Calgary: Could We Become A Clean Energy Tech Hub
For many, SAIT’s announcement re: creating a new School for Advanced Digital Technology (SFADT) could be the game changer for Calgary and its downtown that they have been waiting for i.e. the transformation of downtown into a Tech Hub.
A Tech Hub is defined as group of buildings in close proximity with various amenities that encourage networking and collaboration resulting in numerous small technological startups growing into mid (50 to 200 employees) and large (200+ employee) companies. Much like downtown Calgary’s has been an Oil & Gas hub for the creation and growth of junior oil companies over the past 40 years.
However, Calgary still grappling with the following issues:
Does the city have the workforce it needs to create a Tech Hub?
Is the community concentrated and connected enough to form a Tech Hub?
Does Calgary had the lifestyle to attract tech entrepreneurs?
Can we attract the venture capital needed to sustain a Tech Hub?
Is the downtown oil & gas hub an attraction or a hindrance?
Note: An much shorter opinion piece was published by CBC Calgary “Let’s face reality about Calgary’s potential as a tech hub” on Nov 24, 2020.
Downtown Tech Hub
Thanks to a $30 millon donation by Calgary businessman and philanthropist David Bissett, Calgary may now have the beginnings of a downtown Tech Hub as several buildings near the new school in the historic Odd Fellows Temple (corner of 6th Ave SW and Centre Street) are home to small tech firms with growth potential.
Caglary’s historic Odd Fellow Temple is currently being transformed into SAIT’s School For Advanced Digital Technology.
The Odd Fellows building is perfectly positioned to become centre ice for a Tech Hub with +15 links to most of downtown’s major buildings so students will be able to attend classes in the morning and then wander to their tech internship in the afternoon, or vice versa.
The School is one of three key actions items the City of Calgary and its partners are working on to diversify our city’s economy by fostering new technology industries.
But there is still a long way to go and questions to be asked if Calgary’s diversification plan will work? Everyone is saying it will take decades for diversification to happen. In fact we have already been trying to diversify the city’s economy for over five decades.
The City of Calgary first started to foster the development of high tech companies in Calgary, with the formation of Calgary Technologies Inc in 1981.
And even before that, the Province established The University Research Park next to the University of Calgary in 1966. The vision was to foster innovation in the energy industry and by the 1990s it included not only the Shell Technology Centre, but a variety of tech focused businesses and organizations - SMART, Alberta Innovates, Computer Modelling Group and Alastair Ross Technology Centre.
More good news! The Park was recently rebranded as “University Innovation Quarter” and the University of Calgary Innovation Quarter Trust has been established to transform the tired old park into a world-class start-up hub.
Calgary Economic Development and its partners have completed numerous studies and plans and have tons of data on how to enhance our city as a major tech center, but they all distill down into three key strategies – training, growing and attracting.
Link: Eleven Reasons Why Calgary Is An Ideal Place To Relocate.
Strategy #1 Provide More Tech Skill Training
One of the things Calgary’s economic and educational leaders learned from the failed Amazon Headquarters bid in 2017 was while Calgary is a highly educated city (73% of Calgarians have some post-secondary education, the highest in the Canada, source Calgary Economic Development) we lack people trained as software engineers, data scientists, coders and programmers.
It is a bit of “chicken and egg” situation - what comes first - the trained tech employees or the companies providing job opportunities for tech workers.
I expect it would surprise many Calgarians to learn there are 2,000+ tech jobs available in Calgary today as a result of over 400 growing technology companies in the city (source Calgary Economic Development).
SAIT’s goal is to graduate about 1,500 trained advanced digital employees over the next five years to help fill some of these positions and others that will be created over the next five years. Hopefully most of them will stay downtown, repopulate the empty office spaces and create a new downtown new Tech Hub.
However, one has to wonder why SAIT chose to lease a building downtown, rather than to just offer all of the courses online given how education is evolving these days? Or use space on its campus which is conveniently connected to downtown by LRT.
Also the traditional role of post-secondary school in tech education has also been put in question with tech giants like Google offering online “Google Career Certificates” in the fields of data analytics, program management, information technology and user experience design. The certificates can be obtained online in six months and are being treated by Google as the equivalent of a four-year degree. The certificates will be offered through partnerships with 100 community colleges in the United States.
This could be a game changer when it comes to the future of advanced digital training at post-secondary schools around the world.
Strategy #2 Grow Existing Tech Companies
While SAIT’s announcement is getting all of the attention, the real story is the number of start-up tech companies already located near the school. Finger Food is located in Brookfield Place, Absorb LMS is located in Telus Sky, Symend is moving into First Tower (formerly the Telus Building) and Pureweb is located in the historic 1930 Telephone Exchange Building.
