Focus on local ‘fertile ground’ at 3rd annual MbTech Week

A weeklong tech “festival” is ready to celebrate made-in-Manitoba innovation later this month.

On Tuesday, Tech Manitoba held a launch event for its third annual MbTech Week. More than 50 events will be held across Winnipeg, Winkler and Morden from Feb. 22 to 28, including panels, business tours, activities for children and students, and showcasing tools for manufacturing, health care and other sectors.

A focus on Manitoba businesses is the common thread among the events, said Kelly Fournel, CEO of Tech Manitoba.

“Our focus was to make sure that we brought attention to local companies who are doing good work through technology and innovation, and we felt that having a festival, for lack of a better term, was a great way,” she said.

As tensions with the U.S. have encouraged Canadians to seek everyday local options, Fournel said the tech industry has experienced the same shift.

Tech Manitoba has switched its customer relationship management tool from a U.S.-based company to Manitoba-owned Focus Forward, and its website is currently being redone by local creative agency Luscious Orange.

“Because of that dynamic that’s happening, you have more people locally who are interested in knowing which company is Manitoba-based and what products do they have,” she said.

Grainne Grande, general counsel and privacy officer for Payworks, which is hosting a panel on women in tech Feb. 26, called Manitoba a “fertile ground” for a growing industry.

“What we have here in the Manitoba tech scene is unique and it’s our shared responsibility to keep the good growing,” she said.

A new focus for MbTech Week is a non-profit initiative that will pair four non-profits representing Winnipeg, northern Manitoba and rural communities with tech companies that meet their programming needs.

Non-profits may particularly struggle to find what digital resources work best for them, Fournel said. (Interested non-profits can apply for a spot in the program on Tech Manitoba’s website.)

Some non-profits, like Manitoba Possible, which works with people with disabilities, have found a way to leverage existing tech tools to make it easier to connect vulnerable people with care.

Care Possible, Manitoba Possible’s social enterprise platform, hosts what director of social enterprise Michael Coutts describes as an online “marketplace” that allows families in need of home care and other support workers to connect with providers already vetted that meet their needs.

Before the service, first launched in 2022, Coutts said he knew of families that were searching local ads and websites like Kijiji for care workers and struggling to find the right match.

“Literally, for some people, (Care Possible) might mean finding a care provider for themselves or a loved one when previously they couldn’t or having gone through a number of different care providers and not being confident that you have someone who might be available for you when you need it,” he said.

“The primary impact is really about those care relationships.”

Over 2,000 users later, the program’s model could scale larger, Coutts said. Care Possible will discuss how it built a digital care platform at a MBTech Week event on Feb. 23.

“What we’re seeing in the work that we do is just really deep human connections between people who are receiving and delivering care, which is really the vision,” he said.

The full list of MbTech Week events can be found at mbtechweek.ca.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca