.

This is next level.

So I'll bring this over here.

Yeah, just leave it in the bag.

It was difficult to find, but I managed to get some veggie dumplings.

All right, on.

I'll show the camera.

So there's some chopsticks for you.

Look at that.

So actually, like, I was trying to do some research in this, which is, like, a ridiculous part of. Of, like, not knowing my own heritage. I am Chinese, for those that are wondering. But dumplings are supposed to kind of signify wealth. And actually, like, I kind of feel like Chinese people, whenever they want to eat something during, like, a certain period, they just say it signifies wealth because.

Like, spring rolls, they're sticking together.

I think you got to eat all of them, man.

Can you imagine all this in One bite. Give me a second. Let me get this out. You want to jump in here?

So the dumplings are all stuck together. So this is one from a place called Latigre. I've never been there, but the original dumpling place that I went to is apparently closed on Fridays, which kind of led to the heck nec. Ness of this morning of where am I gonna find another place that's gonna have vegetarian dumplings? So this is a whole.

So I'm gonna eat this, and then I become wealthy.

It's supposed to signify wealth. So let me just.

That's delicious.

Let me just quickly Google. It's got egg. It's got eggplant, which is not eggs. Eggplant, caviar, wood ear. I don't know what that is. Kanyaku.

Oh, my God, this is so good.

Kale, shiitake, which is a mushroom, and then vegetables.

So we're having caviar right now.

Eggplant, caviar.

Ignore the first part of that.

So how was it?

It was delicious.

So it's supposed to signify wealth because I think the way dump. Some dumplings are made and not all dumplings kind of look like that, like, gold nugget. But then at the same time, spring rolls was supposed to be like a gold bar. So that was like, everything is like, yeah, I could kind of shape, like gold, if you have a good imagination. And then we just eat a lot.

So.

So enjoy that throughout the show. But let's get back to you. Like, you've been with, I wanted to say the B.C. tech Summit, but it says Innovate BC for two years. What's that like? I know there's a lot going on with what you guys do, and you have multiple teams doing multiple things. What's your experience? Been like, just entering in, Actually, maybe let me jump back a little bit. You talked about doing English and all this stuff. What made you jump into tech?

You know what? So like I said, I feel like an old man, which I would describe in, like, 10 years. But I had done a whole bunch of different jobs, working pr, freelance writing, project management, teaching English. And then I kind of. You kind of get to a point where you're like, I don't want to just work for the sake of work. And you got to try to find something that, like, you're passionate about. You want to try to help people. And then I came across a job at what was then BC Innovation Council, and it seemed to check off, like, every box that I wanted. And sure enough, they actually wanted me to which was nice feeling because you know, you want to interview like, oh, they're never gonna give me the job. But sure enough, I convinced my old boss to do it and then I got the job. And then since then it's been pretty crazy actually. In the last like 18 months, we have held two BC Tech Summits. We would have rebranded our organization.

Your new brand looks amazing.

We hear that. That's the kind of feedback we're looking for actually on a new brand. There's a lot of work actually and props to national for helping us out with that. But there's a lot's been kind of going on. In addition to the summits and the rebrand, we also have a bunch of programs that support like student hiring, research projects, connecting tech buyers with solution providers, the venture acceleration program. So we have a lot of other programs as well. I always tell people, when you think of like Innovate vc, we help all size companies from like startups all the way to like Microsoft and Google. We take care of the whole province because we're a crown agency and we go cross sector. So if you're mining, forestry, ag, real estate, retail, AR VR, blockchain, cleantech, like IoT, you name it, we work with you. So pretty much if you have a pulse in this province, we almost certainly have a program that can support your business growth. And it's great because we've met some hiring recently. And so we're government funded, right? Which means we're crowned agencies. We're funded and mandated by the government. And I always tell people, if you want to work for a crown agency because you want like benefits and the vacation and all that, that is like cool and like perfectly reasonable. But there are like a handful of like crowned entities in the province. Almost all of them would love to have you. But if you're gonna be here at Innovate bc, you have to be willing to like, there's gotta be an innate desire to want to help people. Cause there's so many companies in tech, it's a cliche, but it's kind of everywhere. So we help so many different people and so many different companies. If there's no innate want and desire to want to help people, you're never gonna be able to do the job the best way you can. So it's been a big part of our hiring process and why I think our team across the whole board is so strong because everyone kind of has that same kind of common denominator of wanting to help people and help the ecosystem grow.

