nGen to provide much-needed new media business support in Niagara Region

Earlier this week the Ontario Media Development Corp. (OMDC) announced an investment of $245,000 in nGen, an interactive media business incubator in the Niagara ON region. Like all new media business development initiatives nGen is a collaboration of educational institutions, private business and government, but its specific project focus makes it unique. Over the next two years nGen will concentrate on generating three interactive media projects: a game related to the War of 1812; a web-based social networking project promoting the Niagara music scene; and an investment attraction tool targeting companies in the digital media sector. The traditional aspects of a new media business incubator such as retaining talent, attracting new businesses and fostering collaboration should fall into place around the projects. "What we want to do is build capacity, get people working together, help people form collaborative networks," says Jean Bridge, director of Brock University's centre for digital humanities and coordinator of the nGen steering committee. "So we're going to be less focused on tenancy and that kind of approach, and more on a kind of synergistic approach."Brock's nGen partners are Niagara College, game developer Silicon Knights, the City of St. Catherines, Region of Niagara, Niagara Enterprise Agency and Interactive Ontario. The initiative has been in conception for a little more than a year. At its outset, nGen received a small grant from the OMDC's Entertainment and Creative Cluster Partnerships Fund to conduct a feasibility study for such an incubator. This year's infusion, which also came from the partnerships fund, will help secure a physical space within the next couple of months to house nGen's fulltime staff and those who are working on the projects. With two post-secondary schools that offer new media programs, provincial and local government support, and an established industry player, nGen mirrors the new media business development initiative on PEI. Bridge says nGen looked at many incubation projects in and outside of Canada including PEI's, and acknowledges they have similar goals, including providing a support network for new media start-ups. "Any kind of support network for emerging companies is something that is direly missing all across Ontario," says Ian Kelso, president of Interactive Ontario. "There aren't many options for new start-ups to find the resources, intelligence and advice to build up a company. The kind of content you're creating is one thing, but just to be able to figure out how to get through and how to build a business around it is something entirely separate."Bridge says nGen will lean on Interactive Ontario for its expertise in networking and business development. Similarly, it will be looking to the Niagara Enterprise Agency, which will be helping match entrepreneurs with potential angel investors, and the City of St. Catharines, which provides numerous services to business start-ups. Bridge hopes as the industry grows in the region, it will offer more opportunities for recent Brock and Niagara College graduates to stay in the area. "We're going to have a program of income support for a number of recent graduate entrepreneurs who will be brought into nGen, provided with equipment and a space to work and they will work in part on their own projects and in part on the central nGen project," she says. "We want students who graduate in these areas to be able to stay here and not to head out to Vancouver or off to Montreal."Kelso says talent retention is a laudable goal, but fostering new clusters also gives new media talent from other areas more options to find a location that suits their lifestyle. "Ultimately, the talent will go where it wants to go," he says. "People may prefer to move to PEI or L.A. because that's where they want to live. At the same time I think we are losing a lot of talent who would much rather stay closer to home, much closer to friends and family, and ultimately there just aren't enough options for them right now."Denis Dyack, president of St. Catherines-based Silicon Knights - the province's largest video game company - concurs. "Talent is everything in digital gaming, and there's an abundance of it for us to choose from in southern Ontario" says Dyack. "We've got the best universities in the world here. You've got, within an arm's throw, twelve or thirteen universities that are world-class. Toronto, Waterloo, Brock, Western... they're all in Ontario."

nGen to provide much-needed new media business support in Niagara Region

News | 01/09/2008 5:23 pm EST

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