The BC Innovation Council’s Innovation Summit 2010 is fast approaching and the two-day hybrid networking event promises to connect science to business in the agriculture, food and ag-bioproducts sectors.  The Summit includes the Commercialization of Agricultural Technology (CAT) Awards, where four emerging BC companies will be recognized and awarded prizes totaling up to $600,000.

Designed to unite researchers, start-ups, innovators and entrepreneurs with leading BC business leaders, BCIC’s Innovation Summit 2010 is an opportunity to encourage and further the commercialization of new technologies within these progressive sectors. BCIC’s Innovation Summit 2010 includes companies involved in:

• clean technologies,
• advanced food processing and packaging,
• production of novel food and non-food products
• new food safety and animal health detection technologies,
• new biocontrol technologies and;
• software for control and management of a range of complex systems.

The 2010 BCIC Innovation Summit is on January 7-8th at the Hyatt Regency. Tickets are $75 in advance or $100 at the door. Visit BCIC’s website for complete program details.

2009 New Ventures BC Competitor ConnectionPoint Systems had quite the Fall in 2009. Although they didn’t make the Top 10 in September, they launched their FundRazr Facebook app in the TechCrunch 50 Demo Pit in September and then were showcased at the PayPal Innovate X 2009 Conference in November.

Now, just in time for the New Year they have just released their open beta version of FundRazr.com. Check out FundRazr is you need to collect fees, run campaigns, sell tickets, manage finances, and issue receipts and more.

The FundRazr team has some new features lined up for 2010 and they promise to continue pushing the envelope in developing innovative social commerce solutions.

The BCTIA announced earlier this month that they have launched the Xcelerate program in partnership with ACETECH.  What is Xcelerate?

A full day committed to improving your corporate strategies and operations through dynamic two-way discussions with professional experts and industry coaches specializing in legal, finance, markets, talent, product development, planning, sales, licensing, and many more.

Xcelerate has evolved from the need to provide a variety of educational options for technology entrepreneurs and their executive teams. From business skills, new venture expertise, to leadership and employee development skills, Xcelerate will help companies grow stronger, smarter.

As part of the Xcelerate program, the first annual Xcelerate Forum will take place April 12th, 2010.  It will be a full day committed to improving your corporate strategies and operations through dynamic two-way discussions with professional experts and industry coaches specializing in legal, finance, markets, talent, product development, planning, sales, licensing, and many more.

To ensure we deliver the best results possible, the organizers are only selecting 25 technology companies to participate. If you’re interested, submit your application online by January 29th.

The Canadian Financing Forum attracts leading Venture Capital and Corporate Investors from across North America and it’s back for 2010. Next year’s event will take place on January 28th at the Hyatt in Vancouver.

The 2010 Forum will have two presenting streams – Information Technology and Cleantech & Advanced Technology – and organizers are on the look out for presenting companies. If you’re interested, be sure to beat the January 5th submission deadline for company selection.

In addition to the regular Forum, organizers are mixing it up a bit this year and have partnered with Bootup Labs, the BC Innovation Council and the Bootup Entrepreneurial Society to host Demo Days. Running concurrently with the Financing Forum, ten Digital Media companies will present to the VC audience in the afternoon on January 28th and then again the next week in Silicon Valley.

Five of the companies will be from Bootup Labs current portfolio of investments and the remaining five spots will be available to other Digital Media Startups. If you’re interested, be sure to get your application in quick.

The British Columbia Technology Industry Association (BCTIA) announced the launch of their 2010 business outreach program today. The PODIUM program is designed to connect guests and media of the 2010 Vancouver Olympic and Paralympic Games with technology sector business partners and media stories while visiting BC.

The centrepiece of the program is the PODIUM digital guide, an e-book illustrating the talent and ingenuity that makes British Columbia a great place to live, work, study and invest.

The PODIUM guide profiles over one hundred world-class companies and includes a number of companies whose technology is being used to power aspects of the Games. The digital guide will be distributed to thousands of contacts, including International Business Development offices, Olympic Sponsors and hosting organizations, Federal and Provincial governments, and media.

And it’s not too late to participate.  The PODIUM guide will continue to evolve right-up to the opening ceremonies. Interested parties need only send an email to podium@bctia.org.

Business in Vancouver’s Curt Cherewayko profiled 2008 New Ventures BC Winner Saltworks Technologies in this week’s issue. In an article titled Vancouver company hopes desalination technology will generate liquid assets, Chereyayko learns more about Saltworks’ desalination process from Founder Ben Sparrow.

Ben Sparrow’s eureka moment occurred in the middle of the night in 2005 in a train-station bathroom while he was travelling from Beijing to Shanghai.

He was on a backpacking trip during a break from studies at Simon Fraser University (SFU) and had spent the night on a train mulling over how to use a thermodynamics law, in which the tension between two different concentrations of the same solution converts energy.

