The city of Hamilton has an opportunity to become the nation’s leader in life sciences.  The Chamber of Commerce has done terrific work to identify needs as per this article.  This is one of the many fields  burgeoning with talent within Hamilton.

There is a strong grassroots movement to revitalize Hamilton, in arts and in technology.  The popularity of the monthly art crawls, and bi-monthly democamps are two examples of growing interest in these movements.  Hamilton is also considered a hotbed for computer and video gaming in Canada.  Local web and graphic designers are garnering rave reviews from all over Southern Ontario. Attendance at every software and startup event over the past two years has grown steadily.  The mix ranges from very experienced to inexperienced, all sharing their knowledge, attitudes and ideas.  The amount of enthusiasm and energy is amazing.  We celebrate our ideas and discuss how we can succeed.

Indeed, there have been a number of local success stories, such as Peregrine Labs, Weever Apps, and TripCentral.ca.

There is more we can be doing to achieve further prosperity.  Many of the needs outlined in the life science cluster article represent issues across the entire tech field.  Seed money, engaged leadership, publicity, and marketing!

Great that we recognise this, it is one of the first steps in a plan to succeed.

Success breeds success.  We need to talk about Hamilton’s successful entrepreneurs.  Make sure people in all of Southern Ontario hear about them and how they happened.  They need to hear about the supportive community that is part of the accomplishment.

We have to remind people in Hamilton about what is happening.  Show them that great things are happening in their own community.  We need to celebrate our achievements! We have many to share, and our community should be proud of them!  Hamilton was known as the Ambitious City! We still are, no one knows it though!

Once we get the message out that Hamilton is open for business, looking to match up our hi-tech skills with problems to be solved, we can begin to draw in seed and venture money.  Seed money will help companies get started.  Venture will help them grow.  With the seed and venture funds, more talent will come to the community.

This is part of strategy for growth, investment, re-investment, marketing, intellectual property protection, promotion, and civic support.  The strategy needs to be bottom-up, coming from us, the grass-roots initiators of the movement.  It must address issues discussed above, and includes developing new talent, matching talent to needs, encouragement of outside the box thinking to cross-fertilize.

To make all this happen we need leaders.  Leaders to create and socialize the strategy.  Leaders to grow the grassroots movements.  Leaders to mentor and guide the startups.  Leaders to guide small and medium businesses.  Leaders to bring all of the various groups together behind the common strategy.

We need a spokesperson for the community.  The spokesperson must have technical and marketing credibility, charisma, and tell a compelling story about Hamilton.  To be the face of a revitalized Hamilton.