48 hours, 12 participants, 4 teams, and 2 challenges – and intense and innovative weekend!!!! Below are some of the pictures from the Ottawa Innovation Challange – OIC 2009 that took place on August 21-23 2009 and the OIC 2009 Social that took place on September 11, 2009.  Congratulations to all the participants!!! More pictures can be viewed here. Share and Enjoy:

Entrepreneurs, pay attention.  The nomination process is open for Round 4 of the Premier’s Catalyst Awards, a series of awards recognizing excellence and leadership in innovation for both product and service providers. There are 5 awards, each worth $200,000, for five categories: The Best Young Innovator Award – for innovators who have played a significant role in developing a commercially...

  It’s 11:00 pm.  The OIC2009 48 hour competition has been underway for 4.5 hours. The halls of Prescott Residence are surprisingly quiet – the teams are focused, thinking.  Enter the dorm rooms and you find a different story in each.   Room 1 holds a classic scene.  The three team members sprawled around the room with laptops (and again, all surprisingly only on research sites) notes,...

For those of you who have sat around and complained about the lack of business competitions in town – pay attention.  OIC is exactly what has been missing from the Ottawa business landscape. An intense, fast paced, business competition focused on innovation, applicability, and execution rather than primarily business plan writing (which is a valuable experience, it just tends to be a little...

I’m in Greece right now, soon to be going to Turkey, in the hot summer months of July and August.  What I’ve noticed is that there are much more girls traveling alone then guys….at a ratio of 4:1 actually.  So I’ve written a few tips and good ideas I’ve used, picked up, or saw others do on my travels – some for girls, some just good tips for both genders.  If...

Be warned – this blog entry is going to be soppy and cheesy.  I can’t help it – I just came back from spending a wonderful day in downtown Ottawa celebrating Canada’s 142nd birthday and in short – I love being Canadian. I love that I have Canadian-Tunisian nationality and not feel that that makes me any less Canadian.   I love that I can travel the world proud to have...

If you missed our CBC Radio debut about TalentBridge and the opportunity it brings, you can still hear it at:  http://www.cbc.ca/ottawa/features/thewayforward/!  The good news is lots of people have heard it, and already just a few hours later, TBridge has gotten +10 leads from interested parties to the program.  I never thought I’d be on the radio, nor inside a national newsroom.  Dreamed...