Amidst the plethora of news that we’ve been hearing from all industries about the economy heading towards worse times and as we hear stories of worsening conditions close to home (i.e. Nortel), I can’t help but say, let the startups begin.

There is a lot of talent in Ottawa and other cities around the world that currently work at larger corporations with comfortable, and in some cases, inflated salaries. It is exactly these conditions that make it almost impossible for them to attempt to either join a startup or begin one themselves. Times are changing and we may see more and more of this pool of talented and intelligent people move on to other things and potentially the startup scene.

We’ve seen this in the past and we have a number of local success stories coming from guys who voluntarily/involuntarily left their jobs at these large corporations and attained a level of success that they wouldn’t have achieved by staying at their previous positions. Companies like Nakina Systems, Nimcat, Fitel-Photomatrix, ObjecTime, and many many more fall under this category. Needless to say, the Economic Downturn can be looked at as an opportunity or a menace depending on how you look at it

Scott Simpson from BitHeads really stood out as the person everyone remembered at the OCRI Awards. He gave the most entertaining and funny acceptance speech that I have ever seen when his company, BitHeads, won the award. He had the whole audience captivated and as a result, I think everyone knows about him and knows about BitHeads… Congratulations to Scott!

On another note, I happened to bump into John Roese who is CTO at Nortel (I used to work @ Nortel). He also won an award tonight (Next Generation Executive of the Year). Nortel is the 4th major company for which John has served as CTO (and he’s still under 40 – pretty impressive). You can check out his biography here. Amongst other things he has written two books and he’s also named on 16 different patents… and of course he’s an amazing public speaker… good to see him win.

Other than that, BridgeWater Systems won the Technology Company of the year award [I think that's what it was called] (Doug Somers was sitting at my table).

Well, I had a great time at the awards and can’t wait until next year

Aydin.