A user creates a customized campaign on FundRazr.

A Vancouver company is pioneering a new technology for raising money through social media.

As hundreds of charities compete for donation dollars, ConnectionPoint Systems Inc. is using a Facebook app called FundRazr to show people how to effectively leverage their online social networks to raise money for everything from lacrosse teams to international social-justice campaigns .

The app, the brainchild of founder and CEO Daryl Hatton, has already helped people raise $15 million for 30,000 campaigns since it launched in 2010.

“What we do is allow people to easily create an online campaign and then share it across their social network – their family and friends – and securely collect donations for projects and causes,” explained Bret Conkin, vice-president of marketing at FundRazr.

The campaigns range in scale from personal memorials that raise a few hundred dollars to Julian Assange’s nearly $300,000 Wikileaks legal defence fund.

What sets FundRazr apart from the competition is the company’s partnership with industry giants PayPal and Facebook.

FundRazr enables users to create a campaign by logging into the app through Facebook and then building a compelling multimedia story around their project. They can then set a fundraising goal and share their campaign through their online social networks.

The donations are securely collected via PayPal, while Facebook, which is constantly inventing new ways to enhance sharing among networks, boosts the campaign through people’s digitally connected lives.

“The starting point is visibility amongst users’ friends and family but the multiplier is this: Once Joe likes, tweets, shares your campaign, that visibility is shared amongst his social network who are not supporters currently,” explains Conkin, whose company has been featured by Facebook because of its innovative use of the social-media site’s technology for helping users connect.

Fundraising in a networked world

FundRazr’s ability to empower individuals to effectively raise money relies on a surprisingly simple and traditional concept: passing the hat. People have always turned to those closest to them like family and friends for help in times of need. In other words, “passing the hat” has now become “crowdfunding.”

An industry survey has revealed that 452 crowdfunding platforms raised nearly $1.5 billion in 2011 alone. Forbes magazine predicts that crowdfunding, in its myriad of different forms, will explode by 2013.

“Money has become one of the easiest things to get out of people because it’s just another click, just a simple transaction,” says Brian Reich, the author of Shift and Reset, a book that outlines fundraising in the new, networked world.

“When you’re fundraising, you’re not actually looking for the direct ask in most cases. You’re looking for the credible, trusted person who can make the ask for you. That is the nature of high-dollar fundraising.”

That is precisely the key to FundRazr’s success. It takes the headache out of asking for and collecting money while sharing your campaign with the people who are most likely to support your cause – your friends and family.

“With technology, high-dollar fundraising is now at scale. A global scale. I am much more likely to give to someone I know than to an organization that asks me, end of story,” Reich explained.

Operation ShareCraft

Last year, a professional video-gamer called Athene was dismayed by the fall-out of the “Kony 2012” campaign.

He approached FundRazr with an idea to raise a million dollars for Save the Children.

The caveat? He wanted to leverage his 500,000-strong online following of video gamers to raise the money for him.

FundRazr built a custom social-media driven campaign, called Operation ShareCraft, which turned the fundraising experience into a game. It pitted gamers against each other to see who could individually raise the most money towards the campaign.

The campaign successfully reached its goal in just 80 days, after securing a matching donation from DC Comics.

While Athene’s online celebrity status certainly helped put the bucks in the bank, it’s not the only recipe for success on FundRazr. A small but dedicated community with a compelling story can change lives, too.

A customized ‘Restaurant Rumble’ campaign on FundRazr

Restaurant Rumble

When a group of bartenders, servers and chefs from Gastown found out that a Downtown Eastside boxing gym was under the threat of closure, they were determined to save it.

The gym had long served as a safe haven for disadvantaged youth in the area who received guidance and mentorship from their coaches both in and out of the ring.

The workers formed the Aprons for Gloves Boxing Association and turned to FundRazr to help them create a cohesive campaign called Restaurant Rumble.

Aprons for Gloves has raised $130,000 with the help of friends, family, customers and the local Gastown business community and are currently working to secure a new spot for the gym.

Education: the next fundraising frontier

When Facebook reached the milestone of one billion users on Oct. 4, 2012, it chose to highlight FundRazr as a developer taking social fundraising to the next level.

As the technology continues to evolve, FundRazr is exploring new ventures. This includes a possible partnership with the University of British Columbia to use FundRazr as a payment method for students to crowdfund their education.

Reich has an ultimately hopeful message: in our modern, connected world, anything is possible.