Going above and beyond to really make it happen for that company.

You got it shot in. That's what really the people at InnovateBC really help attract people and help retain people at the company because everyone is really like minded and surprisingly for a government crowned agency, a lot of people are young. You would think you walk in and you see a bunch of old people roaming the hall. That's actually not what it is. Everyone who works there is really young and passionate about tech, which really makes it a great place to work.

The Innovate VC crew is always the cool crew at the party.

I thought we were the cool crew.

No, we're not.

I thought you were.

I've been tell people the wrong thing.

We're cool. But have you seen Innovate VC's staff at a social event? They're so fun.

This is a subtle hint for me to go back to the gym.

You need to be hip and fun.

This is really what it is, hip.

And also it's like having a high retention rate in your company in Vancouver is so valuable I feel especially if you want young people in your company. It's so hard to retain staff in the city. There's so many incredible opportunities and everybody, I don't know if you guys have noticed in Vancouver is like overly ambitious with their life and they're just always thinking about the next thing. The next thing. Like people do not settle in this city. Which means that if you're going to keep your staff, you're going to really provide some like exciting growth and exciting changes and complete like always be stimulating their career path because otherwise you'll just lose your staff.

You're totally right.

That's truncated by, by the tech industry as well. So totally. It's pretty normal. So tell me a little bit for the listeners, for the founders out there, what's like, what's the right starting point to get in contact with, with their program or your programs or your events or things like that.

So there are a few different ways. Our website is really the best point of access to get to us and that was also part of the rebrand. So the website's really cool. And I don't know if you saw our old website, the BCIC one wasn't really like the most user friendly website. The one we have now is outstanding. And if you go there, you can find out how you can get funding from us. You can find out how we can connect with experts in the industry.

I was looking at that actually just before the show and the first thing that I caught my eye on Your website, was it what's called the Innovation Marketplace?

One of my favorites.

Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because I think that that's, that's a tool I had no idea existed and I think it'd be really super valuable to just broadcast out to the tech community. For sure.

The Innovation Marketplace is awesome. It's kind of a new kind of initiative for Innovate bc And I know Fernanda and Maggie are listening right now. They're super happy because they absolutely love when I talk about this.

Yes, no doubt.

Maggie used to be here at Launch Academy, right? So she should definitely be listening, I feel like. But the Innovation Marketplace, to simply describe it, it connects large tech buyers, so large private organizations or large government organizations who have business challenges and we connect those organizations with the challenges to BC tech SME solution providers. So we're trying to connect problems with solutions and it's great for the large tech buyers because you can get homegrown solutions right here and we can facilitate the whole challenge process. And for the solution providers, we have an opportunity now to have these large organizations, customers, partners, referrals, and if you can work with them, not only do you have an opportunity for follow up contracts, but you can also work with other similar organizations who are looking to innovate and have business challenges as well. So industry you guys do is sort.

Of like validate that service provider, that software provider to those big companies so that they have the standard chance to provide.

You got it. Like a lot of times you'll see a large organization, they have business challenges and that need to be solved with tech. Now they have a hard time really describing what the challenge is or kind of formulating that. So like an innovator in B.C. here can actually find a solution for it. And we always like to say we try to find local solutions to global challenges, right? And our local solutions are here. There are so many talented tech entrepreneurs and innovators within the province. You guys know this already. And that's like. And when we say the whole province, we really mean the whole province from like we're talking Rosslyn and the Kootenays all the way up to like Kitimat, right? We reach out to our whole network and try to get these business opportunities in front of them because you know, we can offer funding, we can help you try to start your business, but at the end of the day you need customers, right? You need partners. And this is kind of a great way for us to try to bring those two together.

How, what's the turnaround like usually for a project to you know, get taken on by I guess a founder or solution from the website and then to actually get, you know, get in contact, get, get working with them. Like what's the turnaround like usually?

So great question. It all really depends on the challenge and the client. It's not the best answer, but it varies though from client to client. I'll give you a couple reference points here. We just did an AI justice challenge with the Ministry of Attorney General which is really cool. Like the Ministry of Attorney General is looking for AI solutions to some of their court system business problems.

Yeah.

And it kind of seems like the minute the courts are kind of seem like an old school and AI is very new. So it was kind of cool to merge these together together. And they went through a procurement process through government. So that changed the timeline just a little bit compared to other challenge processes. And basically at Innovate BC we helped the client define the challenge. In this case, we worked with the Ministry to define those challenges, put them together, put that to the innovation community. And then once we were able to find solution providers for the challenges, at that point we take the company, we take the ministry and then they work together. Because now this is a, like, this does not involve us anymore. We've done, we've done the connection, we found the companies and now they don't work together. So a lot of times these result in contracts and funding that comes with it and potential follow on contracts as well. If you just include this challenge process itself, it could range anywhere between 6 and 12 months.

Cool.

How is there any like eligibility requirements to be part of this?

Almost always we try to focus the opportunities for B.C. companies. Right. Because we're a crown agency, there's no point really offering opportunities to either companies in other parts of the province or international. But usually if you have a solution you're eligible to, you don't have to be a tech company. You can be any company if you have a solution. I mean as long as it's local solution, often the client really cares what industry they need the solution to solve their business challenge.

Right.

Some might be more specific. Riotendo. So they run a huge smelter up in Ketimat. So they're a private organization obviously and they were looking for drone technology to effectively measure some of their stockpiles of raw materials. So in that one specifically you needed like specific tech in order to do this. So that one there were some finite like eligibility requirements that were needed. But other than that there's really, we're open it to everyone we know.

Awesome.

Yeah, Cool, cool. So what, what specifically do you. Does your role entail in a BBC?

Oh, I do nothing there, man. You're here.

So technically, I mean, we're all working.

I'll take that. No. So unfortunate because my job allows me to do kind of a little bit of everything at Innovate bc. So right now me and the whole rest of the team there, our whole lives are kind of consumed by the summit, which is pretty cool. It's such a huge event and it impacts so many people. But when we're not, and with that, that means writing the press releases, creating marketing partnerships which we're working with Launchon, working on the media partnerships in the PR firm. We do all the marketing for the programs. Obviously we run about five different programs. So we have a kind of a four or five person marketing team, which is great. They're super talented and together we work to really promote the programs through digital, through traditional media, through partnerships. So a little bit of everything we kind of do. We have a new CEO which we'll get into later on. So working with them to kind of prep them as to really who we are, what we do, even though he kind of knows that, to kind of learn from the inside perspective. So there's kind of a lot that goes into marketing. We're fortunate because we get to work with every single department because everything kind of eventually has to come back through marketing. So it gives us a great opportunity to work with a lot of great people and a lot of great departments.

So let's talk about the BC Tech Summit. What is it and when is it?

So the BC Tech Summit is Western Canada's largest annual innovation conference. So it takes place this year from March 11th to 13th, which is less than a month away.

Oh my gosh.

I want to say we're about 17 work days from this.

I think this last month just flew by.

This month is shorter.

Yeah.

And it's shorter by a day. We have a holiday coming up on the Monday.

Not to stress you out.

Oh, geez. Okay, so Mark, so it's coming up here in just less than a month and it's really a unique opportunity for to meet with industry, academia, entrepreneurs, startups, investors, government, all kind of under one roof for three days.

Right.

And we bring in like Microsoft, Google, Telus. From that huge industry perspective. We have incredible discounts for startups to try to get more startups to attend. We want our ecosystem on full display at this event. The house isn't sitting for government, so you get a lot of government officials coming, which is really cool. So you connect directly with different ministries on different challenges. So it's really a great business opportunity to kind of come to the summit and meet all these people in one shot. We have a great speaker lineup. There's some really cool keynotes and programs.

There's some of your favorites, just to throw some names out there. Are you allowed to play favorites?

Oh, in order to play favorites, in case John Horgan, the premier, is gonna be there, so we'll put him out first. And my boss, William Johnson, is actually moderating one that panels as well. So I'll get those two out first. But from a general perspective, we have some really cool keynotes. Eric o'. Neill, so he used to be an FBI agent and he helped take down one of the most notorious spies in U.S. history. And there's actually a movie made about him called Breach. Came out like 2001. It's probably before half the people listening here were even born. But Ryan Felipe played him in the movie, which isn't bad, actually.

That's a great bio line. Ryan Felipe played me?

Yeah.

