Speech - Manitoba Community Dinner, Dr. Roger Pederson, President & CEO, TRLabs

Good evening and welcome.

Many thanks to the Winnipeg team for bringing us together here tonight, an annual event that demonstrates TRLabs' mandate to connect industry, government and academia in pursuit of enhanced dynamism of the ICT sector here in Manitoba

Curiosity is defined as the desire to learn or know about anything. The highest personification of humanity – the author of our history, and an expression of our future. It's our first passion and our last.

Walt Disney said that when you're curious, you find lots of interesting things to do. While we don't busy ourselves with looking through holes in fences, curiosity is the beating heart of TRLabs – a place that poses questions and pursues the answers that send us down innovation's new paths.

It's been said that the larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder. For 20 years TRLabs dedicated itself to the collective pursuit of network connectivity. Today's Internet - a system for dispersing information - is second nature, as natural feeling as grabbing a morning cup of coffee. Tomorrow's notion of networking will generate completely new forms of information and ways to interact with it. As networks get faster – their ability to be more visual and tactile – to generate a more human experience for us – will grow exponentially.

Network intelligence will allow us to customize and personalize our experience. The mouse as navigation tool will diminish in importance as our movement, our voice, or even the touch of a surface like a wall will trigger network responses. Quality of service will be replaced by quality of experience.

Western Canada's ICT sector is standing at the starting line of a new race - one that doesn't look to history for guidance, but to the imagination for the future.

Our new ability to leverage network connectivity presents us with profound opportunity. But also profound competition from China, India and others capitalizing on the opportunity and holding key advantages like labour supply, cost of labour, and domestic market size.

In this context, the mantra of 'if you build it they will come' – which served us well to build the Internet, must be replaced by a new mantra – 'know thy customer, then build.'

Tom Brokaw once said it will do us little good to wire the world if we limit our vision. It will do us little good to wire the world if we short-circuit our souls.

The magic of the Internet and networking is that it is a social calling card. Too often the market misses that in pursuit of the next gadget with even more bells and whistles – most of which will leave the average user dazed and confused.

The real Internet story of the future is that people will finally have permission to be human in the context of their work. Networks will become a natural extension of us as we work to enhance productivity, lifestyle, and entertainment value.

The story is told of a woman who decided to introduce her elderly mother to the magic of the Internet. Her first move was to access the popular Ask Jeeves website, and she told her mother it could answer any question she had.

The mother was very skeptical but after some time she responded - 'How is Aunt Helen feeling?'

The irony is it sounds funny today but is likely a reality tomorrow as we turn social and economic reality as we know it on its head. For example, today's 'Big H' hospital is tomorrow's 'million little hospitals' – a distributed system of health care that ties your home to the health system via biomonitoring, ownership of health records, and real-time connection to family members around the globe. Health is a prime example of the powerful industry opportunity being created by the convergence of demographic demand, health spending, and ability to export our health knowledge and products to the world.

We need to reflect the potential of new realities based on the needs and desires of real people in the imagination we apply to the challenge.

Two engineers were standing at the base of a flagpole, looking up.

Manitoba Director of Operations and VP Administration Jeff Rohne walked by and asked what they were doing. 'We're supposed to find the height of the flagpole,' said the engineer, 'but we don't have a ladder.'

Jeff took a wrench from his pocket, loosened a few bolts, and laid the pole down. He took a tape measure from his pocket, took a measurement, announced, '5 metres' and then walked away.

The engineer shook his head and laughed. 'Well isn't that guy daft! We ask for the height and he gives us the length!'

Despite Da Vinci's conundrum that simplicity is the ultimate form of sophistication – which requires an exponential increase in the complexity of technology to achieve it, there are only four ways to create value in a digital economy: information, entertainment, convenience, and savings. This lies at the heart of the business opportunity for Manitoba industry.

It's our people and our imagination that are Manitoba's and western Canada's competitive advantage moving forward. We need to nurture and generate ideas, find effective means to transition them to the market, and germinate the seeds of ideas in the form of student training.

And that in a nutshell is what TRLabs is all about – making the connections between industry, government and academia that bring new reality to life. Our goal is a simple one – work with industry to identify their research and development needs – and meet them.

It has been said that optimist invents the airplane and the pessimist the parachute. We look back with pride on the wings we have given to new ideas in the form of generation of 1000 technologies, commercialization of 300 technologies, training of 840 university students, and interactions with more than 200 companies as innovation's horizon is explored.

For TRLabs the future means shorter-term, industry directed research, development and commercialization activity. More diverse and entrepreneurial brain-power. A focus on emerging markets such as Home Technologies and Health. Serving as an R&D pathfinder for companies by making new connections with academia, other companies, and in the international arena.

I would like to take this opportunity to recognize several new members in Manitoba – MTS Allstream, the Economic Development Council for Manitoba Bilingual Communities, CIC Wireless, Norscan, SMT Research, and Cengea Solutions which represents a merger between TRLabs member Linnet and Ansera. Wing is this for sure? Our growing member base in Manitoba is both a testament to the success of a program in Manitoba with its nose to the grindstone, and a promise to our new members that we will deliver value to them by meeting their needs.

Curiosity is our inexorable link that bridges the past into a future shaped by our discovery.

Sir Isaac Newton's epitaph says - 'I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.'

A guiding spirit for us all.

Thank you and have a great evening.

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