BCIT’s Peter Thomson Centre for Venture Development is hosting a six-week Growth Strategies Boot Camp for Technology Companies starting later this month.

The economy grew by 5% last quarter, the largest single growth number since 2000, surpassing all expectations. Is your technology company prepared to take advantage of the tremendous growth opportunities that are currently in the marketplace. The Discovery Parks Foundation is pleased to have BCIT’s Peter Thomson Centre for Venture Development offer a one time limited seating opportunity for technology companies to participate in a part time growth strategies boot camp. There is no cost to your company and you will be accessing experts in technology and business to create a plan to see your company leveraging current market opportunities.

During this 6 week boot camp you will learn more about:

• Marketization of Product
• Venture Capital Acquisition
• Property Protection
• Growth Strategies
• Cash Flow
• Marketing
• B2B Presentations
• Partner Negotiations
• Operations and more

The six-week part-time program runs from March 30th to May 8th, on Tuesdays from 5:30pm-8:30pm, Saturdays from 9:00am-4:00pm, and by webinar on Thursdays from 5:00pm- 6:00pm. In-person class time is at the BCIT downtown campus at 555 Seymour Street.

This Bootcamp is fully funded with NO COST to participating companies. In order to qualify, you must operate or plan to operate a technology company within the lower mainland area and have a focus on growth.

To take advantage of this one time opportunity during such aggressive market growth please contact Simonetta at 604‐412‐7651 for further information and to arrange for an interview.

Northern Voice is a two-day, non-profit personal blogging and publishing conference that’s held in Vancouver.

Thanks to the Olympics, this year’s event – the 6th Annual – has been delayed and will take place on May 7th and 8th at UBC. Tickets went on sale for the 2010 edition of Northern Voice last week and should sell-out quickly.

Early-bird tickets are available until March 31st and the registration fee includes lunch, coffee, and tea.

DemoCamp Vancouver 10 is this coming week and picks up where Edition #9 left off with a duplicate format that includes longer featured presentations, 6 minute company/code/demo presentations, and lightning pitches in between to keep things moving.

This time around the theme is Geo and the two featured presentations will be:

• Matt Galligan (@mg), cofounder of Boulder, CO-based SimpleGeo, will be talking about the SimpleGeo platform. In the process of writing a location based app, Matt and his cofounder found that they were figuring out everything from scratch. It was hard and painful coming up with a storage engine for millions of geo points, and it was slow and difficult to run giant database queries against those points. And thus, SimpleGeo was born – infrastructure to power the geo layer of your app so you don’t have to build it all from scratch.
• Parveen Kaler (@kaler), founder of Smartful Studios, will be speaking about the business of Geo Location and Location Based Services. Currently, the Geo technology stack is fractured into disparate slices of functionality. We will look at who owns the data and what functionality currently exists. We will look at where data and functionality gaps exist within the stack. This will motivate the types of applications and services that can be built today. It doesn’t make sense for a viable business to build a product without a revenue model. We will enumerate different methods to monetize Geo Location services and how to build a revenue strategy.

DemoCamp Vancouver 10 is on Thursday, March 4th at Ceili’s Pub and starts at 6:30pm. The event is free but be sure to register online.

The British Columbia Technology Industry Association is hosting their Xcelerate program in partnership with ACETECH this Spring and have announced their panel of judges.

What is Xcelerate?

On Tuesday April 13th, the folks behind Angel Forum are hosting a work shop in Vancouver titled Term Sheets and Due Diligence for Investors, Entrepreneurs and Advisors.

Why attend? If you are planning to invest in or raise private equity in the next 12 months, ask yourself:

• Do you know what investors look for in fundable deals? Learn how investors think.
• What key business functions should investors focus their due diligence on to finalize their funding decision?
• Do you have a good overview of the language and post-investment ramifications of a term sheet?
• Do you want to network with private equity experts and other fellow investors and entrepreneurs?

This all day practical Due Diligence and Term Sheet workshop will be a blend of presentations and panel discussions with local experts, with lots of time for Q&A and networking.

The workshop will be led by Bob Okabe, Founder of Prairie Angels and Managing Director of RPX Group in Chicago where he leads the firm’s efforts to assist universities, research institutions and corporations create startups from their innovative technologies. He has made a lucky thirteen investments in startups as an angel investor with one major liquidity event and three other positive returns of capital.  Bob is involved with his portfolio companies, serving on advisory boards, management teams and boards of directors. He has been a lead instructor since 2006 for the US Angel Capital Education Foundation and Board Director.

As they are still finalizing panelists and sponsors, there is a “special” discount available. The first 20 seats are $285 each (~$50 off).  To directly register click here.

