Digital media firms form cluster to raise Ottawa’s profile in wake of Nortel meltdown

There’s a new player in the regional race for digital dominance: the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation (OCRI) launched GENERATOR this week – a digital media cluster that aims to combine the individual efforts of Ottawa’s interactive companies and hopefully put the Nation’s Capital on the new media map. According to people interviewed at the GENERATOR launch event Tuesday, this former Nortel town needs to make more of its digital media capabilities. “It’s a collective for people to... represent themselves as one, so folks, say in the Ontario government, can look at Ottawa as a digital media hub,” says Scott Simpson, the cluster’s chair. “There is critical mass now, whereas if they hear 17 or 20 different voices, that might not resonate.” With 280 new media companies in the capital, Ottawa seems to have momentum in the sector. Digital industry players include bitHeads Inc., a software development company now in its 15th year (Simpson is the firm’s president and CEO), and Magmic Inc., the developer responsible for a number of mobile games such as Ka-Glom!, and the iPhone version of the New York Times’ crossword puzzle. “The city has had all of these people before, but they haven’t banded together, so that may be why you haven’t heard of a lot of them,” Simpson says. “The industry hasn’t promoted itself.” People have heard a lot of bad news over the past few years about Ottawa’s high tech industry. Coining itself “Silicon Valley North,” the municipality housed numerous high-profile technology businesses in the 1990s, including Nortel Networks, which once employed nearly 20,000 in the region. Now Nortel has been dismantled under bankruptcy proceedings, and Ottawa’s tech sector largely consists of various small businesses that don’t carry the weight that Nortel did. As a result, Ottawa isn’t considered a new media hotspot, like Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver – although GENERATOR hopes to change that. “Digital media is a pure knowledge industry that’s expressed through media,” says Patrick McGowan, president of InMotion, a 30-year-old video production company specializing in HD these days. “My take on it is that we have a massive opportunity to provincialize cultural industries. They’re being decentralized very quickly.” Traditionally, media outlets set up in large cities where there are TV stations and networks. But with the web, “the distribution networks are rapidly being decentralized and democratized,” McGowan says, explaining that as a result, Ottawa could just as easily become a new media hub as anywhere else. For people thinking this new cluster concept is Ottawa’s way of papering over the economic hole that Nortel has left, Simpson suggests you should think again. “It’s not like somebody said, ‘Geez, Nortel’s leaving. What are we going to do now?’ Even when Nortel was around, there were still a lot of companies doing what they’re doing.” But O-town is competing with some heavy hitters in digital media – cities that have been at this game for a while. Vancouver and Montreal have been promoting themselves as digital industry Meccas for years. East Coast provinces including PEI are also ramping up their gaming-industry efforts. Is Ottawa behind the times? “It depends on the community you’re comparing it to,” says Rick Norland, a charter member of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), a non-profit organization fostering entrepreneurship; he’s also a partner in investment company Thorington Corp. “Broadly speaking I’d say in IT and telecom, Ottawa tends to be six months to a year behind what’s going on in Silicon Valley, but we’re on par or ahead of other geographies, like Boston and other places. That said, Ottawa has never had a new media presence before. Most of our technology folks are more hardware, telecom and IT focused. “I think the social media opportunity has come forward because those other ones have gone down,” Norland says. “As the workforce looks for a new place to use their skills, they head over to new media opportunities.” It’s too soon to position Ottawa as a contender for Canada’s new media crown, he says. “I don’t think Ottawa has a strong enough cluster to pit itself against anybody yet. I think it’s still in survival mode on this. This is the launch.” Norland points out that Ottawa’s success might depend on the new media industry’s ability to connect with traditional media. According to Roch Brunette, that’s starting to happen. Brunette is the general manager of the Ottawa-Gatineau Film & Television Development Corp. (OGFT), charged with fostering local film and TV growth, and positioning the Ottawa-Gatineau region as a film-friendly environment for producers. From his perspective, convergence is the way forward. “A good example is the Canada New Media Fund,” he says. “They’re basically taking the industry by the hand and saying from now on, we want to see more digital media applications and web-based products. The way to do it is through your traditional documentaries and products. Try to find the game that will fit with a documentary on the Rideau Canal, for instance.”

Digital media firms form cluster to raise Ottawa’s profile in wake of Nortel meltdown

Broadcast | December 16, 2009

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