Downtown Eastside - Old Town - Corktown : Innovation + Job News

As befits the season, there are many seasonal job posting right now, especially in the areas of gardening, urban agriculture, and the environment.

Evergreen, based out of the Brick Works, is hiring an urban agriculture program assistant for the summer. Applicants must be under 30 years of age and returning to full-time post-secondary studies in the fall, and will work both on the green spaces at the Brick Works and in delivering programs across the Toronto region.

Green Thumb Growing Kids, a charity that helps urban children learn about how to grow, cook, and enjoy fresh food, is also hiring summer students: they are looking for two garden program leaders to help maintain school gardens and develop children's garden programs. Applicants can be younger in this case—the age range is 15-30—but must be returning to some kind of full-time study in the fall.

Also in this area, Central Toronto Community Health Centres is looking for a garden and program support worker to run weekly programs, maintain a community kitchen, and provide other assistance as needed. This too is a program for students under 30 returning to studies at the end of the summer. Another community organization, the Agincourt Community Services Association, is on the hunt for some similar help: they are trying to find two urban agriculture facilitators for the summer to promote youth engagement in gardening and healthy eating.

Finally in this sector, the Toronto Botanical Garden is seeking a teaching assistant for their children's programs. The assistant will be working with children aged 3-11 enrolled in the Gardens' summer camp programs, as well as help with maintaining the teaching gardens.

Also for students, but in another area of environmental work: TREC Renewable Energy Co-operative, which focuses on energy conservation, has a summer opening for a communications and research assistant to help with their ongoing outreach and marketing efforts.

Moving on to the cultural sector, FACTOR, the Foundation Assisting Canadian Talent on Recordings, is hiring a full-time project coordinator to manage an artists' client base. Also looking for a project coordinator is ArtReach Toronto, which focuses on engaging youth who typically have a hard time accessing arts programming. It's a six-month, part-time contract, and the coordinator's primary responsibility will be to develop a series of cultural career workshops.

One last, and particularly noteworthy opportunity: Diaspora Dialogues, which supports diversity in the creation of new literature in Canada, is seeking a new artistic director. The position is part time, and the successful candidate will play the lead role in shaping the overall direction programming takes in future.

Do you know of a great job opportunity? Let us know by emailing [email protected]. 

The most interesting opportunities we've spotted this week:

Harbourfront Centre is looking for an integrated communications specialist. It's a fulltime contract position for someone to develop marketing and media plans--both strategy and implementation.

Also in the cultural sector is ArtsSmarts, which helps organize classroom-based arts education programs. They are on the hunt for a project coordinator to help with several programs. It's an early (but not entry) level position, and the post is a nine-month contract.

Finally in this area, WorkInCulture, which supports career development in the cultural sector (in fact, it's the source of those previous two job listings) is seeking a marketing and communications manager; the position is permanent and fulltime.

MaRS Discovery District has a video production unit, which creates event and promotional videos for MaRS and its clients. They need a production/post-production manager to oversee this work and provide strategic advice as necessary. Meanwhile, the Mozilla Foundation is hiring a web developer with at least two years of experience.

For those with an interest in the environment, the Georgian Bay Land Trust needs a new executive director. The position is based in Toronto, but does require frequent travel to Georgian Bay. The charity is hoping to find someone with five to ten years experience, preferably in a non-profit.

In the social services sector, the Jane/Finch Community Centre is looking for a program manager for their Women Moving Forward initiative, a poverty-reduction program for mothers in their twenties. The centre is also looking for a mobilie community financial worker. This position is for someone who works from a variety of locations in the community providing financial management education.

Finally, the Ministry of Transportation is looking for a communications lead to oversee stakeholder and public engagement for the PanAm Games. It's a senior, temporary position that will run for up to two years.

Are you hiring or do you know of a great job opportunity? Let us know!

The most interesting and innovative opportunities we've spotted this week:

There are a good number of interesting openings in media right now. Canadian Journalists for Free Expression are hiring a digital development coordinator to work on IFEX, a network of organizations that promotes free expresion as a human right. Also, a new Canadian affairs and cultural magazine called Depict is launching soon. It will consist entirely of visual elements -- infographics and "visual storytelling" -- and they are looking for both a creative director and a graphic designer.

Continuing with the media opportunities, Global News is looking for a project manager with at least 3-5 years of experience to handle several digital projects. And finally, a very significant opening at the CBC: they are on the lookout for a new managing editor of cbcnews.ca--a senior position for someone with at least five years of related experience.

Moving on to the environmental sector, the Toronto Atmospheric Fund was established by the municipal government to provide support to new initiatives that combat climate change. They are currently seeking a summer intern for a 12-week project. The position is paid and candidates should have completed some graduate level work in public policy or environmental studies.

Real Food for Real Kids provides healthy catering for child care centres and camps, with an emphasis on local and organic ingredients. They are looking for an assistant kitchen manager.

In medical research, the Ontario Brain Institute is hiring for three six-month internships: one in industry relations, one in community outreach, and one in finance and governance. All the positions are paid, and applications are due by the end of this week.

And finally, Toronto-based financial software company FreshBooks is hiring for several positions, including a MySQL developer and a product manager.

Are you hiring or do you know of an innovative job opportunity in Toronto? Email Yonge Street's innovation and jobs editor Hamutal Dotan to let her know. 

"While nearly all high growth technology startups have historically emerged from no more than 3-4 startup ecosystems, namely Silicon Valley and Boston, this trend appears to have reached its end. Simultaneous with a global explosion of entrepreneurship has been an explosion in the rise of new startup ecosystems around the world, and a newfound maturity in others."

So begins a new report from the Startup Genome called the Startup Ecosystem Report (available for free online, though registration is required). And among those ecosystems that are currently flourishing: Toronto, which ranks the highest in Canada on the report's index, and eighth in the world. (Vancouver is right behind us in ninth; more surprisingly Waterloo is further behind, at sixteenth.)

All cities in the index are compared to Silicon Valley (which predictably is the benchmark first-place ecoysystem) across a variety of metrics. While we are similar to Silicon Valley in terms of our level of ambition, our technology adoption rates, our sector mix and mentorship support, one key area of difference, according to the report, is that "startups in Toronto receive 71% less funding than SV startups. The capital deficiency exists both before and after product market fit."

While that may sound like grim news, it actually provides a very useful roadmap for future growth. The report goes on to conclude that the current under-investment in Toronto-area startups "presents a large opportunity for investors. Moreover, "policy makers can help closing the funding gap by attracting late-stage venture funds through tax breaks and incentives, and investor-friendly policies."

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Startup Ecosystem Report

As more and more of us live in cities, the challenges of maintaining urban environments multiply. The Centre for Urban Energy at Ryerson University is dedicated to studying some of these issues, ranging from renewable energy sources that are scaled for cities to building techniques which reduce our need for energy in the first place. To help develop the community of people working to address these challenges, the CUE has just launched a new accelerator program: i-CUE.

The Innovation Centre for Urban Energy is a business incubator—essentially an innovation lab within the centre—that will provide support for up to 10 projects at a time. Ryerson students and faculty, and members of the community at large, are all able to apply. The goal is to provide those with a "mature business idea" some tools to help get it off the ground, says executive director Dan McGillvray, which can mean anything from guidance for writing government grant applications to help overcoming technical challenges.

If a proposed project fits within the centre's scope and makes a convincing case, i-CUE will offer three months of free lab support to develop a business plan. If things are moving well, you might get another three months, McGillvray says (albeit with a bit of "pain" in the form of paying to offset some of the lab's costs). On the other hand, "you might be asked to go." It is, he says, "a fail fast model... It's not a lab where you will live forever; it's a lab where you will graduate out... into another location—[because] now you're business."

Four companies are currently being incubated at i-CUE. Among them is one project led by Ryerson students aimed at educating the public about energy conversation, and another developing public charging stations for mobile devices.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Souce: Dan McGillivray, Executive Director, Innovation Centre for Urban Energy

Every year leaders from the venture capital, communications and media industries gather for the Canadian Innovation Exchange, a one-day forum dedicated to the country's innovation economy. (This year's CIX takes place in a couple of weeks—at the MaRS Discovery District on November 27.) And every year, a panel of experts selects the CIX Top 20—leading technology-based companies who are showcased at the forum. This year's list has just come out, and there's good news for local entrepreneurs: about half the finalists are Toronto-based companies.

