By Lauren McKeon and Michael Ganley Eight people whose involvement in the digital economy is creating a new and viable industry for the territories. Photos by Patrick Kane and Daren Gallo
When people think about industries in the North, they’re bound to put mining or oil and gas at the top of the list. Then comes tourism, perhaps, or construction. Maybe transportation. Digital technology, on the other hand, is way down, if it’s considered at all.
It’s understandable; we’re chock full of resources up here. But we’re also full of the most modern of talents: creating, manipulating and engaging the digital world. In all three territories, Northerners tackle our unique challenges and dream up innovative ways of interacting with the world around us through computer technology. Could this industry become as iconic in the North as mining is, or oil and gas? We don’t know. But if it does, it will be because these people had the smarts to lead the way.
So what do we mean by digital leader? We’re talking about making stuff that works in extreme cold, connecting camps throughout a vast and remote land, figuring out how to bring broadband to Nunavut’s 29 small communities spread over 2.1 million square kilometres. Our eight digital leaders bend their minds to such things and more every day. In so doing, they are creating a stronger, more stable North full of possibilities. This list is about having the brains and the gumption to effect change that will take North of 60 to places it never thought it could go.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The Advocate
Darrell Ohokannoak
Founder and manager, PolarNet, Cambridge Bay
As manager of PolarNet, Darrell Ohokannoak helped start up the first – and only – local Internet service provider in Nunavut. Founded in 1997 and owned by the Kitikmeot Corporation, PolarNet was, of course, a dial-up connection; Qiniq didn’t come along until 2005. These days, Ohokannoak continues to manage PolarNet, but he keeps even busier as chairperson of the Nunavut Broadband Development Corporation – a volunteer position. Why spend so much time on something you don’t even get paid for? Well, Ohokannoak believes Nunavummiut need better, faster and cheaper broadband services to make their economy strong.
“Up here we’re reliant on satellite,” says Ohokannoak, “and the bandwidth we need is extremely, extremely expensive.” Currently, the average person in Nunavut pays $60 per month just for basic Internet services, and that’s a subsidized rate. Without subsidies, each bill would be close to triple that amount. Part of the NBDC’s job is to lobby different levels of government, says Ohokannoak, so they can keep the network alive. Better, faster service would enable business owners to connect and to use applications and services that aren’t operating at their full potential, if at all – think anything from Internet banking to e-mailing large files.
Basically, says Ohokannoak, it’s about better resources and better communication tools. Take video conferencing. Ohokannoak and his wife use Skype all the time, but the quality can depend heavily on network traffic. Right now, he says, tools are being put together so the quality of video conferencing in Nunavut can be better than what Skype offers. In the meantime, thanks to Ohokannoak and the work of the NBDC, even Skype is looking pretty good. Just the other day a teacher came into Ohokannoak’s offices to do a job interview over Skype. “It was a great success,” he says. “It’s a shame I didn’t have my camera at that moment to take a picture of it.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The Lobbyist
Chris Lane
Founder and principal consultant, Software Development Centre, Whitehorse
When Chris Lane was growing up in the Yukon in the 1970s, his brother built a computer in their house. Lane was “sucked in.” At 12, he and his brother would program a computer for hours just so they could play tic-tac-toe. It was only natural, then, that when it came time to go to university, Lane chose to pursue a computer science degree. While that took him to B.C., Lane had no intentions of staying south. After first working at a local firm, Lane branched out and founded his own company in 1991. He later formed Software Development Centre with David Larkin and Stephen Maltby. Throughout it all, Lane came to one conclusion: The Yukon really needed a technology industry, and it needed a strong one.
So he helped create the Yukon Information Technology Industry Society (YITIS) about 10 years ago. “The technology industry is here to stay,” he says. “Our jobs provide a good, quality income into the territory and stable jobs. We can make investments here. We’re not here for a short time.” Plus, it’s important for all of the Yukon’s businesses to have a solid, local technology industry. Ideally, at least, a local tech industry is cheaper and better able to respond to the North’s unique issues. Without a local industry, many mid- to small-sized companies would have to rely on big-name, out-of-town service – and technology is no longer an option for businesses. “[Every] enterprise needs to use technology in today’s world,” says Lane. “It’s not going away.”
YITIS has worked hard over the past decade to build Northern expertise and to stop what Lane calls leakage – money going to southern companies. A north to south brain drain continues to be an issue, but with a growing tech industry, the Yukon has more businesses to lure the wonderfully geeky back to the North. Certainly, Lane’s company is top notch, and growing. Over the past couple of years, Software Development’s employee ranks have grown to 13, plus sub-contractors. The company has also moved out of its rented space and purchased a 6,000 square foot building. “Our goal is to continue growing,” says Lane, “And to prove Northerners don’t always need to import the expertise from down south.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The Kid
Julien Plourde
Owner, Technical Solutions Company, Whitehorse
Julien Plourde has always been a tech-savvy kind of guy. When he was a kid, he’d stare at cell phone towers and wonder how does it work? By 12, he had a bona fide government-issued amateur radio licence, allowing him to transmit on airways. And, by 14 he’d started his pilot’s licence. Perhaps it’s not too surprising to learn, then, what Plourde did after arriving in Whitehorse at the tender age of 24. When the young techie discovered the job he wanted didn’t exist in the Northern city, he created it – along with his own company, Technical Solutions. “It’s basically about wanting to never stop learning,” he says, “to never stop asking questions.”
