#WRawesome online: Communitechhub.ca
I feature an interesting website, blog, Twitter feed, Facebook page or other online destination related to Waterloo Region on CKWR with Randolph J. Johnston called #WRawesome Online, Mondays at about 12:30. I hope by doing so that I’ll help people find places online that help them to connect to their community-online and in the real world. By doing so, I hope to help people find online places that they might not find otherwise and make our community a better place to live.
You can also find links to each week’s selections on Midday with RJ’s Facebook page.
For folks looking for communications advice, you can get tips from each selection featured. I’ll highlight at least one example in my weekly post.
Communitechhub.ca
This week’s selection is the website for an amazing space in downtown Kitchener called the Communitech Hub. The space recently celebrated its first birthday. And what an exciting first year it has been! These excerpts from a news release issued by Communitech help to explain the Hub and share its successes.
Communitech has played a key role in tech company deals totaling more than $500 million and the emergence of 164 new digital media companies during the first year of The Communitech Hub’s operation – and that’s something to celebrate. The Hub, a digital media innovation center that brings entrepreneurs, multi-national companies, and academic institutions together under one roof to build global digital media companies, marked its first anniversary today after a banner year.
More than 600 companies in total benefited from The Hub’s programs during its inaugural year. Start-up tinyHippos encountered Research In Motion at a Hub ‘Collision Day’ and is now part of RIM, hav. ing been acquired in March. Gaming company Infinidy saw its Happy Theme Park reach over 3 million downloads in 11 days this summer and hit #1 status on Apple’s App stores around the world, and other start-ups such as on-line education company ClevrU are making inroads building business globally.
Companies resident at The Hub are provided with free meeting and networking space, mentoring programs, strategic events, and access to professional services. Other specialized digital media development infrastructure is also available such as the HIVE 3D interactive environment for which Christie Digital Systems Canada Inc. provided the infrastructure, and the Magor TeleCollaboration suite.
The Hub currently houses 28 start-up companies, 3 post-secondary academic offices, 5 multi-nationals including RIM and OpenText, and 14 professional services firms plus provincial and federal partners.
I am sharing this website because we hear a lot about the knowledge workers and the creative class and how important they are to Waterloo Region’s economy. I thought that it’d help to highlight an example that they are already here and not just in the larger tech companies like RIM but in the form of start ups that the Hub nurtures.
I’m hoping visiting this website will help people understand what digital media is and the central role that Kitchener and Waterloo Region are playing in the digital revolution. Be sure that you take a look at the list of tenants to get a sense of what is being developed there and why this centre is so special.
Include a search feature on your website
A key feature that this website has is the search feature in the top right corner. There are two excellent reasons why your website must have one:
- Some people use search to quickly find what they are seeking. It may be because that’s their preference for navigation but it could also be because they’ve been frustrated too often by using menus to navigate websites.
- The terms that people use in the search feature can help you to know what people are seeking and the words they are using to describe it. This information, found in your website statistics or analytics, can help you use the same words and phrases to help your website’s search engine optimization (SEO). The results can also be used to help you understand why people are on your website. That information might help you to meet their needs better or be a clue about what you need to change to attract the audience you seek.