I always felt like Brad Pitt or George Clooney would play me in a movie, but if they weren't available, Ryan Felipe would be.

I don't know how what this person looks like. I'm googling him.

So he's really cool. He'll talk about cyber security and he was kind of how he even helped use cyber security to kind of track down the spy and how that worked. So that was really cool. So he'll be a great speaker.

Does he look similar to this Ryan Felipe dude?

Yes, let's go with yes.

Identical, separated.

That birth type deal there for sure.

We've lost Shot.

Shot is deep into Ryan Felipe. Google images there. Manjit Minhas, who's a dragon on Dragon's Den. She also runs Minhe Breweries, which is one of the largest breweries in the world. So she'll talk about how to scale your company, which is really important for petty tech companies here in bc. Tan Lee is a huge boss, actually, from Vietnam, was a lawyer in Australia. Georgia Strait. Kate Wilson said a super sick article about her. It was on the COVID of the Georgia Strait, actually. Great article. Kate wrote and talks about Tan Lee. So she works with this brainwave company. And the coolest thing they've done that I've seen today is they had a paraplegic drive an F1 car with his brainwaves. So the tech allows you to kind of understand a person's brainwaves it's machine learning. He was able to turn the car left and right using his brain waves, so you didn't have to drive it.

That's insane.

It's super cool. And she'll talk all about that at the summit, which is great. And then we also have really a bot sessions too. We have Fin AI bench, an article on BC's fastest growing companies with Sean Selcott from the board.

Hey, Finn. AIs and alumni.

Oh, great. Shout out. So the merchants. Those are some of Canada's fastest growing companies. We have them all in one shot. The Super 5. We have the five heads of the Canadian innovation superclusters all in the same room all the same time for the first time ever. Wow, that'll be really exciting. Actually, that's a really high profile session for us. We have another on the future of work, like what the workforce will look like in 2050.

Just sweatpants involved.

Judging by the looks of it right Now, I think 2050 is already happening now.

Leggings and sweatpants, please.

I was telling these guys I feel overdressed in jeans.

That's the thing. Every single episode, they don't really know what we're wearing because all tops.

Right. You know, you're right.

So we could be, you know, shorts and sandals underneath.

And then I think my favorite session of the whole BC Tech summit, and I hate to give credit to my buddy Alistair, who's our program manager, I think this is his idea. But it's ones to watch. So it's BC's best kind of under the radar companies that we're gonna feature on the stage. So if you're looking to find out who the next maybe big tech companies that you haven't heard of yet wants to watch as a stage to go to.

That's so cool. How did you guys come up with that list? Like, was it an application process? Did you guys have a judging panel?

You know, we're fortunate to have a lot of contacts in the industry. We talked to about who they thought would be a good fit for the stage.

That's awesome.

As part one of our programs is the venture acceleration program, where we actually fund 11 different accelerators around the province, which gives us access to a bunch of really early stage companies. So we tapped into some of the eds at these accelerators to find out who would be a great fit for this. And we have a great mix of regional companies, different industries. I don't want to give away too much because it's gonna be really cool, but that's a really cool idea. We've never really done this before a once to watch stage, so I'm super stoked about it.

Cool.

I'm excited to see all that.

Maybe give one more. How can people get access?

So for the BC Tech Summit, there's a bunch of different ways you can access the event from below full cost price. So one of them is through our marketing partnership with Launch. So if you're not a startup, there's a promo code, BCTech19 industry that gets you in at 400 bucks off the.

Full conference price, which is solid BC tech industry.

You know what, Atlanta has the code.

So we'll make sure to populate that code for anybody that's listening.

No, but that's not even the best one actually I kind of bear the lead here. We have a great startup rate. So for 199 startups can attend the summit.

199? That's insane.

It's like 800 bucks off the full conference price. That is absolutely absurd. So it's really great price which we really want startups at the event and we know like it's hard to afford a thousand dollar ticket. No one really wants to pay that if you're a startup. So we're really making a big effort to try to get them at the event. Now if you're a startup and you want to participate more than just like attending the event. Exhibitor packages cost about five grand but for startups they're $1,000. So again, similar discount of 80% off. Again, we want to showcase the startups we have here in B.C. and that's all over the province. We're reaching out to startups to try to get them in again. If you want more info about the startup pricing and the exhibitor packages, just shoot me a line in my email address on the Invit BC website and I can run you through all the different startup options we have to get you to the event cheaper, but that's your best bet to attend the event at the cheapest possible.

