I was depressed after the meeting. Bob Williamson was defiant. It was the spring of 2010, and we had just met with an eminent person in the start-up community. We had outlined Williamson’s plan for a regional conference to unite start-ups and investors in Atlantic Canada. Williamson was insistent that the conference, to be called Invest Atlantic, be pan-regional, even though some sponsors would have preferred an event focused on one province.

What we heard from this person was discouraging. He insisted that the number of regional start-ups was too small to sustain such a conference, and that mature and young companies had different agendas, as did tech and biotech companies. He didn’t want to be negative; this was simply his assessment of the start-up world at that time.

Williamson and I adjourned to a nearby coffee shop to discuss the situation. Williamson, the CEO of Jameson Consulting, was the conference organizer; my main role was to line up the speakers.

Williamson was determined to push forward; he had heard similar discouraging rumblings before he started his Renewable Energy Conference. So he went ahead and held the first Invest Atlantic in September of 2010. This week he’ll throw open the doors to the fourth annual Invest Atlantic.

The Atlantic Canadian start-up community has changed in the thousand days since Invest Atlantic launched, and the conference is changing with it. It’s more international and now spans two days. 

The conference events begin the evening of Sept. 24 with PitchCamp, during which a dozen companies will have 60 seconds to pitch their companies, then receive feedback from a panel of judges.

Even in this event, I can see the legacy of the inaugural Invest Atlantic. The chair of the first conference was David King, the president and CEO of the Genesis Group, which operates the Genesis Centre at Memorial University in St. John’s. Two of the companies pitching on Tuesday night, Grey Island Energy and Whitecap Scientific Corp., are oceantech firms working out of the Genesis Centre.

The Invest Atlantic conference itself begins on Sept. 25 at the World Trade and Convention Centre; it has attracted more than 200 delegates and will focus on the themes of talent and corporations. The idea is that start-ups must partner with corporations to grow, then eventually develop into corporations themselves. A key to these partnerships and development strategies is the ability to attract the right people.

The morning sessions will dive into these themes with such speakers as conference chair Duncan Shaw, the president of Mullache Corp. and the Summerside, P.E.I., Storm basketball team, and Trevor MacAusland, the executive director of Propel ICT.

The keynote will be delivered by Joey Glidden, the president and CEO of Introhive, who will be joined by Brad Feld, the author of the book Start-up Communities.

Two former Maritimers, Matt McInnis, the founder and CEO of San Francisco-based Inkling, and David Kirby, the vice-president of Arbor Advisors in Palo Alto, Calif., will discuss the landscape for homegrown talent in the afternoon. That will be followed by a talk on attracting and investing in talent.

It’s interesting that Brad Feld is on the agenda, because he defined what a start-up community is and how to create one. Williamson instigated Invest Atlantic before any of us had heard of a start-up community let alone thought we would ever have one in Atlantic Canada. When Invest Atlantic opens, it will be staged largely because of Williamson’s determination in 2010.