While most Calgarians have never heard of these companies they are all tech employers with big plans for growth, which means an increase in demand for new grads.
There are currently about 270 technology start-ups in Calgary with 1 to 4 employees across a diverse range of sectors. The City’s goal is to grow the number of start-ups to over 2,300 by 2031. While this is a bold and ambitious goal, the reality is every city in the world is trying to do the same thing.
Strategy #3 Attract Tech Companies To Calgary
The City of Calgary’s $100M Opportunity Fund, is designed to attract companies (mostly tech ones) with growth potential to set up operations in Calgary. To date almost $40M has been invested in the 12 different initiatives, including $8.2 million in SAIT’s School For Advanced Digital Technology.
While it is great to see these new companies coming to Calgary, one has to wonder how long they will stay? Or will they move once they have meet the terms of their agreement with the City of Calgary? Will they be able to meet their ambitious growth goals?
The hope is their employees will love the quality of life Calgary offers and decide to stay even if the companies move. Ideally, they will stay and start new companies with new ideas fostering a made-in Calgary tech hub
In addition, the City is also building an 50,000 square foot new home for Platform Calgary in the new $80M parkade in East Village just south of the new Central Library. Platform Calgary is the new name for Calgary Technologies Inc. (CTI) whose history can be traced back to 1981 when the City set up the Calgary Research & Development Authority to help develop Calgary’s budding technology centre. In 2000, CTI moved into the new 120,000 Alastair Ross Technology Centre at the University of Calgary, offering subsided office space for budding tech start-ups.
Recently, Platform Calgary announced several companies and organizations who will become tenants at their new East Village space in the hopes of fostering the development of a tech hub in East Village. It would seem Calgary is trying to create three tech hubs, one in East Village, one downtown and one at the University of Calgary. Are we spreading ourselves too thin?
To thrive in the 21st century, cities must be home to leading edge schools and businesses that train, retain and attract entrepreneurs who are at the forefront of new technology. SAIT’s new School of Advance Digital Technology, Platform and the University of Calgary’s Creative Destruction Lab are designed to do just that.
Link: Platform Building Video
But is that enough? Will it work? Are we spreading ourselves too thin?
Calgary isn’t on the list of the top 100 Emerging Ecosystem Ranking ( 2020 Startup Genome Report)
Calgarians Who Think Calgary Can Become A Tech Hub!
Elizabeth Cannon (past President of the University of Calgary) arrived in Calgary from PEI in 1982 to complete here engineering degree at the University of Calgary. She was drawn to a new program – Geomatics Engineering because it was future-oriented and a new wave of hi-tech. She stay in the Calgary because of “the spirit and culture of the city resonated with her – hard work and creativity were rewarded.”
When asked “Do you think Calgary is as attractive to tech grads and entrepreneurs today as it was in the 1980s?” She answered “Yes – definitely!”
However she went on to say, “the nature of the opportunities has evolved. In the ‘80s the entrepreneurial spirit was at the junior oil and gas companies which were being formed, grown and sold - then they did it all over again. Today the entrepreneurial spirt has broadened to include the technology sector, as both an enabler of the energy sector, but also in support of many other industries.”
One of those companies is Enersoft, a Calgary-based applied technology company working with oil, gas and mining businesses employing robotics and Artificial Intelligence computing platform to provide faster, cheaper and better information. Enersoft’s co-founders Grant Sanden and Yannai Segal (both Calgary area boys, who met at the University of Calgary 20 years ago) provided me with some interesting insights into Calgary’s potential as a future Tech Hub.
They founded Enersoft Inc when they were well into their 30s, with three kids each, which meant Calgary fit perfectly with their lifestyles. They informed me that while “our intuition might be to that to make Calgary more attractive to tech entrepreneurs we should make our city look more like – San Francisco, Vancouver, and Toronto – with a livelier nightlife and more arts and culture. But while all those things are great, we’ll never out-compete the big cities at those big city things.”
Sanden and Segal added “it’s a myth unattached 20-somethings living it up in the big city working crazy hours and sharing tiny apartments are the ones driving the tech sector growth. In reality most entrepreneurs only develop the skills, connections, and opportunities to build something great later in life.”
So, from an urban development perspective, they suggest what Calgary needs to do to attract tech talent to the city is “to continue doing what we are already know for – affordable suburban housing, short commutes, low taxes, clean and safe streets and parks, great neighbourhood schools, fresh air and a culture of reasonable working hours (true work-life balance). Maintaining affordability and a broader culture of work-life balance is also critical because it gives innovators the financial resources and free time to incubate their ideas into businesses.”
Link: Is Calgary really the 5th most livable city in the world?