Finalists are divided into two categories: information and communication technology, and digital media. Among the Toronto finalists in the first category are B2B marketers Influitive, audience engagement platform Viafoura and consumer goods software makers Nulogy.

Among the rising stars in the digital media category are liveblogging company ScribbleLive and e-commerce platform Shopcastr. We profiled Shopcastr just a few months ago, when they closed $1 million in new funding.

The other Toronto CIX Top 20 are:
·         Sitescout, which helps small businesses manage their digital advertising;
·         Language learning tool PenyoPal;
·         Employee engagement platform Employtouch;
·         Jibestream Interactive Media, which develops digital wayfinding systems (including 3-D directors for Pearson airport).

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Canadian Innovation Exchange

"Just a year ago, Ontario’s Task Force on Competitiveness, Productivity and Economic Progress... published a report that quantifiably demonstrated that in per capital GDP, measured in comparison to 16 other large states and provinces in North America, Ontario ranked 15th. A lack of innovation combined with lower productivity is a significant problem for everyone—especially in Ontario. No amount of handwringing will solve it. No amount of cheerleading should make us believe we are doing better than what we really are. And no amount of naysaying should stop us from tackling this problem head on."

Stark language from Anne Sado, president of George Brown College, who addressed the Empire Club earlier this week. She was there to present findings from a new George Brown study called Toronto Next: Return on Innovation, which surveyed more thn 300 Toronto-area employers to learn more about the state of innovation locally. Sado wasn't just interested in describing problems, however—she was much more interested in proposing some solutions.

There are reasons to be hopeful that the situation can change. For starters, the issue isn't a lack of funds. Companies have the money; they are just risk-averse. "GTA businesses are more interested in productivity than innovation or creativity," said Sado, suggesting that what we need to effect is a cultural shift in our understanding of what innovation is, exactly, and why it's so important.

At George Brown, she explained, they defined innovation as "the process of creating social or economic value from something that already exists"—a contrast with the businesses they surveyed, which defined innovation in terms of novelty (creating new processes or products or thinking in new ways). Because of this definition, Sado believes, those businesses don't see any strong or direct links between innovation and productivity—most new inventions both cost a lot and fail, after all—and thus they don't value innovation enough.

In her speech Sado emphasized that one major key to advancing innovation is collaboration, and especially collaboration between post-secondary institutions and the private sector. This both facilitates the development of those iterative improvements, and mitigates some of the concerns about risk, since various parties can each contribute in their areas of expertise, and work together to improve products before they are brought to market.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Anne Sado, President, George Brown College

While Toronto faces many transportation shortages—we'd all like faster subways and more frequent buses—one thing we are well-supplied with is taxis. With about 10,000 licensed drivers and just under 5,000 cabs, the per-capita tax rate is quite high.

Getting a taxi when you need one isn't quite so straightforward, however. If you're downtown, you might be able hail one in less than a minute. If you're further afield or it's a busy night, you might wait much longer.

Hoping to change that experience is Hailo Network Canada Inc., which officially became licensed as a taxi company in Toronto at the end of August, with plans to launch the last week of September. The app-based service is built on the premise that "the only two people who matter are the passenger and the driver," says Hailo Canada president Justin Raymond.

The app allows drivers and passengers to communicate directly, bypassing the traditional model of calling into a central line and having dispatchers send vehicles out. Hailo (which currently works on iPhone and Android phones) matches a passenger who wants a cab with the nearest vehicle; drivers text when they arrive so you can wait indoors. The app allows both drivers and passengers to rate each other. Payment, also done through the app, is by credit card.

You won't see any branded Hailo cabs driving down the block soon, though. Rather than introducing new cabs to the city, the company works with existing ones. Essentially, it's a tool for drivers, who sign up directly—Hailo may bring a Beck or Diamond or Royal cab to your door, depending on who is closest.

Toronto is Hailo's first North American venture. They already operate in London and Dublin, and will open in New York, Chicago and Boston soon, with other cities in both Canada and the US expected to follow. They've hired nine staff for the Toronto office and are "always looking for smart, innovative, tech-focused people," says Raymond.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Justin Raymond, President, Hailo Canada

"It's the biggest project we have done to date, and the second biggest in Africa," a slightly rushed-sounding Daniel McCormick tells me over the phone—understandably, since he's having a rather busy day.