“We know that if we can get people with shared interests together in one place we have the potential to do things to change the world on a scale we’ve never imagined before.”

The Draganflyer X6 drone is used by law enforcement agencies throughout Canada and the United States (Image courtesy of Draganflyer Innovations Inc.)

Early one morning in 2009, the Texas Department of Public Safety’s SWAT team approached the home of an Austin man suspected of possessing illicit drugs and weapons. Armed with a search warrant, the SWAT team wanted a bird’s-eye view of the property before storming the building and making the arrest. According to the Washington Post, however, the officers feared the suspect might shoot down a police helicopter and instead launched an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), or drone.

Law enforcement agencies are among the many individuals, groups and organizations around the world — from farmers to fire fighters to researchers to oil and gas producers and so on — interested in using drone technology.

A recent study by Teal Group Corp., a team of aerospace and defense industry analysts, estimates that on a worldwide basis, “UAV spending will almost double over the next decade…totaling just over US$94 billion.”

Last August, RCMP in British Columbia launched a year-long pilot project testing the usefulness and cost-effectiveness of using drones to take aerial photographs of traffic accidents, the idea being that the images can help officers analyze and reconstruct collisions. The drones might also be used to collect evidence at “significant crime scenes,” the RCMP said.

Some, however, are concerned about the impact drone technology could have on Canadians’ privacy and its potential for “function creep,” especially since law enforcement agencies in the United States are using drones for more than their stated purpose.

What are you looking at?

Micheal Vonn, policy director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, fears law enforcement drones are intended for “much, much more” than traffic and safety.

“When we’re looking at deploying the tools of war domestically by the B.C. RCMP, we need to ask exactly what is the intention and how is this proportionate to whatever the purported problem is,” said Vonn.

The U.S. experience may offer a clue as to how the use of law enforcement drones could evolve. In 2010, a Predator drone used by U.S. Customs and Border Protection to patrol the northern border for drug smugglers and illegal immigrants assisted police in Nelson County, North Dakota in arresting a family of anti-government separatists who failed to report missing cows that wandered onto their property.

More recently, Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office near Houston, Texas expressed interest in arming its $300,000 ShadowHawk drone with non-lethal weapons — including tasers, tear gas and rubber bullets.

“What you’re talking about is expanded surveillance powers,” Vonn said. “We now have technological innovations that will allow for population-based surveillance — essentially dragnet surveillance — looking for crimes that are not even being investigated, looking for suspicious people, looking for intelligence, looking essentially to risk-score entire populations in terms of potential threats.”

The possibility of drones being used for surveillance, she said, is “absolutely chilling.”

Scott Hutchinson, senior communications adviser with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, said the organization recognizes the potential of drone technology to be used for surveillance.

“There are privacy concerns about the possibilities simply because it’s a form of surveillance that is potentially covert or hidden,” he said. “When you step into a store that is being surveyed by video cameras, there should be some notice informing you that ‘Hey, you’re on candid camera.’ But that would be very difficult [or] impossible to do in the case of a flying drone.”

Ryan Calo, director for privacy and robotics at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, said in a Stanford Law Review article published in December 2011 that drone technology might actually be good for privacy law.

“People would feel observed, regardless of how or whether the information was actually used,” writes Calo. “The resulting backlash could force us to re-examine not merely the use of drones to observe, but the doctrines that today permit this use.”

As long as it’s legal

Both Vonn and Hutchinson emphasized the need for law enforcement agencies to follow legislation when implementing new programs.

Drone use in Canada is regulated by Transport Canada under the Aeronautics Act, which enables the Canadian Aviation Regulations (CARs).

Under CARs, a Special Flight Operations Certificate (SFOC) must be obtained before a drone can be operated in Canadian airspace. Between January 2007 and January 2012, 293 SFOCs were granted for drone use alone.

However, Transport Canada Media Relations Manager Patrick Charette said in an email there is no centralized list of SFOC holders and thus it’s difficult to know who has permission to operate drones in Canada.

Charette added that his organization is monitoring developments of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration’s UAV flight regulations — which is required by law to safely integrate drones in American airspace by 2015 — and will work with “the UAV community” to ensure the same happens in Canada.

Transport Canada is responsible for regulating Canadian airways. It is not, however, responsible for ensuring that privacy laws are upheld. Instead, any Canadian government institutions seeking to implement, modify, contract out or transfer programs involving the use of personal information for administrative or decision-making purposes are required to complete a privacy impact assessment  — which identifies, quantifies and describes a program’s potential privacy risks — before receiving Treasury Board approval.

