It is 11:24 p.m. on the night of 23rd of August, 2009, and I just got home after successfully closing OIC 2009 - a new micro initiative that we launched out of TalentBridge. Details of Ottawa Innovation Challenge (OIC), that I co-developed and co-managed with Steve Robins and William Armstrong with support from Sonia Riahi and Amanda Emmanuel, can be found at: www.innovationottawa.com
The seeds of OIC were sown about 4 weeks back during one of our regular TalentBridge meetings when Steve Robins brought up the idea of running an immersive student initiative in town that will bring local students and local industry together in a “bootcamp” environment. At that time, in parallel, I was also working on developing a similar concept. When Steve mentioned the idea, it was quite serendipitous and, I suggested that we develop it as a TalentBridge run micro initiative during the time that Steve and other TalentBridge interns spend with with us on Fridays. That it took much more than Fridays is another story, but OIC 2009 was born and we decided to pilot it over the weekend of 21st-23rd August 2009 before Steve takes off once again for school at University of Western Ontario.
Over the last four weeks, we developed the framework/model for the competition, drafted all framework documents, recruited the two companies - Benbria and ThinkSM for 2009 challenge - that would put together the industry challenges, sought and secured the necessary sponsorships and partnerships, put together a website, developed the marketing/PR collateral, ran a directed marketing campaign, developed the actual logistics of running the competition, ran recruitment sessions, recruited the talent (students) and then ran the initiative from 5:00 p.m. on the evening of 21st of August till 8:00 p.m. on the 23rd of August - but most importantly all of us had a lot of fun over the weekend surrounded by 12 hugely talented people who developed jaw dropping/awe inspiring solutions to the challenges that were thrown at them by the two companies.
The preparation for 2010 OIC is already underway, and we are committed to delivering a larger program - with a stronger immersive component - with a larger talent and industry participation. Anyone interested in helping out with the 2010 OIC should get in touch with me asap.
Twitter Updates of OIC 2009 can be found at: http://twitter.com/search?q=%23OIC2009
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on Sunday, August 23rd, 2009 at 8:38 pm and is filed under Entrepreneurship/Innovation, Work/Edu.
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