It’s a great time to be a tech entrepreneur in Alberta. Besides the entrepreneurial spirit that already exists here, the buckets of money, and the positive business environment that is willing to buy early adopter products - we now have a provincial government that is willing to step up with providing a much better investment climate. Or at least one that is as good as the other provinces.

With the flurry of government funding announcements, tax credit changes, and private equity going on, you’d think that we just caught up in 3 months, what should have happened 10 years ago.

I guess good things just take l o n g e r to cook, and we have a provincial government that has the money and the political capital to really diversify the economy. This is great, because along with the entrepreneurial capital, energy and spirit here, it will make for a great combination and I think you’re going to see some great tech companies come from it. For people who live here, and see companies like RIM, ATI Graphics, Nortel, Cognos, and other tech companies become great companies out east, it’s a signal for them to build the next SMART Technologies (who helped bring these changes about) in Alberta.

I believe this to be true, because of the smart and determined people here. Many have succeeded in spite of the previous lack of capital and infrastructure, so imagine what it will be like now.

All that was missing was an initiative like this to tell everyone that Calgary and Edmonton is where you want to go to make it BIG in technology.

I’d like to believe that all the folks that I’ve been previously giving credit to in previous posts, raised the profile enough to get this done. A special thanks to David Martin, Chairman of SMART who has an ‘elder’ statesman (sorry Dave) of the tech community led the charge, and has the experience that the politicos were willing to listen to, and act on.

Now if we can just roll back living expenses 4 years, and this would be a really incredible place to start a tech company….

Thanks Eddie - my new best friend.