Hutchinson said the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, which reviews privacy impact assessments, has not received one from the RCMP regarding the use of drones. This, he said, is probably because RCMP drones are not collecting personal information as defined by the Privacy Act. If, however, there is ever a program conceived where law enforcement agencies use drones to survey the public or collect personal information, they will need to complete a privacy impact assessment.

“We’d want to review the assessment [and] provide advice and recommendations,” said Hutchinson. “Depending on the nature of the initiative, it might also be appropriate to recommend that the institution behind it carry out some form of consultation to inform the public.”

Buzzing to a traffic accident near you

Sergeant Dave Jewers, Unit Commander of RCMP Traffic Services in B.C., pilots the Draganflyer X6 (Image courtesy of RCMP)

In B.C., the RCMP is prohibited from flying drones over crowds, near buildings or higher than 175 feet.  Only licensed officers are allowed to operate drones, and they must remain within the officers’ line of vision.

“We’re not allowed to overfly any person that’s not directly involved in the operation,” said Sergeant Dave Jewers, unit commander of RCMP Traffic Services in B.C., who operates the drone being tested as part of the year-long pilot program.

“We specifically wrote in our policy that we won’t do surveillance,” he added.

“It’s turned very badly on police agencies that have tried [drone surveillance] in the States,” said Jewers. “We will not be doing surveillance of people or vehicles with our UAVs. Just aerial photography.”

The unit’s Integrated Collision Analysis and Reconstruction Service (ICARS) is testing the Draganflyer X6 — a drone  manufactured and retailed by Saskatoon-based Draganflyer Innovations Inc. — to take aerial photographs of major collision scenes in the Lower Mainland. The images help analyze and reconstruct accidents and can be submitted to courts as evidence.

“It works fabulously,” said Jewers. “It’s a great piece of equipment.”

He said drones are far more effective at taking photographs of collision scenes than someone standing on the ground.

“Say there’s a big 18-wheeler crash where there’s evidence probably five, six, seven hundred metres down the highway. Just having close-up photos…doesn’t show you an overall image of the whole thing,” he explained.

Jewers also said drones can be set up and deployed within minutes at a fraction of what it costs to call in helicopters. This allows officers to get the evidence they need faster and reopen roads sooner.

There’s an app for that drone

Bird's-eye view of traffic from a Draganflyer X6 (Image courtesy of Draganflyer Innovations Inc.)

Law enforcement agencies elsewhere in Canada have also started using drones, including RCMP in Saskatchewan and police departments in Kenora and Thunder Bay, Ont. and Prince Albert, Regina and Saskatoon, Sask.

Saskatoon Police Inspector Jerome Engele said his department tested an early model of the Draganflyer X6 as far back as 2003 before adopting the current version around 2006.

His unit is subject to the same restrictions as RCMP in B.C. in terms of where drones can be flown and by whom. They, too, use drones for collision analysis and reconstruction. However, Engele said the drone’s small size, easy operation, 20-minute battery life and ability to fly in below freezing weather conditions makes it useful in other situations as well, including SWAT.

“If you have an incident where you’ve got someone that’s holding a hostage on the second floor of an apartment complex and naturally we can’t see in, you could use [it] to fly up and hover outside the windows to look in,” explained Engele.

Engele said drones can also be used for emergency response and outdoor homicide investigations.

“There’s so many applications, you’re crazy not to use it,” said Engele.

He insists, however, there is no reason for people to be concerned about law enforcement drones and privacy.

“We [do] everything within the law. We’re not going to use it illegally whatsoever,” he said.

Voting app is only available for the iPhone.

The Vancouver Votes app was released on Oct. 27, to encourage more people to vote. By Nov. 14, it had only been downloaded 1,000 times, even though the city has 400,000 registered voters.

By comparison, a similar app released for Calgary’s municipal elections a year ago hit 4,000 downloads.

City officials have not set a target for downloads and say there will not be a way to tell if the app has any impact.

“You never know with elections whether the tools you use got people out to vote,” said City Chief election officer Janice MacKenzie.

The goal with voters is to “get the information into their hands and by virtue of that encourage them to vote,” she said.

Appealing to youth

Voter turnout has fallen in the last two municipal elections and the city is particularly concerned about trying to reach young adults who shun the ballot box.