McCormick is a managing partner of Siginik Energy, which just announced that it has signed a deal to provide solar energy to Ghana, one of the fastest-growing economies in Africa, and a nation seeking not just new energy sources but renewable ones. The deal will see Siginik build a 50-megawatt ground solar installation, from which the Electricity Company of Ghana will purchase power for a 25-year term.

Siginik, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Toronto-based Episolar Inc., is "a full turnkey solar energy provider," says McCormick, and also one of the beneficiaries of Ontario's Green Energy Act. That act was passed in 2009, and McCormick says that "it created a labour force that is highly skilled."

Ghana is hoping to draw on those skills to help meet its own energy needs, which are substantial and growing. To help the country expand its power sources, Siginik will be hiring both abroad and here at home—about 50 full-time, part-time and contract positions in the Toronto area, says McCormick, ranging from engineering consultants to components providers. Some of those hired here will also work in Ghana to train local workers.

Recently Ghana's Parliament passed a Renewable Energy Act; the country has set a target of obtaining 10 per cent of its power from renewable sources by 2020.

Writer: Hamutal Dotan
Source: Daniel McCormick, Managing Partner, Siginik Energy

One of the most promising startups to emerge out of Ryerson's Digital Media Zone incubator over the past year was Scanly, an app that gave students discounts from various retailers through their mobile phones. Business prospects appeared so encouraging after the company's launch in September 2011, the founders applied to and were accepted for a session at Y Combinator, the Silicon Valley incubator that may be the most renowned in the world.

Interestingly, the company has returned reimagined, reinvented and renamed.

"As we prepared to go to California and scale up Scanly, we realized that expanding it beyond Ryerson would be very costly and risky, and that the business could never become truly big," founder Martin Drashkov writes about the experience. "Abandoning a product and starting anew is always tough, but thankfully we had the support of the Y Combinator partners and the awesome YC Alumni community."

The reinvented company recently launched in its new incarnation, Kyte, an app that allows any Android phone to be turned into a children's phone. "After doing some research, we realized we could write an app that runs on Android phones and completely locks down the phone into a limited, kid-mode, while letting parents control the phone from the web," writes Drashkov. "We had stumbled on a very interesting idea—we would be the ones to make sure every child in the world can get a smartphone!"

The app allows parents to control their kids' web experience and track their location by GPS. Work on the new product began in January. The Y Combinator process of mentorship helped with the development process. Finally, Kyte launched at the accelerator's Demo day last month.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Sources: Lauren Schnieder, Ryerson DMZ; Martin Drashkov, Kyte

We reported a year ago that Ryerson Digital Media Zone-based startup HitSend was a local digital company to watch as it launched its first product, SoapBox. Now the company has announced that SoapBox is the discussion platform for The Walrus magazine's new online conversation tool, The Walrus SoapBox.

The partnership with what is probably Canada's most respected magazine of ideas represents just the latest in a steady stream of announcements for HitSend. Announcing the initiative, Walrus publisher Shelly Ambrose said the SoapBox platform offered an "innovative and exciting new realm" for the magazine. 

HitSend CEO Brennan McEachran says that the combination of SoapBox, a platform designed to enable the sharing and development of ideas, and The Walrus, a magazine devoted to exploring ideas, was a natural fit. "When we met each other we noticed it right away... they're one of our more well-known clients, so we're excited."

Over the past 12 months, McEachran says they've grown from one or two clients to a roster of about 20, including Chapters/Indigo and a project with Vitamin Water launching soon. In September, a new talk platform for Ryerson students will launch university-wide.

During the past year, the HitSend team has also doubled in size to eight employees.

"Over the next couple months," McEachran says, "it's all about spreading the word and building SoapBox."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Brennan McEachran, CEO, HitSend

"I cannot wait to start my business," Noura Sakkijha told StartMeUp Ryserson as it announced she was the winner of this year's $25,000 Slaight Business Plan competition. The company she's starting, Majoura, is a crowdsourcing platform for designers, allowing them to get feedback from consumers before manufacturing and distributing products.

In addition to $25,000 in seed money, Sakkijha will get mentoring from StartMeUp, an organization designed to foster entrepreneurship among students at Ryerson University.

