Medicine Hat Hosts National Tour
Medicine Hat, AB, (June 9, 2012) – Medicine Hat is hosting Startup Canada on June 9 as part of Startup Canada’s six-month National Tour to celebrate and inspire entrepreneurship across the country.
Startup Canada is an entrepreneur-led, national movement to enhance the nation’s competitiveness and prosperity through entrepreneurship. Its National Tour is traveling coast to coast to engage more than 25,000 Canadians and 250 partner organizations through a series of Town Hall Meetings and Fringe Events, and to develop community-driven solutions to challenges facing entrepreneurs today. The Entrepreneur Development Centre at Medicine Hat College is co-hosting the events in Medicine Hat with Startup Canada.
“Startup Canada highlights the important role that entrepreneurs play in driving local and national economies,” says Jon Sookocheff, Manager of the Entrepreneur Development Centre at Medicine Hat College. “Together with our local partners, we are excited to work with Startup Canada to foster an entrepreneurial culture and successful small businesses in our region.”
Startup Canada’s Medicine Hat activities include a site tour of the local business Weddingstar, followed by a Town Hall event.
“This is a great opportunity for us to introduce Weddingstar and explore the challenges we face when competing in a global market,” says Rick Brink, President and CEO of Weddingstar. “The information received from the local Startup Canada events and other Canadian entrepreneurs will serve to be invaluable.”
Rick Spence, a National Post business journalist and Startup Canada Advisor, will facilitate the Medicine Hat Town Hall event. Participants will discuss and develop community-backed action plans to further bolster and support entrepreneurship across Medicine Hat, Alberta, and Canada.
“This is great exposure for entrepreneurs in Medicine Hat to have Startup Canada here,” says Wendy Blackwell, Executive Director of the Economic Development Alliance of Southeast Alberta. “This is a unique opportunity to identify key challenges facing local entrepreneurs. It promises to bring them together to begin a critical conversation, one that we should be having more often.”
A full event listing is featured on the Startup Canada Campaign website. A national audience is following the tour through Startup Canada’s interactive website, live web-streamed broadcasts of the tour, and active social media networks.
Medicine Hat’s local partner organizations include the Entrepreneur Development Centre at Medicine Hat College, the Economic Development Alliance of Southeast Alberta and Community Futures Entre Corp.
In addition to being championed by patrons such as Brett Wilson (Host of RiskyBusinessTV, former Dragon & serial entrepreneur), Heather Reisman (Founder, Indigo Books & Music), Dani Reiss (Founder, Canada Goose), and Michael Legary (Founder and Chief Strategy Officer, Seccuris Inc.), Startup Canada has also received support nationally from a number of ambassadors and industry sponsors Microsoft, Gowlings and Ernst & Young.
Other sponsors include Best Western Hotels, Artik, Kick Ass Media, PubliAir, VideoBooth the Association of University Research Parks Canada, the Canadian Association of Business Incubation, the Evidence Network, Francis Moran & Associates, FreshBooks, MSBi Valorisation, NextMTL, the Ottawa Technology Transfer Network, Podio, Best Western, Backbone Magazine, HootSuite, ITWorld Canada, Paper.li, Sprouter, and Techvibes.
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For additional information or to pre-schedule interviews, contact:
Victoria Lennox
Co-Founder, Startup Canada
victoria@startupcan.ca 613-316-6203
Jon Sookocheff
Entrepreneur Development Centre at Medicine Hat College
jsookocheff@mhc.ab.ca 403-504-3585
About Startup Canada
Startup Canada is Canada’s first-ever, entrepreneur-led, national movement to enhance the nation’s competitiveness and prosperity by supporting and celebrating Canadian entrepreneurship. Startup Canada is harnessing the collective energies of Canadian entrepreneurs and enterprise support communities from Coast to Coast with the goals of providing the entrepreneurship community with a strong voice, promoting a vibrant entrepreneurial culture and creating a unified brand that Canadians can rally around. Startup Canada is launching this effort with the country’s first national entrepreneurship tour and campaign. The tour will run from March to September, engaging 25,000 Canadians and 250 partner organizations across the country. Entrepreneurs will participate in more than 30 Town Halls and 100 Fringe Events and connect through a social media groundswell campaign.
About the Entrepreneur Development Centre
www.mhc.ab.ca
The Entrepreneur Development Centre at Medicine Hat College helps students start, manage and grow small businesses. We foster and enhance an entrepreneurial culture at MHC, working across campus to realize entrepreneurship as a valued career option. We also develop cross-curriculum resources and leverage existing resources to provide education and training across college credit and non-credit programs and, contribute to building the entrepreneurial capacity of the larger community through enhanced partnering with stakeholder organizations. Thanks to a generous gift from JMH & Co., students have access to the Summer Company Program, which provides up to $10,000 in startup money to students looking to start a business, plus five Entrepreneurial Awards valued at $2,000.