And for our members watching, I'll just put that into our newsletter on Monday so they can get on that. Sure.

Right on.

Terrific. So moving along, you hinted to the changes earlier. You guys have a new CEO.

We do man. So Ragwell Goapall, he was the old CEO at Accelerate Okanagan, Huge boss. He was there for like 40 years in Kelowna and now we got him coming down to Vancouver. He's got to try to find a place to live. I'm like, I told him I'd Airbnb. My couch to him didn't actually. Ragwa's first official day is like today.

Wow, that's exciting.

It's hot news.

It's very hot news right here. But it's a little unfortunate, his first day as CEO. I'm out here leaving work early to come hang out with you guys.

Just leaving him alone.

You're on set, making an outstanding first impression.

That's amazing.

But we're super stoked to have Ragwell on board, especially our partners are really excited to have him on board as well. I was talking to Ray earlier, before I jumped in here about. And he's super excited, I know, to have Ragwa on board because they go back and a lot of our B camp partners, the accelerators, are super excited to have him as well, because he's seen it from their side of the equation as well, for sure.

So what is he coming in with that will change things that innovate bc? Like, does he have any new visions? Does he have any goals? Have you guys talked about that? Is that something that we can talk about?

I presume he does. However, given that it's his first day.

He'S probably had lunch by now.

My goal is to survive this first.

I left off to like 11am I don't know if I can really speak to his goals at this point in time, but I think right now he's coming in. He's got to kind of get familiar with how things work at Innova abc. And then before he knows that, he's speaking at the Tech Summit.

Yeah, right.

Because we got that going on.

So he's got the ground running.

Yeah, he's hitting the ground sprinting, this dude, I feel like. But we're super excited to have him. If you talk to anyone in the industry who knows him, no one's got a bad thing to say about him. So we're really excited to get to have him on board.

We're excited too.

Just a chill Okanagan guy coming in.

Here, God forbid, deal with Vancouver pricing and everything. He's going.

So he's getting the pricing, but. But the Ontario weather.

Oh, and I was joking with Ragwa the other day, actually. I'm like, he moves from Kelowna to Vancouver, but he brought the snow with him. But no, that's a huge change for us to have Ragua on board. Can't wait for him to really kind of get started here. But in terms of his vision and his goals for the organization, that might be something we discuss on a later podcast. It's something because right now sounds like.

We'Re have to bring him in, make some calls. You talk to your people, I'll talk to my people first I got to find some people to become my people and then the people will talk.

I'm just going to call right about my people because our new CEO. So we'll go with that. But no, we're. I can't speak too much about what he's got planned for the future, but right now there's, there's a lot of positivity around him joining our organization.

So maybe more on the general tech ecosystem. What excites you and kind of gets you kind of keeping going with your work every day and seeing the tech companies.

There's quite a few things here. I feel one, the people we have in the ecosystem are outstanding. Look at some of the people running some of the big organizations. I talked about Ragwell at length about how great we think he is. We have some great people around. Dan Gunn, Lincoln Smith and New ventures. Outstanding. Ray Dan Berger, VR AR Association. Really great.

Dan Berger gets shout outs every episode. How do you do it?

It's Dan Berger and Shade's mom. Like it's most shout outs. Shout out to Shade's mom.

You know what, I'm gonna try to find a way to work her into one of these answers anyway.

Sorry I cut you off.

But then we have great people. Jill Tipping's another person outstanding obviously in the industry. So we have a lot of great people here in the industry. And especially the way we're trying to bring tech into more traditional industries across excites me a lot. It's happening everywhere. But in B.C. you see it a lot. I don't want to shout out Dan again, but the head of VR AR association knows this firsthand in terms of how we can bring AR and VR tech into traditional industries like forestry, ag and mining. A lot of the innovation marketplace challenges we do brings that tech into more traditional heritage industries. And that really excites me because there's a huge opportunity there for our tech companies to get customers and partners and opportunities by working with large organizations like whether it's Cam 4, whether it's tech, you name it. So it's a. There's a lot of opportunity there. That really excites me. And look at the opportunities and the people kind of leading and championing our industry. I think we're in a good spot.

