H.I.C.K. Tech is a 1.5 day conference taking place in Owen Sound Ontario April 30-May 1, 2007 on beautiful Georgian Bay. It will focus on three main components: professional development for local IT professionals; demonstrating the benefits of being on-line to local businesses and organizations; and to showcase our local talent via a trade show and workshops/seminars. It is our hope this conference will help to match organizations with appropriate technologies and to appropriate, local technology firms.

Last week I attended The City of Owen Sound's Public Meeting for their new [Draft] Cultural Master Plan. The draft document can be downloaded in PDF format from the City's Web site. We are Ontario's third city to develop a Cultural Master Plan. I think the plan is a good start. Many positive things were included that I would not have expected. My congratulations goes out to the City for including, for example, the literary arts. The plan's weakest areas are the parts where it reads as a partial inventory of many of the organizations in the region who contribute to our local cultural.

Today I attended the Rural and Relevant (7th Annual Regional Tourism Conference) here in Owen Sound. Donna Hatt from Nova Scotia was the dynamite keynote speaker. She's an absolute riot to listen to, but I wish she'd gone through more concrete examples in her follow-up workshop "Moving Your Ideas Into Action." My take away for the day was hearing Donna (in her east coast accent) ask, "You want a piece of that? Sure you do! So g'wan out and take it!" Think Cathy Jones telling you about how to market your tourist destination. It was great.