The City of Prince George played host to a regional innovation tour on Thursday night, focusing on technological advancements to make the resource sector a more efficient industry.
One of those companies was SparkGEO, a website and application specializing in satellite web-mapping based in PG.
.@sparkgeo CEO @geo_will says the problem with global change in distributing resources = the world is getting bigger @mypgnow pic.twitter.com/G3PxvBjloM
— Kyle Balzer (@KyleBalzer) February 3, 2017
CEO Will Cadel says an opportunity to talk in front of government officials is a real treat.
“We have companies with big spending power like IBM who are coming up and saying, ‘If you’re a guy who’s building stuff in his basement in PG, you can be involved, we can talk, and we can figure something out.’ Just because you’re not in Vancouver, doesn’t mean you can’t engage in the technology community.”
MLAs Shirley Bond and Mike Morris were in attendance to kick-start the tour; most organizations speaking to them will also be presented at Vancouver’s BC Tech Summit in March.
.@shirleybond addresses #bctech innovators saying it's important for province to shine in the national level @mypgnow pic.twitter.com/vk3MAY4Vkt
— Kyle Balzer (@KyleBalzer) February 3, 2017
It’s considered the pinnacle for local “techies,” like Cadel in geography, to show off their visions and ideas to big-name companies.
“The great thing is that right now, given the proponents for everyone to have a smartphone in their pocket, geospatial data is everywhere. It’s in your phone, it’s in your car, and we find ourselves solving a whole bunch of really interesting, quite difficult problems constantly.”
He says he decided to base SparkGEO in Prince George because of the people and surrounding environment.
“We’re in PG for the lifestyle and we hope that other organizations will sort of adopt technology in PG as well because of the same reasons; you don’t have to have a two-hour commute to get to your office, all that kind of stuff. There are much better lifestyle values here, so it works well for us.”
He encourages other Northern BC companies to take the plunge on their innovative ideas.