A few weeks ago, I found myself in a coastal area rich in universities and colleges, bursting with ambition, and actively trying to draw back residents who had moved away and improve an income level well below the national average.

Sound familiar? No, I wasn’t in Atlantic Canada but rather in an office in downtown Bangor, Maine, listening to the principals of Mobilize Eastern Maine outline their impressive plans to revitalize their region’s economy.

Maine has a bipolar economy. Most of its residents live in the affluent southern area, and census figures show that the disparity between

In 10 days, a group of Canadian expats in London will hold the official launch of C100UK, the British equivalent of C100 in Silicon Valley.

There has been relatively little hype about this new group since the Globe and Mail reported its advent in December, and I’m surprised there’s not more buzz about it in Atlantic Canada. I get that London is not Silicon Valley and if you want to be somebody in the tech world you have to make waves in suburban San Francisco. No arguments here. But the mission of the Atlantic Canadian innovation community should not be just to make waves in the tech

Innovacorp and GrowthWorks Atlantic are leading a $1.1 million first round of funding of 2nd Act Innovations, which will help the Halifax company develop a product for midsized customers.

The company, which has developed an advanced document-organization system called Oris4 Enterprise Content Manager, or ECM, has doubled its customer base since I last reported on the company in October, and CEO Andrew Doyle said 2^nd Act  next year aims to raise about $5 million to $7 million.

Innovacorp, Nova Scotia’s innovation agency, and GrowthWorks, the venture capital fund, are each investing

Our Guest Columnist today is Jeff Thompson, (@thomjeff) of Fredericton, who exited his tech company Conseros when it was bought by Genesys in 2009. Jeff recently announced his departure from Genesys and is now a tireless and sage mentor (according to several people we know) with Launch36 and the Canadian Youth Business Foundation.

 By Jeff Thompson

The Atlantic region has long been a source of natural resources, including forestry. As a region we’ve been challenged to diversify our economies and ensure we have a place in the so-called new economy.

I heard the New Brunswick Government

An entrepreneur I know recently lamented that most entrepreneurship events in Atlantic Canada are attended mainly by support organizations rather than by businesspeople. What he would love to see is an event that attracts the rookie entrepreneurs—the folks who are working on new technology in their basements.

I suggested that he look across the Isthmus of Chignecto to New Brunswick. The old Loyalist–Acadian stronghold does a magnificent job of dragging its entrepreneurs out of their cellars and into the blazing sunlight where people can see them. In fact, I don’t think any other province

 Dear Readers:

We may have told some of you we were planning to move to Calgary, where Peter had accepted a job with a financial company. Well, as so often happens, those plans have changed and we’re delighted to say we’re remaining in Atlantic Canada. We are now refocusing our efforts on Entrevestor and planning some new initiatives. And we are excited – really pumped! -- about what’s coming up. We know we’re supposed to say something like that, but we’ve got some cool stuff in the pipeline and can’t wait to unveil it.  

Thanks to all of you who sent kind messages. We really appreciate

Any year that features a 2,800% gain on an exit would be a pretty good year for a fund manager, but Calvin Milbury believes the Radian6 exit was only one facet of a successful year for the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation.

During an hour-long interview in NBIF’s boardroom in Fredericton on the first day of fiscal 2013, Milbury discussed the sale of Radian6 to Salesforce.com, which bagged $9.25 million for NBIF, and the exit of Q1 Labs, which wasn’t an NBIF portfolio company.

They were the highlights of the fiscal year that ended March 31, but Milbury was more interested in talking

Ad-Dispatch, the Dartmouth-based augmented reality company, will announce today that it is spinning off its audio and video production division into a separate company called Current Studios to ensure better use of its talent and resources.

Headed by seasoned producer Richard Huggard, Current Studios will offer broadcast radio and television production in addition to online web video, animation, and 3D modeling.

The group hopes the new branding will, among other things, help in sales to Atlantic Canadian companies by reminding them that there’s a source for top-quality production

Since moving to the cloud a month ago, Celtx has released 14 new products and now the company is gearing up for a couple of more launches – big launches.

St. John's-based Celtx is one of the world’s leading makers of pre-production software for the film industry. Its free software allows filmmakers – whether they’re directors, cinematographers, writers or whatever – to do all the preparations they need for filming on their PC or device. First funded in 2006, the company now has almost 2 million users (those who have logged in 5 times or more) in 170 countries operating in 34 languages.

 Even though he co-founded Startup Kitchen to discuss technology, Suhaim Abdussamad’s favourite podcast is the interview with the operator of a gourmet food truck.

On New Year’s Day, the Fredericton-based video-blogging site broadcast an interview with Jamie Lynch, who had just launched a mobile gourmet business called Fresh Mobile Bistro. Seated before a PC, Lynch described the process of starting his business with $45,000 from BDC and the Canadian Youth Business Foundation, and told why his business is different from other food trucks. It was a bit of a departure for a website devoted