Will the real Silicon Valley North please stand up?

http://www.techvibes.com/blog/will-the-real-silicon-valley-north-please-stand-up-2011-03-04

by techvibes • 15 years ago

10 5 15 years ago

thesnark• 15 years ago

What about Montreal?

guyzero• 15 years ago

Montreal would probably be on par with Vancouver and Calgary, but I'd guess it's still behind Waterloo and Toronto. I think the VC landscape is actually quite good in Quebec since there's a lot of government money to stimulate investment in the province. Or so I hear.

bwertz• 15 years ago

Agreed - Montreal should be on the list as well

Tiktaalik• 15 years ago

It's bizarre that they mention EA Canada for Vancouver yet don't mention that Montreal, due to Quebec's very significant tax incentives, is where all the new traditional games studios are being created. EA made a Bioware satellite studio out there, THQ is opening up a huge 400 man studio, and Warner Bros is doing a studio there too. Vancouver in contrast has shrunk with EA Blackbox collapsing and being absorbed into EA Canada, and Radical downsizing into a one team studio. EA Canada itself has had rounds of layoffs.

Now that's not to say that things are all bad for Vancouver. Many traditional games studios have disappeared but smaller studios have appeared in their place. Xbox Live focused studios such as Klei and Hothead for example. Microsoft bought Big Park and they're creating casual Kinect titles. Finally, Vancouver still has their digital effects industry with Sony Imageworks and Pixar opening up studios.

Aside from traditional console games I just noticed a few days ago that EA is opening up a Playfish studio in Montreal so that's another point for the Montreal column.

rdrimmie• 15 years ago

If you accept that Waterloo is part of the Golden Horseshoe (a possible point of contention, but born and raised here I've always thought it was) then Toronto and Waterloo are similar and connected in the way that San Francisco and San Jose are, though on a small population and density scale.

I don't know much about the Valley, but the impression I have is that it is a large area with regions that focus on different aspects of technology and I think that is true for the Golden Horseshoe.

I am missing some, but there's a large number of great schools (York, Ryerson, McMaster, Sheridan, Conestoga, Waterloo, Laurier, Guelph) that tend to act as focal points for regional specialties, highlighted by the differences in focus by tech organizations like MaRS and Communitech.

And if you extend a bit towards London and Stratford you get excellent culture and schools like Western and Fanshawe, and in the other directions towards Markham and Kingston you get highly educated knowledge workers.

Organizations like the Ontario Centres of Excellence (http://www.oce-ontario.org/) - who I am not directly connected to but professionally benefit from and generally admire - are viewing this part of the world as much bigger than any one city, and I think that is necessary.

If there's anything we have that is similar to Silicon Valley (which benefits as well by relative proximity to LA and San Diego) is that this is a high density population area, at least as far as such things exist in Canada.

Will the real Silicon Valley North please stand up?

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