Wednesday, May 27, 6:00 to 8:00 pm
Algonquin College, Woodroffe Campus just south of Baseline,
Building T, Room T130 (campus map below)

Cutting Edge focus on Social Media for Business

Social Media – its here, now, and ubiquitous – but how can you use it effectively in the business context.

Learn about the  role of social media in driving market conversations to understand the voice of the customer, and how a Social Media Press Release differentiates from a traditional Press Release. When it comes to implementation, you will also learn how to build your own enterprise social network using new social networking open source web applications.

Come hear our distinguished speaker:

Chris Biber – President & CEO, SearchingWorks
Chris Biber is an award-winning marketer with over 20 years experience in international sales, business development and senior marketing roles. As the founder of SearchingWorks, Chris advises clients throughout North America on the successful implementation of cost-effective Internet marketing strategies.

Chris has won a series of marketing awards such as the Cisco “Growing With Technology Award” and has also been featured in industry publications such as MarketingSherpa. Prior to founding SearchingWorks, Chris was Director of Marketing at Pronexus Inc. He also held senior positions at Corel Corporation, Databeacon and others.

Rick Radko – President, R-Cubed
Rick is an entrepreneur and consultant with 18 years experience in hardware, software and web application design.  Since developing his first his first web application in 1998, he has gained extensive experience customizing, integrating, and extending open source web applications such as Joomla, WordPress, and MediaWiki. As founder of R-Cubed, he develops custom web applications, social networking and team collaboration solutions for businesses.

Natasha D’Souza, Digital Media Strategist and founder, Virtual EyeSee
Natasha D’Souza is founder of Virtual EyeSee, a Social Media consulting agency serving North America.
Being creative, a visionary and a trend spotter, Natasha helps key decision makers understand new trends and technologies in online social spaces and how web 2.0 or social media principles can enable them to connect with their customers, thus increasing their bottom line.

Natasha has over 13 years of hi-tech experience working for fortune 500, mid-sized and startup companies. Her experience in the private and public sectors has given her the opportunity to work in marketing, project management, business development and sales.

Campus map: http://www.algonquincollege.com/main/yourAlgonquinTab/directions/woodroffeMap.htm

Free parking in lot 8 after 5:30 pm

Startup, Dropin - Social Media and Web Aggregation Businesses
Offices of LaBarge Weinstein

“The Cutting Edge event normally scheduled for the 4th Wednesday of the month will NOT take place on January 28. Cutting Edge will resume in February.”

Wednesday February 4, 2009 - 5:30-7:30 pm
at Gowlings Lafleur Henderson LLP
26th Floor, 160 Elgin Street

What Not to Write -

The Retooling Ottawa “Marketing Make-Over”

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 the first ever Retooling Ottawa “Marketing Make-Over”. As announced at the last Retooling Ottawa session, a business will be selected from the entrants for a real-time marketing make-over by the members of the re-united “panel” of distinguished speakers listed below. You will receive practical insights into marketing “do’s and don’ts” in connection with the opportunities and challenges that many local high tech companies are facing when introducing new products or services to the market.

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.

Wednesday February 4, 2009 - 5:30-7:30 pm
at Gowlings Lafleur Henderson LLP
26th Floor, 160 Elgin Street

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

Wednesday, November 26, 5:30-7:30 pm
at Algonquin College, Woodroffe Campus just south of Baseline, Building T, Room T119 (campus map below)

The Cutting Edge on Intellectual Property (IP)

IP — What is it? Do you have it? Do you need it? What’s it worth to you, and how do you get it and protect it? What is the current landscape and what are the emerging trends? A panel of experts representing legal, investor, government and IP as business perspectives will address these and other questions and share their experience with intellectual property.

Come hear our distinguished speakers:

Bayo Odutola
Practice Leader, Odutola & Co.

Curtis (Curt) Dodd
VP of Patents and Counsel, Wi-LAN

Dallas Smith
Department Head of the Intellectual Property Group Ottawa, Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP

Marie-Andrée Katia Bertrand
Manager Outreach Program, Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO)

Paul Smelters
Partner, VenGrowth Private Equity Partners

Michael Morgan
Head of Licensing Group, LaBarge Weinstein

Bayo Odutola, Odutola & Co.
Bayo Odutola is the practice leader of Odutola & Co., an intellectual property law (IP) boutique in Ottawa. Bayo is an IP lawyer and trade-mark agent. He has represented clients from Juno and Academy Award winners to chemical companies and family pizzerias. He is perhaps best known nationally and internationally as an author of the authoritative loose-leaf manual: Odutola on Canadian Trade-mark Practice, a comprehensive reference work, updated quarterly, published in 2005 by Thomson Carswell.