He applied the law to salt water and realized that the voltage from the ions of a hyper-saline solution could pull salt from a third water stream as the ions naturally move from a high to low concentration of salt water.

Four years later, Sparrow and his seven-person team at Vancouver-based Saltworks Technologies Inc. are making the final adjustments on a saltwater-powered battery that can desalinate water at a cost that the company says is up to 80% less than that of existing processes.

Read the rest of the article here.

Saltworks is in discussions with its first potential customers and has survived to date on roughly $2 Million in grants from provincial and federal technology-focused agencies, including B.C.’s Innovative Clean Energy (ICE) Fund and the New Ventures BC Competition Grand Prize in 2008.

Accorsing tothe article, Saltworks is looking to close a minimum $5 Million financing round in the next six months.

BC Angel Investor of the Year Mike Volker has launched a new “angel fund” called GreenAngel Energy Corp. that is now trading on the TSX Venture Exchange under the stock symbol GAE.  The Company will focus on commercializing clean energy technologies and is starting off with equity positions in six ventures including former 2009 New Ventures BC Top 10 Finalist Rapid Electric Vehicles (REV).

According to Volker, the principals of these portfolio companies are also advisors and shareholders in GreenAngel, which is ultimately their “secret sauce”.

The GreenAngel Energy Board of Directors is made up of four seasoned professional entrepreneurs who have strong connections to New Ventures BC – President and CEO Volker, CFO Bruce A. Schmidt, and Directors Robert de Wit and Alan Werenko. Volker and de Wit are Directors of New Ventures BC and Werenko has been a jury member sinec 2006.

Would you like to learn more about raising private company equity? Then you should attend the Angel Capital Overview workshop on January 19th in Vancouver.

The workshop promises to get you ‘Investor Ready’ with a real life overview of the angel investment process: Valuation, Due Diligence, Term Sheets and Post Investment Relationships. The workshop is comprised of expert presentations, panel discussions and small group case studies with networking time. Boris Wertz, Nadeem Kassam, Basil Peters and Steven Lukas are among the panel of experienced local investors, serial entrepreneurs and expert service providers.  US Angel Investor of 2009 – Bill Payne is the workshop leader and has a particular knack of delivering his great knowledge of angel capital.

Twenty-five people have already registered to date, leaving 19 seats remaining at the discounted $295 price. Register today.

In September, 2009 Top 10 Finalist Vineyard Networks was profiled on Network World in an article titled Start-up offers net management Fisher-Price style.

Well, they’re at it again this month and have been named a Top 10 IT Management Startup to Watch by the same publication. Here is what Network World had to say:

Company: Vineyard Networks

Founded: May 2009

Headquarters: Kelowna, British Columbia

Focus: NetCore on Demand is offered via subscription and delivered as a SaaS application, in part. The offering includes an application-aware probe called NetView, which is installed on the customer site. Vineyard configures the NetView hardware probe to monitor the environment and then deliver to customers an interface called NetCore via a secure SSL connection. NetCore on Demand monitors WAN and LAN connections, Layer 7 service information, application traffic and Cisco’s NetFlow data.

Why it’s worth watching: Vineyard Networks is taking advantage of the trend for management vendors to package their products as SaaS as well as easy-to-deploy hardware devices. This hybrid approach will help IT managers use more sophisticated technology to monitor their environment, without having to be responsible for the care and feeding of complex management applications, industry watchers say.

“SaaS with management software has to take this hybrid approach in which the main functionality and user interface is on the vendor side, with several hooks into the environment on the customer premise,” says Glenn O’Donnell, a senior analyst with Forrester Research. “IT management customers have been telling vendors ‘simplify this, make the purchase process and economic impact simpler’ and vendors have responded with virtual appliances or SaaS offerings, which are ways for the vendors to do all the integration and hide the complexity of the technology so customers don’t have to worry about it.”

Vineyard, in particular, offers an interesting value proposition, EMA’s Frey says.

“Network-based performance management using Cisco NetFlow data but also delivered in a remote hosted model can work really well,” he adds. “There has never been a need for less network management, but now vendors like Vineyard are trying to help companies use these advanced technologies in a more efficient way and lower the learning curve so they can see the value sooner.”

How company got its start: The founders wanted to create what many before them have also attempted: easy, inexpensive network monitoring and management technology for IT managers that couldn’t devote money, time and energy to complex software that promised to help them better run their networks.

How company got its name: Named after an aspect of its local landscape in Canada: wine vineyards.

CEO: Jason Richards previously worked in operations and sales at Packeteer and prior to that, he held a senior position in engineering with Workfire Technologies, a British Columbia start-up that focused on Internet acceleration technologies.

Funding: Through a combination of angel investors, government research assistance grants, and the Southern Interior Development Initiative Trust (SIDIT). Currently Vineyard has raised more than $1.6 million in operating capital.

Who’s using the product: Customers include Pushor Mitchell, ECC and ASCI.