Wednesday November 5th 5:30-7:30 pm
at Gowlings Lafleur Henderson LLP, 26th Floor, 160 Elgin Street

Beyond Free Keychains

Effective Marketing Strategies from
Product Development to Commercialization

Gowlings is very pleased to host “Retooling Ottawa”, The Ottawa Network event stream focused on promoting the formation of cross-disciplinary management teams and the redirection of business and technical skill sets to emerging technology areas.

Thomas Prowse, a Partner in the Gowlings Kanata Technology Law Office, will moderate an informal discussion about the opportunities and challenges that many local high tech companies are facing when trying to introduce new product to market with the hopes of achieving strategic revenue growth.

Come hear our distinguished speakers:.

Corien Kershey, HBS Marketing

Corien Kershey is a seasoned strategic thinker with a proven track record in business planning and marketing. Her ability to develop and execute strategies that result in marketplace success has kept her in demand in the technology sector. Corien has more than 20 years of technology marketing and executive management experience as VP of Marketing and Product Management for companies such as Simware, NetManage, Buystream and Trigence. She also served as CEO for two software start-ups, ServiceSwitch and Fusetalk. Since joining HBS, Corien has developed successful marketing strategies and programs for accounts such as Mitel, Borderware, Omnivex and Pyrophotonics, covering a range of technologies including enterprise software, hardware, security and defence, photonics, semi-conductors, wireless and social networks.

Corien is also active in the academic world. Holding a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto, Corien is a contributing author of Marketing: An Introduction, a Pearson Education textbook targeted at University and College students. As well, Corien is Director of the Management Certificate Program in Marketing at Carleton University’s Sprott School of Business where she sets curriculum, designs and teaches courses and supervises other instructors. As part of her association with Sprott, Corien has been judge for the School’s Nicol Business Plan Competition, which awards start-up funding to the top winners.

Ted Hutchins, Hutchins Crang Marketing Group

Ted is a Founding/Managing Partner & Creative Director at Hutchins Crang Marketing Group, a full service marketing communications agency serving business, technology and Industry. Throughout his career, Ted has designed communications solutions for subject matter including: semiconductor and electronics manufacturing, automotive manufacturing, aerospace, lasers technology, precision optics, fiber optics, telecom, optical scanning, economic development, and public policy.

Previously, Ted spent 16 years in marketing communications positions at Ottawa-based laser company Lumonics, where he rode the mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, and two rebrandings to become an expert in developing, implementing, and supporting a broad range of integrated marketing communications campaigns, programs, and deliverables, many on a worldwide basis. His experience at Lumonics provided Ted the opportunity to collaborate with and learn from leading industry experts in strategic marketing planning, program implementation, and brand building - a network that he is still active with today. Prior to Lumonics, Ted was a freelance illustrator and designer. Ted holds a B.A. in Psychology from Carleton University.

Tom Johnson, CoFounders Inc

Tom co-founded three technology start-ups: Enfin (sold to Newbridge), Caravelle (sold to Fluke technologies) and Guardian Mobility (successful personal exit in Spring ‘08). He also started Co-Founders Inc. to incubate start-ups and has consulted to numerous firms including Newbridge, Alcatel, Nortel (Entrust), U.S. Post Office, Canadian Government and several early/middle stage companies (Webplan, Mobile Knowledge, Digital Fairway, etc.). Tom has drafted several business plans that resulted in tens of millions of venture capital being raised. He has also worked with one venture capital firms and one “vulture capitalist” firm and served on a number of boards. Tom is a serial entrepreneur with a strong background in marketing and sales.

Retooling Ottawa is a free event with complimentary refreshments and is kindly made available by: .

Wednesday October 29th 6:00pm

Special Event:

Founders and Funders Dinner

Founders & Funders is a social event aimed at bringing together the people that start the next big successful company with the people that fund these companies in their earliest stages. The event is social. It is not a pitch fest. It is not a DemoCamp. It is an opportunity to meet other entrepreneurs and funders in your local community. The goal is to help facilitate opportunities for people to meet, share and build relationships that will grow into the NEXT BIG THING.

This event requires registration and is now SOLD OUT

Wednesday October 15th 7:00pm
at Royal Oak Pub Kanata, 329 March Road, Kanata

The SENS vs the Panthers

Come raise a beer with your fellow hitech fans while cheering the SENS to victory.

Tuesday October 21st
at 359 Terry Fox Drive, Suite 210, Ottawa

Vitesse

New “Individual Leadership Skills” Workshops

Vitesse Re-Skilling Canada and the Ottawa Talent Initiative are offering interesting and vital workshops on leadership skills development and personal growth for the individuals seeking a job or working at corporations.