Bayo is one of the few dual-certified specialists in IP Law (Trade-mark/Copyright) by the Law Society of Upper Canada (LSUC) and has served on LSUC’s Committee for the Certification of Specialists in Intellectual Property. He has also taught, written and spoken widely in his area of expertise.

Bayo handles all aspects of IP litigation (opposition, cancellation/expungement proceedings and domain name disputes), prosecution, acquisition, clearance and advice with a particular emphasis on trade-marks, copyright, licensing and technology-related issues.

Curtis (Curt) Dodd, Wi-LAN
As VP of Patents and Counsel, Curt is responsible for the management of Wi-LAN’s Patent portfolio including all patent filing and prosecution-related activities, as well as formulating infringement and validity positions with respect to its issued patents.  In addition, he is actively involved in licensing Wi-LAN’s patents and provides patent-related counsel to Wi-LAN’s licensing, research and development, business development and litigation teams.

Prior to joining Wi-LAN, Curt held the position of Intellectual Property Counsel at Nortel Networks.  In this position, Curt was involved the management and licensing of Nortel’s 4G wireless technologies including WiMAX.  Curt is a patent lawyer, engineer and registered patent agent and has authored several papers on U.S. and Canadian patent law.

Dallas Smith, Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP
Dallas Smith is Department Head of the Intellectual Property Group in Ottawa and has expertise in patent prosecution, with an emphasis on originating patent drafting for Canadian high technology, electronics, communications, wireless and photonics companies.

Software patents include client/server application software development tools, communications algorithms, telecommunications services, and speech recognition algorithms.

A Registered Patent Agent in Canada and the United States, he received his honours degree in Physics from the University of Victoria in 1972 and acquired his patent agent certification in 1989 and was awarded the Marie Morency Memorial prize for drafting proficiency.

Prior to joining Gowlings, he spent four years as Director, Intellectual Property with Nortel Networks Corporation, where he worked with various businesses on patent strategy and acquisition. He worked for the firm as a patent agent for two years after he spent six years as a patent manager for Northern Telecom’s Patent Department, where he was responsible for the drafting, filing and prosecution of patents, on a worldwide basis, for transmission systems, optical fibre systems, data and telephone switching networks and services, voice processing and speech recognition. He also advised various corporate departments on validity and infringement issues.

Dallas is a member of the Intellectual Property Institute of Canada and was a member of the Patent Agents Examination Board 2004-2007. He conducted tutorials on drafting of patents for IPIC for 10 years. For six years he lectured and tutored a portion of a summer course on patents for the PTIC at McGill University.

Marie-Andrée Katia Bertrand, Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO)
Mrs. Marie-Andrée Katia Bertrand recently joined CIPO as Director of the Outreach program, which is responsible for raising awareness, knowledge and effective use of IP in the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) and education sectors as well as in other government departments.

Prior to this assignment, Mrs. Bertrand worked for several years with economic development agencies for the government of Canada as a Regional Director in Québec. She has also worked for the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) as a Director, counselling services.  In addition, she occupied various positions with international cooperation agencies working with developing countries.

Paul Smelters, VenGrowth Private Equity Partners
Paul Smelters is a Partner at VenGrowth Private Equity Partners, and has more than 25 years of technology experience in advanced technology design, R&D management, and product/business management. He currently specializes in communications and semiconductors, and actively serves on the boards of local technology companies such as BTI Systems, TenXC Wireless, Galazar and Kleer. Prior to joining VenGrowth in 2005, Paul worked in various senior roles at Nortel Networks/BNR. He holds a Bachelor of Applied Science (BASc Electrical Engineering) from the University of Waterloo, and a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Queen’s University.

Michael Morgan, LaBarge Weinstein
Michael Morgan is the head of the LaBarge Weinstein Licensing Group. He practices intellectual property law with an emphasis on complex transactions for the development, acquisition, licensing, use or other exploitation of technology products and services.

Prior to joining LW, Michael was the General Counsel of the Entrust group of companies, where he was responsible for the negotiation and drafting of a wide variety of contracts, including software licenses, distribution and OEM agreements for both hardware and software, software development agreements, maintenance, consulting, source code escrow, and Internet-related agreements. In addition to these responsibilities, Michael managed the Entrust intellectual property portfolio of over 100 patents and pending patent applications, and was also responsible for the management of a number of patent infringement lawsuits for Entrust in the United States. Before to joining Entrust, he was a member of the Technology Law group at Nortel Networks, where he worked on numerous large M&A transactions.