Finding
your Smart Community "Sweet Spot"
It is the role of the NCIT to provide the glue,
which brings together industry, academia and governments to work
together to cooperatively pursue the development of technology,
which will benefit our lives and our economies for years to come.
Despite our name, the reach and impact of the NCIT goes far beyond
Canada's national capital region. Our partners come from all across
Canada and in fact from across the globe. The results of our collaborative
efforts will eventually make a difference in the way you live, the
way you work, and the manner in which health and educational services
are eventually delivered into you community.
In part the NCIT manages the crystal ball that Canadian
industry and governments rely on to determine where our telecommunications
research dollars should be focused in order to have the maximum
impact on the future well being of our industry and our country.
What our crystal ball is telling us today, is that
the telecommunications technology landscape is undergoing a dramatic
shift.
Five, or even ten years ago, there was a prevailing
belief that if we provided communities, homes and businesses with
more bandwidth, that bandwidth would be used for purposes that would
generate economic benefits and generally improve all of our lives.
Not all of us are living in bandwidth rich communities yet, but
we can now see our way clear to a time when this condition will
be a reality across Canada.
The next wave of Internet technology deployment
promises to be an even more rewarding one than the first. However
it will require a much high degree of cooperation and understanding
between the technology community and their end users. Opportunities
exist in every endeavour to make our industries, our schools, our
health services and our governments dramatically more efficient
and more effective. I like to refer to these opportunities as "sweet
spots". Whereas, many opportunities exist to obtain a 10% savings
or productivity gain from IP technology, it is those opportunities
to experience 500% gain or more that will deliver the real rewards
that come from the next wave of Internet technology deployment.
Finding these "sweet spots" will require a new spirit
and a new process of cooperation and communication between technologists
and end users.