The provinces of Ontario and British Columbia have agreed to implement the harmonized sales tax (HST), which would replace existing provincial sales taxes and the federal goods and services tax in those provinces beginning July 1, 2010 and would be administered by the Canada Revenue Agency. The Canada Revenue Agency is offering a number of informative seminars to help ensure that businesses receive the information they need for the transition to the federal administration of the harmonized sales tax in Ontario and British Columbia.

Seminars are being conducted in downtown Vancouver through Small Business BC at 601 West Cordova Street at the following times:

• Thursday, February 11, 2010 from 9:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
• Thursday, March 4, 2010 from 1:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
• Friday, March 26, 2010 from 9:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

For a full list of seminars across British Columbia, visit the Canada Revenue Agency website. There is no charge for any of the harmonized sales tax seminars.

Are you an investor or entrepreneur looking for an exit strategy from  a private technology company?

Be sure to check out the Angel Forum’s Exit Strategies workshop in Vancouver on March 29th but first ask yourself:

1. What is my exit strategy and why do I need one before or after I invest or look for investors?
2. What type of investor or company best matches my exit strategy and capital/investment requirements?
3. What are the four major steps I should be taking now to plan for a successful exit?
4. What about the timeline, valuation and legal process?

Vancouver’s best experts on exits including: Basil Peters,  Axel Christiansen, Steven Lukas, and Thane Stenner will lead this practical real world workshop.

Register online – the first 20 seats are $285 – a savings of $50 of the regular price.

The BC Innovation Council (BCIC) is offering six BC-based Cleantech startups the opportunity to gain international exposure at the upcoming Globe 2010 Conference on March 24-26th in Vancouver.

Six startups will be awarded exhibition space at Globe 2010 in the BCIC showcase and have an opportunity to work with the BCIC to prepare an action plan that will position them for successful commercialization.

BCIC is asking companies to express their interest in participating at Globe 2010 no later than February 5th. The companies that BCIC will select for participation will qualify under the following criteria.

• Early stage company focused on innovation in Cleantech with the ability to fulfill orders generated by clients at Globe 2010
• Company plans to grow and sell products/solutions on the domestic, local & international markets
• Company would not participate at Globe 2010 had it not been for this opportunity
• Company representative(s) will be present at Globe 2010
• Company will contribute $750 towards the cost of the overall participation at Globe 2010
• Company will participate in confidential follow-up surveys on the outcomes of this initiative

Intested companies should express interest by completing this company profile and submitting it to BCIC Programs at programs@bcic.ca.

The  2010 Canadian Financing Forum took place today at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Vancouver and four previous New Ventures BC Competitors were chosen to present the Venture Capitalist audience.

• Aquavive Technologies – 2009 Top 30 Company
• Rapid Electric Vehicles Inc. (REV) – 2009 Top 10 Finalist
• Etalim – 2nd place in 2009
• Genologics Life Sciences Software – 2nd Place in 2003

The Forum wrapped up tonight with a reception to announce the Forum Favorites and Best Early Stage award winners. Iain Black, Minister of Small Business, Technology and Economic Development, was in attendance and presented the Best Early Stage Cleantech award to Burnaby’s Etalim.

Etalim’s new solar-power technology inexpensively converts the sun’s heat into emission-free electricity. This new technology uniquely combines thermodynamics, high-amplitude acoustics, mechanical resonance and material science to generate electricity not only from the sun, but from any heat source. An Etalim power plant can capture the sunlight falling on an area of land the size of a football field to power 500 homes without creating any CO2 emissions.

Etalim was founded and incorporated in March 2006. Former Creo CEO Amos Michelson is Etalim’s Chairman and experienced tech entrepreneur Ron Klopfer was named CEO in June 2009.

The Vancouver Enterprise Forum is presenting a panel discussion on the outlook for venture capital financing in 2010 this Tuesday, January 26th.

After a couple of quarters of reduced investing, the VC market in BC has some good news with new funds being introduced and new partners for the BC Renaissance Fund.

Is the economic crisis affecting the technology sector and venture capital financing or are recent exits in the US a sign that the market is turning around? But against this backdrop, everyone knows that great companies and great returns emerge from troubled financial times.

Is the venture capital market poised to rebound? Are angels going to be more active? What can companies do to increase their chance of raising money? What creative financing strategies are emerging on both sides of the border?

The evening session will be moderated by Andrew Lugsdin of BDC Venture Capital and panelists include John Albright of JLA Ventures, Ping Li of Accel Partners, and Mike Walkinshaw of Chrysalix.

The event takes place at the Vancity Theatre and tickets are $45 each.