To win this year's competition, Sakkijha beat out 31 other entrants, including four other finalist companies: Soapbox (recently profiled by Yonge Street), engineering consultants Peytec, homelessness documentarians Make Treks, job board My TaskRunner and discount postboard Bank My Coupons.

Past winners of the contest include former Yonge Street subject Damn Heels.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Piotr Makuch, StartMeUp Ryerson

Following on the smash success of its educational app PocketZoo, which went to number one in the iTunes App Store's education section after its release almost two years ago, Toronto app developer Tiny Hearts recently released its second product, InstaMatch, this February.

"It's been really well received so far," says company founder Robleh Jama. "We've gotten some great reviews from TechCrunch and others, and it was featured by Apple as a 'new and notable' application." The app turns images captured by the popular Instagram app into a card-matching puzzle game.

The company was founded in 2010, Jama says, because he loved apps and wanted to create apps he'd want to use himself. He says PocketZoo in particular was inspired by his becoming a new father. "I wanted to create an app I could use with my daughter." Since then, his company has tweaked the app, released a version for the iPad and grown to three employees working out of both the Ryerson Digital Media Zone and a shared workspace in the east end called Work Republic. All the way along, Jama's company has been self-financing.

"I'm not a big believer in spending time chasing investment," he says. "I think your customers are your best investors."

Jama says Tiny Hearts will soon be hiring three more staff—a developer, a marketing representative and a summer intern—as it improves InstaMatch, prepares an Android version of PocketZoo and gets ready to work on a new app.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Robleh Jama, founder, Tiny Hearts

Greengauge founder Lindsey Goodchild doesn't think of herself as a "typical entrepreneur." About 18 months ago, she finished her post-graduate work at Ryerson in sustainability and started doing consulting work for corporations. "I started consulting with really large companies and saw a lot of really good strategies, but when it came to executing those strategies they fell flat." What they needed, she realized, were tools to allow them to better implement their well-intentioned strategies after they left the boardroom.

She submitted an idea to a GreenApp challenge sponsored by Ryerson and Blackberry to develop an application for mobile devices and the web to allow companies to better monitor and implement their green strategies. She won the contest, and Greengauge was born. She raised $30,000 in seed funding last fall, around the time she was finally able to quite her full-time job to focus on the company. She hired a full-time CTO at the start of this year, bringing her staff to "two-and-a-half," she says, including their part-time CFO.

Just as Ottawa-based Coral CEA has invested in Greengauge as part of funding it announced for four Ryerson DMZ companies, Goodchild says the company is now weeks away from launching its first product for limited private beta testing.

"We're really focussed on researching how to embed sustainability into organizations," says Goodchild, noting that she's drawn invaluable support from the academic community, the Ryerson DMZ and some advisors at MaRS.

Writer: Edward Keenan
Sources: Lindsey Goodchild, CEO, Greengauge; Coral CEA

Craig Follett, founder of the Toronto startup uniiverse, which launched publicly last week, describes his company as catering to the "sharing economy."

"It's a person-to-person marketplace for services and activities," he says. "It allows anyone to monetize their time, resources, skills or their possessions." He says, for example, that people can offering cooking classes, rent out their power tools or organize car sharing. "One cool thing we have in Toronto is lunch sharing. If you get, say, five people who all work at BCE Place who are sick of food courts, they can join together and everyone in the group takes turns bringing in lunch for all five people." That's just one example, he says, of how the site encourages in-person interaction as much as commerce.

Though it launched globally, the platform sorts users by location, offering hyper-local functionality. "For instance, it will take your location as The Junction, and show you first offers based closest to The Junction."

The idea for the company occurred to Follett and his co-founder Ben Raffi about a year ago while he was working for a management consulting firm in Toronto. They found a CTO, and began working on it full-time in June, 2011, with the founders putting up their own savings as seed money. They attracted $750,000 in angel investment, and have now grown their team to nine staff working out of a Jarvis Street office in the St. Lawrence Market neighbourhood.

Follett says that in the first 24 hours after the site launched on Feb. 7, the number of listings grew by 200 per cent. "In the wake of the economic crisis, and a number of economic, social and cultural trends," he says, including decreased attachment to ownership and an increase in freelance work, "this allows people to be a bit more resourceful."

Writer: Edward Keenan
Source: Craig Follett, Founder, uniiverse