HomeMy WebLinkAboutEconDevAdv 2012-03-28
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT ADVISORY COMMITTEE MINUTES
March 28, 2012 City of Kitchener
The Economic Development Advisory Committee met this date, chaired by Councillor Bil
Glenn Kohler, Peter Benninger, Darren
Ioannidis; the following members were in attendance:
Shaw, Darrin Snider, Councillor Scott Davy, Ashely Reid, Brian Bennett, Councillor Paul Singh,
Lisa Polonoski, Ian Cook, Jeremy Auger
The following people sent their regrets: Amr Kebbi, Steve Sachs, Steven Voll, Mark Bingeman,
Adrian Conrad
The following people were absent: Dr. Takhar
Staff in attendance: Rod Regier, Silvia Di Donato, Terry Boutilier, Tracey DeVille, Valerie
Machado
Business Items:
1.1 Approval of Minutes
The minutes of the February meeting will be available for approval next month.
New Business:
Desire2Learn hosted this month’s EDAC meeting and Jeremy Auger provided a tour and
overview of what the company does.
Silvia Di Donato showed a video promotion for talent and the importance of the ability to reach
out to companies like Desire2Learn to function in the community.
She advised this is the first in a series and we are looking for feedback on this. She advised
that the video would be a good start for attraction and getting younger people to notice
Kitchener.
The committee provided the following feedback:
-Sports element should be included
-Show the video to a group of young people before public launch
-Who is going to see this, where are they going to see it?
Planned roll out is to post it on YouTube as a start and look at Facebook ads to
o
target interest communities – we can select by demographics and test it out to
see how many clicks we are getting. This is a great video without sound too and
it could be played in the background at events, Communitech recruitment, job
fairs, etc.
The Committee felt the video may be too long and too dance influenced, although they did like
the music and suggested having a voice over component. They also suggested highlighting the
park, it might also be useful to label the locations. They also advised that the market should be
featured in the video.
The committee also suggested that having several shorter videos and one extended version
would be more useful, as well as including images of the festivals, canoeing the grand, hiking,
bike trails and Chicopee Ski Hill.
2.2 Solar Industry Follow Up
Rod Regier advised we had the tour of Canadian Solar in January and we felt this is a good time
to have a round table discussion on the solar industry and cluster building. Terry Boutilier is the
lead on this file. We have held a solar industry networking group meeting.
Terry Boutilier provided an overview of the tour at Canadian Solar, the world conditions on
solar, the new FIT rates, and strategies for consideration and outlined the steps outlined in the
KEDS II document.
Rod Regier asked if we as a community should be taking this and going with it strategically at
some point we need to have committee conservation about this – it would involve Kitchener
Hydro, neighbourhood by neighbourhood analysis capacity etc., this is something to think about
for a future meeting of EDAC for a potential resolution to council.
Project updates:
Rod provided the project updates to the committee. He noted – the labour force update shows
that the first three months of this year were productive for our labour force update – we did see
a decline and now there is an dramatic up turn.
Restructuring of the EDAC meetings – will be started at the next meeting with breakout rooms
etc.
On motion, the meeting was adjourned at 6:00 pm.