Calgary’s University Research Park, recently rebranded as University Innovation Quarters, looks like any one of thousands of suburban business parks built in the last 20th century. Fortunately plans are in place to transform it into an attractive, vibrant, mixed-use space that will attract dozens of startups in various sectors - think urban Village.
Every City Wants To Be A Tech Hub
When asked about Calgary’s potential as tech hub they replied, “the problem is every city in the world is trying to diversify its economy, to save itself with innovation and to enhance its future by becoming a tech hub. Every college is starting a “School for Advanced Digital Technology,” every new downtown complex includes a tech hub with shared workspaces, an incubator and various entrepreneurial and technical mentorship and training programs. Calgary needs to do all these things, and do them well, just to tread water in its battle to merely stay competitive with other cities.”
They went on to say, “Calgary has seen some success with innovative companies from a variety of sectors, from biotech to fintech to warehouse automation, but Calgary is fundamentally no different than Winnipeg, Brampton, Salt Lake City, Tucson or any number of mid-sized cities. If we continue to try and build a generic Tech Hub, we will do well relative to our peer cities, but our chances of building something transformative are slim.”
Their transformative idea is “to make Calgary a major Oil & Gas Tech Hub by leveraging our advantage of having some of the world’s most advanced oil & gas companies in our backyard and a huge pool of skilled, smart and hard working professionals with deep insight into the problems facing this industry globally.”
They see the future of Calgary as “being the leading global tech hub for finding, extracting, and processing energy (oil, gas, solar, wind, geothermal etc.) in a more efficient and environmentally friendly way. And, where geophysicists revolutionize medical imaging, oil sands geologists revolutionize nickel mining and horizontal drillers bring the world geothermal energy.”
They emphasized for this to happen “would require a true commitment from Calgary’s major energy companies to embrace local tech innovation, not just play lip service to the idea.”
Personally I find the vision of evolving Calgary to become a Clean Energy Tech Hub much more exciting than being a generic hub.
Link: Reorienting Canada’s immigration system for the 21st century
How Does Calgary Rank Internationally?
Jordan Engbers, CEO of Cohesic, tipped me off to the “2020 Global Startup Ecosystem Report” which analyses and ranks over 100 cities around the work based on their businesses start-up activity. Calgary is ranked #52 in the Top 100 Emerging Ecosystems global. We are in what the report calls the “Activation Phase” with our strengths being Cleantech and Life Sciences.
The report suggests cities in the Activation Phase must “activate entrepreneurial-minded people and grow a more connected local community that helps each other out and pick one or two start-up subsectors that build on local economic strengths and develop focused programs to accelerate ecosystem growth and develop pockets of success leading to sizable exits.”
Yikes…couldn’t they just say “build on your strengths and foster partnerships.” But it does support the idea that Calgary needs to focus on one or two key tech sectors. Engbers thinks Calgary urgently needs to “identify the key sectors it will focus on and incentivize them.”
Oh and if you were wondering what “ecosystems” have to do with technology, it turn out the tech sector has co-opted the biological term which refers to “diverse organism living and feeding off each other in a particular place” to reference how technology businesses thrive when they are in close proximity to allow for collaborative, catalytic and synergistic interactions.
Unique Tech District
Engbers transformative idea is for Calgary to create something like St. Louis’ “Cortex District”, a 200 acre hub for technology near Washington’s medical campus, St. Louis University and Barnes-Jewish Hospital that was mostly empty lots 20 years ago.
Hmmm…sounds a bit like Calgary’s Foothills Medical Centre, University of Calgary, University’s Innnovation Quarters and Alberta Children’s Hospital. Perhaps throw in Motel Village and redevelopment of Foothills Athletic Park and McMahon Stadium.
Like Sanden and Segal, Engbers also thinks “Calgary shouldn’t try to be like other Tech Hubs – we can learn from them, but we shouldn’t try to imitate too closely. Calgary is a unique city with its own DNA, history and people” He suggests “establishing stronger links between existing oil & gas companies and new innovative start-up, where large companies would invest in start-ups outside of the energy domain to try to diversify their own risk.”
His suggestions for focusing are Healthcare, Biotech, Data Management/Analytics and Agitech.
Last Word
Personally I find the vision of evolving Calgary to become a Clean Energy Tech Hub much more exciting than being a generic tech hub. The demand for clean energy is only going to increase as the world’s population continues to increase.
Being a Clean Energy Tech Hub, is the natural evolution of Calgary’s history as a major oil and gas centre, but goes way beyond fossil fuels. It also extends into other fields like Healthcare, Agriculture and Data Management.
To evolve from a frontier tech city to becoming a major hub, Calgary must build on our strengths! We must differentiate ourselves from other cities. We must dare to be different!
If you like this blog, you may like these links:
CBC: Why we should turn Calgary’s empty office towers over to the creative economy