Where do you see the Vancouver industry in the next three years in terms of like the industries that are going to be dominating the Vancouver Tech Industry. Sorry, I said industry like a million times.

Don't worry about it. It is hard to find a synonym for it sometimes because it's such a great way to describe it.

I think groups of stuff.

Stuff, yes. You start to worry about that. But I think, God, I come, I'm do this again. AR VR is huge. We have such a huge industry here and it's growing.

I mean, we agree you got them.

Preaching to the choir on that one, but I think that's a huge potential there for us. AI is another book. We're going to talk a lot about AI at the summit and how business can adopt AI, kind of bring their business more into like the 2020 and beyond. But I think AR VR and AI are two big ones. And I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about cleantech a little bit. We've. We're a primary funder of Clean Foresight, the cleantech accelerator. And I mean, if you look at the BC Clean Energy Plan that came out not too long ago, I mean, there's so much emphasis being placed on cleantech and sustainability initiatives that we have a great opportunity here to really take that by the horn with Foresight kind of being one of the leaders of that. Yeah, to really kind of take this and make good on some of these promises the government's made. Because there's a great opportunity here for us to try to come in with more sustainable initiatives that can help all industries grow across the province.

Awesome. So on the flip side, what do you think is still missing or lacking or could be improved in our current ecosystem?

I'm gonna refer to the BC Tech report card that came out about a couple months ago that was led by KPMG and the BC Tech association. And BC Tech broke this down even recently on their blog about recommendations based off that report card. But you look at things we're missing, talent can be a bit of a problem in terms of developing talent and retaining talent. Right. A lot of times they could leave elsewhere for more money or more job opportunities. Although we have a lot of job opportunities here. We just need the qualified people for developers and whatnot. Anchor companies is another big one. We don't really have a lot of those. And even just cost of living is another problem right now. Each of those is tackleable on their own. When you combine them together kind of creates a bit of a hurdle for us to get over. But talent, I think, is a really big one. And that starts all the way from like k to 12. Correct. Reimagining that and how we can really train our people better. And one example of this you'll see at the summit, Youth Innovation Day. We bring in a thousand students from around the province. We bring them for free. They come in and they hear some really cool speakers in the industry and then they get to go and learn and try actual tech work. So you get to learn how to do some animation, we get to learn how to code. We try to make them lead with hard skills that might encourage them to pursue a career in stem, which would be great. But developing our talent From K to 12 I think is really important and then working to keep that talent. We have so many great startups and companies here that need developers and need really hard tech employees, but we got to develop those here. So I think that's a challenge for us now. But I think that's a commitment that's being made by a lot of industry leaders here in the province to try to fix that so we can develop and retain our talent.

Yeah, for sure.

Cool. No, that was fantastic. It sounds like we got a lot to look forward to.

Yeah, that's the plan.

Yeah.

And it's, it's nice to think of the future as Vancouver being like a self sustainable kind of ecosystem where. Yeah. Starting kind of initiatives young, like where you go in and you influence kids to think about future career goals rather, rather than stick to like the kind of norm of options that you have. It's like so important to show them that if you go into tech you can really work in any industry. It can take you anywhere. It's a really, really great career path.

I agree. We need less marketing people and more tech people. What we need, I mean that's the answer.

We need less fluff and like more actual knowledge.

A little less of this, A little more.

That's a good note.

That's what you're gonna take away from this.

Don't be us.

You don't want anything to do with this. Actually go to school, learn how to code.

No, but I think there was a good point. I can't remember who we're talking to even like marketing is very different today than it was when we were in primary, Right? Totally. You should know HTML, you should know css, you should know your way around couple these technical things, analytics, all that kind of stuff. But that requires a lot of the stem stuff that you are talking about. So it's not just we're trying to push you to become a developer for tomorrow. The whole ecosystem needs this. So it's not, I'm Gonna tongue in cheek a little bit. But it does make a big difference when everybody is on the same page and has a certain level of like, we used to make this joke about typing, right? Like if you could type 50 words a minute or whatever, you're hired for something. Like, we've moved. We moved up a little bit.

So honestly, I think that like, out of my all my entire like, education kind of path, what I regret the most is not paying attention to the tech stuff. I just kind of. I always pin myself as like a non techie person. I was like, whatever. I'm not just not a techie person. I'm gonna be a people person. It's like, yeah, that's great. But with where the world is coming going now, I just wish I had more actual hard technology knowledge because I don't. Like, I went to one like, coding intro to coding for women event.