Indeed, that never-stop-learning attitude has enabled Plourde to grow Technical Solution’s impressively in-depth breadth of service – in four scant years. Although the company still focuses on customized high-tech solutions, its capacity is now much greater than just industrial work. “As the challenges [presented to us] have grown,” says Plourde, now 28, “our clients have seen what we’re capable of doing and asked more of us.”
In other words, it’s gone like this: A client will have a problem and, finding nobody in town offering the solution to fix it, approach Technical Solutions because of their reputation and previous experience. Technical Solutions will provide, well, the solution. “Through this process,” says Plourde, “we’ve broadened the scope of our work.” The company now does work in custom electronics and even some residential applications. Going forward, Plourde plans to grow the company even more, but there’s no way he’s leaving the North.
“When our clients walk into our office, they say, ‘Well, I’d expect this in Vancouver, but not in Whitehorse,’” says Plourde. And then, the inevitable: “Why are you here?” Plourde always has an answer ready: He likes Whitehorse. Not only does he like the community, but also the unique challenges Whitehorse presents. Here, Plourde and his team can tackle permafrost projects, or work on top of a mountain installing rain sensors, or, well, anything. In Vancouver, says Plourde, he could be working on the same project for two years trying to make paper spit out of a printer faster. You decide which sounds more exciting.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The Technician
Aaron Jaque
President, CasCom Computers, Yellowknife
Aaron Jaque started as a technician with CasCom Computers in 2002, when exploration camps across the North were truly off the grid. People packed what they needed for six weeks or two months or however long their commitment and headed into the wilderness. There were no networked computers on site, and if there was a phone it was a single satellite phone that everyone would have to share. Calls were expensive and of poor quality. People could send a letter to family when the plane came in with supplies, but that was it. “Now everybody has a laptop and they expect to be on wireless Internet at the sites and checking their Facebook,” says Jaque. “It’s come a long way.”
CasCom, which began life as a retailer of computers, phones and video games, now builds its business around delivering an office experience – complete with Internet, phone and fax – to remote locations. It’s all about creating affordable bandwidth through a small satellite dish on site. “Once you have that bandwidth there are a lot of different products and features you can supply to people,” says Jaque.
Ensuring a system is well-designed and executed not only keeps people in touch with the office and loved ones, it can be crucial in emergency situations. It makes Jaque and his staff rock-star popular when they first descend on a camp. “We show up and it’s like ‘Oh, it’s the Internet guy. You’re awesome. I love you. What can I do to help you get this working,’” says Jaque.
In recent years, as exploration around Yellowknife has slowed, Jaque and CasCom have taken their skills beyond the NWT and Nunavut. CasCom has done remote jobs in Quebec, Ontario, Saskatchewan and B.C., and is expanding its work on remediation sites.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The Vanguard
Andrew Robulack
Principle, Andrew Robulack Consulting, Whitehorse
Andrew Robulack is a man of ideas and here’s the thing: no matter how zany, new, out-there, untried or controversial it is, he will at least try it out. This combination of brains and guts has brought Robulack plenty of success and a reputation as somebody who’s not afraid to speak his mind. Even better, it has allowed him to do plenty of really cool stuff. In the late 1990s that meant the first video broadcast of the Dawson City Music Festival. Today, it means looking at mobile telecommunications – and the way we use the technology – in new and interesting ways.
“For example, I’m implementing plans to enable organizations to be more responsive to users through mobile messaging,” he says, “rather than just straight phone calls.” While non-disclosure clauses have Robulack mum on upcoming projects, we can look at one recent job for a taste of what he’s capable of. About a year ago, he threw Whitehorse into a texting frenzy with the launch of Texthorse. “I got endless criticism about the name,” quips Robulack. Name aside, the game was fun. After partnering up with retailers in Whitehorse, Robulack’s team sent clues to the members, or players, who’d joined up. Once the players figured out the clues, they went to the location to get a code through which they earned points – and deals with the retailer.
For the future, he’s thought about creating a whole story through text messaging, Facebook, and guerilla theatre (and has received some funding, too). The idea: Instead of sitting down and watching a story on TV for an hour, a person would engage with it on an ongoing basis. “These projects help us understand how technology can become part of our lives, impact our lives and enhance our lives,” says Robulack, “rather than become just another website on yet another server.” In the meantime, he’ll keep interacting with people through his newspaper column, his blog, and, of course, Twitter – reaching hundreds of followers and readers.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The Visionary
Jeff Philipp
President, SSI Micro, Yellowknife
Jeff Philipp’s fascination with computers goes back to his high school years in Fort Providence in the early 1980s. He remembers working with cassette tapes and 5 ¼ inch floppy discs, “then if you were really lucky you could work on the big Apple Lisa,” he says, still with boyish enthusiasm.
