Kamloops Innovation Centre Cultivates Tech Talents

British Columbia’s attractive natural landscape and culturally diverse population are enticing for tech talent. World-class educational institutions, technology acceleration programs and regional industry clusters all combine to support established and emerging companies. One of these technology accelerator programs is the Kamloops Innovation Centre.

Founded in 2010, the Kamloops Innovation Centre is made up of a community of tech entrepreneurs. It is a non-profit society that serves the central interior region of British Columbia. With support from Innovate BC, National Research Council, Southern Interior Development Initiative Trust and community donors, the Kamloops Innovation Centre strives to inspire, nurture and accelerate technology-based start-up businesses. Accelerator programs like this one are vital in nurturing and cultivating the next generation’s tech talents by providing unique training opportunities.

One example is the innovation centre’s collaboration with the B.C. Lottery Corporation (BCLC) and Thompson Rivers University. The students were selected to be part of an eight-month co-op program to help the lottery company look at technology issues and advancements. BCLC provided a mentor who worked with the co-op students at the Kamloops Innovation Centre on projects related to coding collaboration, artificial intelligence and user interaction. Together they developed a programming framework to reduce potential coding clashes among different departments. Another project undertaken by this group focused on using artificial intelligence to determine the demographics of users active on BCLC’s social media platforms based on their language.

The Kamloops Innovation Centre facilitates collaborations such as these to provide a unique training experience with established companies. Acceleration programs like these have helped the technology ecosystem in the B.C. interior rapidly grow and mature to become a diverse sector of more than 200 local technology firms.

British Columbia has a strong tech sector that employs over 114,000 workers. With easy access to other tech hubs, including Seattle and Silicon Valley, our province is a growing technology cluster for global companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Boeing and Sony. To learn more about our technology sector, follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.