But experts who research youth engagement in politics say an app fails to address the real reasons why so many young people do not vote.

Heather Bastedo, a research specialist studying Canadian political participation with Samara, said youth were disengaged because they don’t identify with candidates and their values.

“It can’t make you care about your candidates, and can’t give you confidence in your vote, and that’s a big part,” she said.

Voter engagement advocates are pleased the city has developed a tool they can use in their own work, encouraging the public to get more involved in the election.

“It’s one more thing we can pick up without developing it ourselves, ” said Andrea Curtis, a coordinator for Get Your Vote On, an advocacy group working specifically to increasing young voter turnout.

Marketing the app

The idea for an app came from Vancouver’s communications department.

They approached developers Purple Forge based on apps they had developed for Calgary’s municipal elections and the 2010 by-election in Victoria.

City officials said the app was mainly marketed the official election website and voter’s guides distributed throughout the city.

When asked if any attempt had been made to specifically target younger voters, officials said that because their budget was limited their ads were very “broad and generic” and “don’t target any one demographic.”

They described Facebook and Twitter accounts as their best avenue of communication. The app had been mentioned by city officials twice on Facebook on October 27 and November 1, and once on Twitter on October 27. 

Smartphone owners

In an effort to keep costs down, the city chose to only commission an iPhone app at the recommendation of the developer.

The iPhone has 31 per cent of the smartphone market compared to the market leader, Blackberry with 38 per cent, according to comScore figures reported by iPhoneinCanada.

With the goal of reaching out to young adults, Bastedo cautions that those young people least likely to vote are also least likely to own an iPhone.

The city has doubled advanced polling days to encourage voting.

Unfortunately, she said, when it comes to increasing voter turnout, it’s a matter of experimentation. It’s not easy to know what will have an effect on numbers and “this may be as good as it gets.”

Alexandra Samuel, Director of the social media and interactive media centre at Emily Carr said the cycle of elections means there will always be a new technology to test.

What is important to consider, she said, is “what kinds of technologies and approaches will generate the best kinds of outcomes.”

“These kinds of apps are most likely to appeal to motivated citizens, that is, to people who would vote anyhow,” she said.

One advantage the app has is its ability to sent push notifications to users, reminding them when and where to vote.

Bastedo said this could be the most important feature of the app for improving voting numbers. It’s a non-partisan mimic of the scrutineers hired by political parties to call supporters with a reminder on voting day.

“Getting people out on voting day is the success or failure of a campaign,” she said.

(Index photo of the voting place courtesy of Travis Nep Smith)

]]> http://thethunderbird.ca/2011/11/17/10k-election-app-struggles-to-stir-public-interest/feed/ 0 http://thethunderbird.ca/2007/11/07/why-microsoft-loves-richmond-bc/ http://thethunderbird.ca/2007/11/07/why-microsoft-loves-richmond-bc/#comments Wed, 07 Nov 2007 08:20:58 +0000 Cynthia Yoo http://thethunderbird.ca/blog/2007/11/15/why-microsoft-loves-richmond-bc/ – By Cynthia Yoo –

If you want to understand why Microsoft is about to open a 700-employee software development centre in Richmond, B.C., it helps to talk with Steve Ha.

Ha runs TecAce, based in Bellevue, Washington. His firm develops software for Samsung mobile devices and requires Korean-speaking employees, experienced in Samsung technology.

But under the current visa system, “it’s impossible to bring Koreans into the U.S. now, so we decided to set-up an office in Richmond,” explained Ha.

“It’s difficult for Koreans to obtain a green-card even after five or six years of work in the U.S. and we heard that it’s much easier to get them into Canada for work,” Ha said.

“I’ve heard of other firms here gearing up to open offices in Richmond or Vancouver because of the U.S. visa problems.”

These firms are following the lead of the biggest software developer of all.

When, last summer, Microsoft announced their planned move, company president Phil Sorgen promised, “This centre will help Microsoft remain globally competitive while providing strong economic benefits to British Columbia and Canada.”

Across the border, however, some point out that Microsoft and other companies are using the Richmond centre to hire foreign workers they can’t otherwise for their U.S. operations. Others believe it’s a tactic to pressure the U.S. government to remove its cap on foreign worker visas.

In fact, Microsoft has admitted that it decided to open the Richmond centre in part because it couldn’t hire enough foreign workers for their U.S. facilities.