Cool.

And I just. Just to under. Because to me before even going to this event, I just thought, it's magic. Everything that happens on my phone, on my computer, on the tv, it's just. To me, it's just magic. And I was okay with that. And then I went to this event and I was like, wow, a lot of work goes into this. There's a whole different. There's like a million different languages that have to do with this and I know nothing about it. And that's kind of cool.

And she already knows four languages.

Yeah, it's scary. I wish. I wish I knew more. So kids learn this in school now.

And just, you know, play with stuff, right? Like I like to do. So shout out to her producer, lady Giselle, because, like, this doesn't happen without her. And she's actually our intern. But to do this podcast. Last week we finally wrote down the documentation on what it takes to do this podcast. 47 steps, guys. Pre show, not on air. Not us babbling, not the show notes, not the food. Just setting it up. 47 steps.

47 steps to make him in roof.

So just keep that stuff in mind. I think it's super fun time if you know, you're young and you're trying things to try and do a podcast, try and do a YouTube channel. Not for the sake of just getting famous, but just for the sake of tinkering. Right? Like that's really gonna help you. And I'm biased, but like a lot more than some of the other stuff that you might even learn in school. But anyway, I'm on to my like, school rant again. And I can feel it coming. So let's just push past that and let's go to the announcements. Shadi.

Yes. Well, first maybe we should start with Jamil. Do you have any announcements?

Do I have. I think I've talked at length about the Tech summit.

Yeah.

Which is great, but anything else coming up?

What was the date again?

March 11th to 13th. Great segue. Great plug for that, Sam. Appreciate that not to be a lot of fun, a lot of parties, a lot of network opportunities, a lot of cool sessions come. If you want to get to cheaper, just hit me up.

Sweet. Well, on our part, we don't have much going on for the next two weeks, so the only thing that I will give a shout out to is one of our community events. There's a BDO Canada's VC pitch day coming up February 21st. So you do have to apply and it's a full day event. So if you want to get out there and pitch and practice and meet some cool people, go to the BDO website and sign up.

Yeah, and I mean, the reason we don't have any events is because we literally did three this week.

So many.

So this, this is the cap end and we're, we're a little bit, were a little bit beat, to be completely honest.

We also had our launch, our mental.

Launch party launch party on Tuesday.

It was awesome. It was so good to see all of our mentors. Jamil, why aren't you a mentor?

Is the question no one wants.

Why won't you at the party?

I'm going to send you the link right now.

Bigger question.

Yeah, do it up. Send me the link.

We've got a roster of like 100 plus mentors now and we're really excited to finally put this into play and get our members to really get some value and, and also engage our mentors in Launch Academy through workshops and through pitch practices and whatever they feel would be valuable. Like if you wanted to come in and do a presentation or a workshop on whatever you think is important for a startup to know about that you have experience in, we'd welcome you in and you can partake and it's good. It's a way to bring in the outside tech ecosystem into Launch Academy that is great and interact a little bit more.

And we did have, I think it was seven or eight new members come in this month. So we do have a little bit more space. So if you guys are interested in joining Launchpad, joining us hanging out here. Yeah, just go on our website, LaunchAcademy, ca LaunchPad and apply and we accept new members every month until we're out of space, and then we say bye.

And we do want to create values, value for our mentors as well and make it really like a network for them and hopefully in the future host more of these events that brings our mentor together. Because out of that launch mentor party, I feel like at least 10 people walked away with some really great new connections and some new friends in the industry and some new potential partners. And that's the goal here.

Yeah, that was in the middle of a storm. And we're back to weather.

So those are my announcements. That's from me.

So any before we close, any final remarks, anybody want to shout out, now's the time.

Shout out to Danvers.

Oh, and Sade's mom also. We barely got that one in, actually, but there we go.

Oh, man.

Thank you so much for coming, Jamil. That was really nice. And everybody get on the BC Tech Summit stuff.

Thanks for having me, guys.

All right, so make sure to, like, subscribe. Five stars, all that nonsense podcast stuff, and we are out of here. All right, thank you, guys. Any last words?

Bye, everyone.

See ya. Sa.