How To Attend

These workshops are heavily subsidized to be easily affordable by our community. The normal workshops’ costs range from $140 to $170, which we subsidized them for our members at special registration fee of $29 to $39. Vitesse – OTI community membership is free and easy to obtain and provides members with benefits like reduced registration fees for our non-free events. To become a member and to register for the workshops, email info@otiac.ca or call 613-254-9880 ext 226.

First Workshop from this Series: Finding the Right Work for You: A Job Seeker’s Intensive - Begins Tuesday, October 21st

This half-day workshop will provide the job seekers and career developers understanding, skills and confidence to the next level. The workshop discusses and reinforced the key principles through a series of individual and group activities that help participants integrate their learning and develop their skills in their job search and career development.

The workshop is lead by Lee Wallace, co-author of Learn to Bounce: From a high tech layoff to your ideal work, who brings over 30 years of experience to his clients as a career coach and leadership consultant. Lee’s book with Anita Caputo valued at Chapter for $23.95 is also available for interested registered participants at the discounted price of $15.00.

Target Audience:

Anyone who is looking for work after a layoff, especially people who are stuck in some way Anyone who wants to improve his/her employability skills and is seeking a better job

Benefits for Participating:

1 - A deeper understanding of the key principles of a successful job search
2 - Clarity about the characteristics of their “Right Work“
3 - A clear statement of what they have to offer an employer so they don’t sound like everyone else
4 - Greater understanding of the hiring manager’s agenda and how to satisfy it
5 - Practical tips on how to ride the emotional roller coaster of unemployment, from people like them
6 - Greater skill and comfort around networking with other people, the #1 key to finding the work they want.

Fees and Contact Information:

Registration Fee: $29 for Vitesse Members - OTI community members, $49 for others

For free membership and special registration please contact us by email (info@otiac.ca) or by calling 613-254-9880 (Ext. 226).

Wednesday October 15th 5:00-7:00 pm
at LaBarge Weinstein, 515 Legget Drive, Suite 800, Kanata

Startup-Up Drop In

Focus On: Cleantech Opportunities

The Ottawa Network and LaBarge Weinstein are proud to host, ‘Start Up, Drop-In”, a pub night and constructive networking session hosted at the offices of LaBarge Weinstein the third Wednesday of every month, for purposes of encouraging the development of management teams, assisting with the start up networking, and making available service provider, sales, marketing and investor resources to local high-tech entrepreneurs.

Featured CEO:

Ron Dizy, Sempapower

Featured resources:

Rui Resendes, Parteq Innovations
Michelle Scarborough, OCRI

Featured Startups:

Niraj Bhargava, Energate
Dave Gerwing, Menova Energy
Scott Feagan, Tirestamp

LaBarge Weinstein’s keg and other refreshments will be made available. If you have an opportunity to RSVP to Diana Lavigne at dl@lwlaw.com, that would be great, but feel free to attend regardless. This is a free event kindly made available by:.

Wednesday October 29th 6:00pm

Founders and Funders Dinner

Founders and Funders is a volunteer run event that has been successfully run in many other Canadian cities and I decided Ottawa could use such an event. Thank you to James Smith of Labarge Weinstein, Tim Hember of The Ottawa Network and Sonny Juane for their assistance in addition to several sponsors who will be announced at a later date.

• what: founders and funders dinner
• when: october 29th, 6pm
• where: ottawa (specific location will be forwarded attendees at a later date)
• why: because there actually people with money to place and many with great companies willing to find a place for that money
• how much: $100/person

To Register or For More Information:

The intent of the dinner is to have funders and founders connect with each other in an informal setting. There are no presentation, no demos, no formal pitches. In order to ensure a valuable session for everyone, we will be keeping the total number of attendees relatively small. In addition, the event is by invitation only - if you wish to receive an invitation, please send me allan.isfan@favequest.com a very brief email with the following information:

• who you are: funder or founder
• where geographically you are coming from
• company
• if you are a founder, why you want to attend
• primary attendee and others from same company that wish to attend (if there is room)

We have a limit of one person per company initially to ensure we get as many companies as possible. after October 20th, we’ll open it up to more people if we are able to.

Criteria and Contact Info:

• Funder criteria: Have lots of money VCs, angels and alternate funding sources (working capital …) are welcome.
• Founder criteria: Be an actual founder or an executive that will be involved directly with funders.

You will be notified before before October 20th. Please forward this other funders and founders.

Cheers,
Allan Isfan
FaveQuest
http://isfanstartup.blogspot.com
http://connecttheworld.wordpress.com/