The H-1B visa

Microsoft and other tech industries in the U.S. hire foreign workers through the H-1B visa. Originally, these visas were established to attract skilled professionals to come to the U.S., work for five to six years and apply for citizenship.

However, in 2006, about three quarters of these visas were taken by Indian outsourcing firms such as Infosys.

These firms send Indian workers to U.S. firms for two to four year terms in order to study their operations and then outsource the work back to India-based companies.

This discovery led to a U.S. Senate investigation into allegations that Microsoft and other companies were using these visas to outsource U.S. jobs overseas, contrary to its mandate to attract skilled immigrants. In response, Microsoft and others argued that current immigration policies were antiquated and did not meet the needs of globalized economies.

“Microsoft, like many big U.S. high tech employers, was keen to push the recently failed U.S. immigration reform bill which upped the quotas for skilled migrants,” explained Mark Ellis, Professor of Geography at the University of Washington.

Ellis surmised whether the timing of Microsoft’s July announcement, so close at the heel of the failed U.S. immigration bill in June, might have been intended to signal that Microsoft would offshore its operations to Canada if it doesn’t get its way on immigration reform.

Canada’s welcome mat

Canada is welcoming these U.S. companies looking for more accommodating immigration policies. The country has a shortage of highly skilled workers. Earlier this spring, British Columbia reported a record low unemployment rate of four per cent and predicted a shortfall of 350,000 workers in key fields.

Canada has no caps on all classes of foreign worker visas. Last November, the Canadian government launched the Advantage Canada Plan under which three federal government ministries of Citizenship and Immigration, Human Resources and Service Canada recently began measures to improve its Temporary Foreign Worker Program.

“The Temporary Foreign Worker Program requires businesses to look for Canadian hires first and file a labour market opinion that there is a need for foreign workers,“ explains Lois Reimer of Citizenship and Immigration Canada. “Essentially it is a supply and demand issue.”

That market analysis process was relaxed for Microsoft. As reported earlier in last month’s Vancouver Sun article, Sharif Khan, vice-president of human resources at Microsoft Canada, stated that Microsoft enjoyed an expedited process of only two weeks to obtain their visas.

But Steve Ha’s firm has not enjoyed that privilege. TecAce has set-up a “virtual office” in Richmond, as he waits the six month long process to hire foreign workers from Korea. “Our branch is only a virtual-office for now because the process [in Canada] is much more complicated and time-consuming than we expected.”

Related: Outsourcing North America?

A group in downtown Vancouver has decided to bring wireless Internet to the masses, saying they can do it faster and better than the city.

“We don’t have to wait for the city to get their act together, or for a commercial service provider to finally bless us with some overpriced service,” said Boris Mann, a member of Free the Net, a Vancouver group whose website proclaims, “We’re connecting Vancouver, 1 block at a time.”

Free the Net is a volunteer organization that only began setting up wireless in downtown Vancouver in mid-September, but already has approximately 30 wireless transmitters in operation, each providing free Internet access to anyone within a 150-foot radius. Over 1000 people have connected so far.

The ultimate goal is to “blanket all of Vancouver in free wireless.” Mann envisions a future where tourists could walk down Water Street and access the Internet and local information through their cell phone or laptop, and where people who could not normally afford Internet access are able to get online.

Municipal wireless

Municipal programs to set up wireless public Internet access have a dismal track record in North America. Most fail after only a few years or never getting off the ground due to high setup costs or a lack of interest. Community groups are increasingly filling the gap, spreading their own wireless networks across downtown areas so that anyone within range can get on the net.

Free the Net is not the first group to take wireless access into its own hands. Île sans fil

(Wireless Island), an organization that has operated for four years in downtown Montreal, currently has about 140 “hotspots” or wireless access points, serves approximately 40,000 registered users and is still growing. Similar organizations exist in Toronto, Quebec City, Seattle, and other cities across North America.

Richard Lussier, a spokesperson for Île sans fil, believes that municipal wireless has not worked well in Canada because of the grand scale of the projects, which typically involve public-private partnerships and huge investments in infrastructure. Such projects, like Toronto’s frequently criticized OneZone project, often prove unsustainable or are contracted out to private companies who have to make a profit. They then begin charging user fees, which drive away consumers. Île sans fil’s projects, he said, are on a more human scale and are succeeding because of this.

