No doubt, Montreal is a hopping place for technology

by Tris Hussey on February 18th, 2008

Contrary to what folks might think down south (i.e. the US), Canada is has a very hot tech scene. There is great stuff going on across the country, which btw keeps me busy, but I have to say of the tech cities here in Canada Vancouver and Montreal are the hot spots as far as I’m concerned.

The Montreal Gazette ran an article called Silicon Island on Saturday talking about the growing tech and start up culture on the island of Montreal. Heri of MTW, Joey at Global Nerdy, and Rob at Techvibes all picked up on it rather quickly and built on the whole Montreal buzz.

A few common threads keep coming up in the articles (oddly enough no one commented on Montreal’s weather, which in winter is pretty harsh). I’ve talked about the need for more VC funding up here and the need for people to take more risks in trying new startups as well. But I have this nagging feeling that we’re still missing something. Some piece of the puzzle just isn’t there.

Maybe we just don’t have the concentration of tech people in one location to get ideas going. Maybe we need some kind of start up incubator city or something. Of course I wouldn’t move to Ottawa, Toronto, or Montreal even though they are all lovely cities to visit.

Regardless of these questions and musings, I’m glad Montreal is getting some attention for their booming tech scene.

Speaking of which, you might like my DEMO videos on Intruders.tv Canada, since most of the Canadian companies presenting were from Montreal. Just because he’s a friend of mine, and a former blogger here at b5media, I have to post my interview with Ben Yoskovitz here. Ben might cringe at this (he seemed a tad embarrassed on Twitter, but said his hair did look good), but hey I’m proud of the guy!

b5media.com

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