That precocious child is now at the head of SSI Micro, a global leader in remote and rural connectivity. It is the largest Internet service provider in the North, serving more than 60 communities in Nunavut and the NWT, and has taken its talents to projects around the world.
Philipp’s passion comes from both the technology and the applications. “It’s like Christmas every day for me,” he says. “I’m in a field that I love, in the most exciting time in that field ever. Plus, I don’t report to a board or shareholders.”
He envisions a near-term future where we wave our cellphones at the cash register to pay the bill, then go home and drop it in a docking station hooked up to a screen and a keyboard and there’s our computer. Ultimately, the phone (really a computer on which voice is one of the applications) will plug directly into your TV. “You won’t even need a computer anymore,” he says. “Households will buy a $400 TV and that is their computer.”
His enthusiasm is tempered by the growing digital divide he sees facing the North, particularly the dozens of communities served by satellite. “You can only push so much capacity up over a satellite,” he says. “You can’t get it at a reasonable price, and your price does not get cheaper with volume to the level that it would on a terrestrial system.”
The problem will only be compounded when all the technology is converged, as in the example above. Most of the converged technology is designed for large markets and SSI operates in a lot of places that max out at fewer than 300 subscribers. It will mean a lot of work for his company. “What we’ve been good at is finding those solutions that scale down into these markets,” says Philipp. “That typically means we can buy the hardware, but the glue that binds it together is the software we write.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The Opportunist
Tom Zubko
Owner, New North Networks, Inuvik
When you’re making a living in a remote community, it’s best to have a broad array of skills, or at least the willingness to acquire them. Tom Zubko has mastered the technique, particularly in the field of communications.
His father, Mike Zubko, came to the Beaufort Delta as a bush pilot in the 1940s, when you were lucky if there was Morse code between the communities. As a child, Zubko’s fascination with “new and wonderful ideas” saw him experimenting with a germanium crystal, an antennae and a little jolt of power. “You poke around with a needle on it until you get the right frequency shaping and lo and behold you have radio,” says the 59-year-old.
Zubko has changed as quickly as has the technology. His company, New North Networks, brought dial-up Internet to Inuvik in the early 1980s, cable TV in 1990 and the town’s first broadband Internet in 1996. “We put in digital cellphones in 1999 and a lot of the stuff we’ve done in the oil patch has been digital,” says Zubko. “Now pretty much everything we do is digital or it will be very soon.”
One of the projects that most excites him now is the Inuvik Satellite Station, an initiative of the Swedish Space Corporation. The SSC has a global network of satellite dishes that download data from satellites in low-earth orbit, all of which pass over the poles. “If you were at the North Pole you’d see every one of those satellites as they pass overhead,” says Zubko. “If you were at the equator you’d see about one out of every 14 because the rest of them would be below the horizon. Inuvik is far enough north that it sees about 70 per cent of them.”
So far the Inuvik facility has two 13-metre satellite dishes, but Zubko says if Inuvik could connect to the south on fiber optic cable, the industry could be a substantial contributor to the regional economy. “I could see 30 or 40 jobs created over the next 15 years, and the good thing about this industry is that it’s flat-line,” he says. “It doesn’t go up and down. You put a billion dollar satellite in the sky and just because the economy changes a bit doesn’t change the fact that it needs to download data.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The Integrator
Steve Freake
Art director, Outcrop Communications, Yellowknife
You might see Steve Freake’s work in the magazine you hold in your hand or on your computer or in the newspaper you read or on the phone that you take everywhere. It’s all about connecting all the experiences so his clients have a constant presence in the lives of the people they want to reach. “Graphic design is no longer just print ads,” he says. “It’s the integrated aspect of technology. It’s everything from corporate identities to advertising campaigns to mobile applications.”
A native of tiny Botwood, Newfoundland, Freake was trained in graphic design at the College of the North Atlantic, then left The Rock eight years ago to join the team at Outcrop. His work spans everything from coming up with the creative concept to colour schemes and font choices.
His primary project over the last couple of years has been the NWT Tourism account, which includes everything from the “Spectacular NWT” website to full-page Globe & Mail ads to displays in the Edmonton airport. It’s one of the broadest campaigns coming out of the North, and the website, now three years old, is still one of the North’s best. “But it’s time for a redesign,” he says. “There’s so much new technology to make websites better. For instance the web has gotten much better at using video in the last three years.”
But even a leading campaign for NWT Tourism is not Freake’s end goal. “We want to put the North on par or even leading Canada for web design and design in general,” he says. “We want to be up there with the creative leaders in North America, and I think we can take that step.”