Some municipalities have managed to stay in the wireless game. The city of Fredericton, New Brunswick, has built a free wireless network across its downtown, where anyone with a wireless-capable machine can access the Internet from anywhere within the wireless bubble. The Fred-eZone, as it is called, was built and is paid for by the City of Fredericton and is provided to citizens as a free public service.

Utility bills

Fredericton’s vision is in line with that of Free the Net. “We want to think of wireless Internet as a utility, like water,” said Mann.

This brings up the issue of payment. Internet access through Free the Net is currently free but might not stay that way. This is a point of contention within the Free the Net organization, with some members wanting to stay far away from any kind of pricing scheme, while others, including Mann, see the possibility of a sliding payment scale sometime in the future. In an interview, he was careful to emphasize that Free the Net does not necessarily mean free in the monetary sense, but is more about equitable access for everyone, or “free as in freedom.”

Currently, people who wish to host a Free the Net connection can buy a unit from the group for approximately $60, which they then hook into their existing Internet connection at home in order to spread the signal to anyone in their area. More units can be added in order to spread the signal even further. One Internet connection can serve 3 to 5 units, but the bandwidth must come from somewhere, meaning that ultimately, someone must pay for Internet access.

Experimentation

While these issues are important to Free the Net members, they do not seem to have diminished the enthusiasm of the admitted “techies” who form the group’s core membership. One member described his reasons for hosting a wireless connection as “more playing than anything,” and the group as a whole seems to enjoy the challenge and promise of a fairly new technology.

“Why did we do it?” asked Mann. “To see if we could.” So far they are on track, well ahead of any municipal or commercial scheme in Vancouver.

Find out how Free the Net’s model works, and learn about wireless Internet in Canada.

Software giant Microsoft has become the latest of the U.S. high-tech multinationals to open up in Vancouver, taking advantage of the city’s diverse talent pool.

Microsoft’s Canadian Software Development Centre, which opened in Richmond this September, will be driving to accommodate a couple of hundred employees, according to Cynthia Keeshan of Microsoft Canada.

Canada is known as an immigrant-friendly country, with considerably less strict immigration policies than those of its neighbour, the United States.

According to Citizenship and Immigration Canada, 113,442 skilled workers moved to Canada in 2004 – some 15 per cent of those to British Columbia.

Vancouver’s location and ranking as the world’s most livable city also helps attract talented immigrants from all over the world.

“The Greater Vancouver Area is a gateway to the world with a diverse population and international reach that aligns perfectly with Microsoft’s commitment to hire the best and brightest people available,” says Keeshan, Microsoft Canada’s corporate PR director.

Zhangbo Liu, a recent computer science graduate from the University of British Columbia, is excited about his prospects.

“I like Vancouver so much that I really want to stay after graduation. Before, EA (Electronic Arts) was my best option but now, I have applied to Microsoft as well,” said Zhang.

And Vancouver’s multicultural society is a factor in attracting people from abroad.

Pei Yin, a Chinese student who completed internships with three out of the five Microsoft Research Labs—Seattle, Cambridge and Beijing, is considering moving to Vancouver upon getting his doctoral degree next year.

“The proximity of a huge Chinese community is one of the bonuses of working on the West Coast, especially in Vancouver. A sense of community is as important as work itself,” said Yin.

Over the years, a few U.S. multinational companies spotted Vancouver’s advantage of accommodating tons of immigrant talents. Electronic Arts

EA, Nokia, ATI, Business Objects and IBM are some of the earlier movers that established technology development centres in Vancouver.

In 1991, EA established its two development centres in Vancouver—one in downtown Vancouver, one in Burnaby. Today, EA Vancouver has become the biggest EA studio, with 2000 plus employees.

Despite these continuous efforts, there is still a gap between talents of the city’s available workforce and the employment demand.

Michael Yu, who worked with IBM in Shanghai for twelve years, landed in Vancouver as a permanent resident 10 months ago. As a project manager, Yu used to host one of the biggest IBM projects in China—Pudong Airport Construction. But now he finds himself selling electronics in a local shop.

“With very limited job opportunities and lack of local work experience, I simply don’t stand a better chance,” said Yu.

“Today, the employment rate in Vancouver is still quite low,” said John Ries, a UBC business and economics professor. This means there are still people who are unable to find jobs that match their expectations.

In this sense, it should not be hard for Microsoft to find qualified people who are willing to work for the company, according to Ries.

But not everyone is so excited about the type of job Microsoft will provide in Vancouver.

