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 world but to develop our ecosystem, which needs more talent, capital and international exposure.

Yes, Silicon Valley is to the 21^st century tech industry what Rome was to the 1^st century arms industry, but it’s rather crowded there. It’s hard to get noticed. It’s fantastic when a Radian6, GoInstant or FlowTown do well in Silicon Valley, but it’s obvious that the competition is fierce. It might serve our region well if we actively build links early with C100UK.

For one thing, obviously, we’re closer to London than San Francisco and served by daily direct flights. Advantage C100UK.

There may also be strategic advantages for developing ties to London. The Tech City in East London and the Silicon Fen around Cambridge will never match Northern California for tech power, but that’s not to say we should overlook the help that’s available in the British tech community. What’s more, London becomes more alluring when we look at other innovation industries.

The U.K. is a global leader in pharmaceuticals and the headquarters of such companies as GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca. It is also a beachhead for continental Europe, where more global leaders like Roche and Novartis are based. The Canadians working in these companies could be invaluable contacts for Atlantic Canadian biotech and healthcare companies, especially the burgeoning clusters in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. As well as capital and talent, these companies need international validation of their products and global marketing and eventually they’ll need multinationals to buy them out.

Britain is making impressive headway in cleantech, which Nova Scotia has identified as a key area of interest.  All political parties in Britain are supporting green energy and London is home to some of the world’s leading cleantech VC funds, including: Consensus Business Group, Generation Investment Management, Virgin Green Fund, Zouk Ventures and on and on and on. There are also more than 100 cleantech enterprises listed on the London Stock Exchange’s Alternative Investment Market.

Ocean industries are booming in Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia, and they will find ready markets in this maritime nation.

The reaction to C100UK so far has been muted but that doesn’t concern me. Four short years ago, I had no trouble tracking down C100 co-founder Chris Albinson about his new group because the media in Canada weren’t paying attention to it. How that has changed. Atlantic Canada could even help this young organization by publicly applauding them and offering to plan events together. If Atlantic Canadian organizations now rally around C100UK, we could get in early and take advantage of a valuable community.