Shelby Xu, a doctoral student with computer science at UBC, said he would prefer a research lab before considering product development. “The development centre is for coding, not the best place for research,” said Xu.

Related: Strict Limits on U.S. work visas

In recent years, more and more high-tech multinational companies have chosen to come to Canada, deterred by strict U.S. immigration policies.

The U.S. sets a quota on work permits every year — the H1B visa, a visa that allows foreigners to work legally in the U.S.

This quota applies to every alien except those who have received Master’s Degrees and higher in the U.S. Like a lottery, the H1B visa is randomly processed.

UBC student Shuan Wang fell for such a quota. He thought he had secured a job when Oracle San Francisco made him an offer of employment in March, 2007. When he graduated in May from the Computer Science School, he learned that he was not lucky enough to have won the visa.

“Almost 50 per cent of the international students in our program this year who received offers from U.S. companies didn’t get the work visa,” said Wang.

His only available option would be to stay in company branches based outside the U.S. for at least one year and then transfers to the U.S. headquarters.

“When faced with the quota situation, some small companies are not even able to help their employees at all,” Wang said. “I am taking the risk of being left out as well.”

Wang would prefer to stay in Canada than move elsewhere. “I have been pushing the company to help me, but I realize that it is really not their responsibility, since it is your visa problem,” Wang added.

He is still in Vancouver, waiting for the company’s decision.

“I am not even sure about when I am supposed to start working. There is a chance that I might have to find another job,” said Wang.

Read the main story about Free the Net Vancouver

Fred Blog buys Internet access at home from Telus, for $35.95 a month. Fred hears about Free the Net from a friend and, thinking it’s a great idea, decides he wants to get on board. So, Fred pays Free the Net $60 for a Meraki Mini – a little antenna about the size of a deck of cards. Free the Net configures the device for him, and he takes home his little box.

When he gets home, he plugs in the device’s power cable, and plugs in an Ethernet cable that attaches to his home router and hooks the device to his Telus service. The device powers on and connects itself to the Free the Net network. A blip shows up on the Free the Net map, and now anyone within range of the device – inside a radius of about 150 feet – can connect to the Internet through the Free the Net network.

Cost to Fred: $60 for the Meraki Mini, plus $35.95 a month for his personal connection.
Benefits to Fred: Provides a public service, gets to enjoy a cool new technology

Wireless Internet Networks in Canada (a selection)

Vancouver – Free the Net Vancouver
Montreal – Île sans fil
Fredericton – Fred-eZone
Quebec City – ZAP Québec
Toronto – Wireless Toronto
Ottawa-Gatineau – Ottawa-Gatineau WiFi (ogWiFi)

For a detailed look at Canadian WiFi programs and why municipality-led projects might fail, read the report “Going Wi-Fi in Canada: Municipal and community initiatives” by Alison Powell and Leslie Regan Shade of Concordia University.

To see how wireless internet networks have been used in the developing world, read this press release from USAID that describes the American-funded program to provide wireless internet access to Macedonia.

Fast fading is the assumption that North American high-tech workers are protected from outsourcing if they work in complex projects. The common belief was that it was too difficult to coordinate high-quality work over differing time-zones and cultural and language barriers.

“Absolutely not. It doesn’t matter anymore if you manufacture fruit-of-the-loom underwear or complex code,” stated Marcus Courtney of the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers.

“Companies want to find out…who can do the work cheapest and they move their facilities, products and services around the globe to do that. Boeing’s Dreamliner project in the Northwest is a perfect example of this. It’s simply a myth that white-collar jobs are simply too complex, too difficult for their companies to outsource,” said Courtney.

Nonetheless, others are not convinced that temporary foreign worker visas are used to outsource jobs. “Short-term visa programs are functional. They are trying to meet labour shortages without committing to having more foreigners permanently,” said Anthony D’Costa, Professor of Comparative International Development at the University of Washington.

“How many will come in the short term is difficult to say but I am certain not large enough to displace local workers wholesale. Besides, employers want good quality professionals and the world does not have an infinite supply of them,” said D’Costa.

D’Costa asked: “Which would you prefer? Foreign workers coming to Canada and working and spending their earnings in Canada or Canadian firms doing the work abroad using foreign workers and earning profits for the Canadian shareholders?”

Links:

Chinese-Canadians’ answers to questions we posted in a forum on a local Chinese-community website

Seattle journalist Todd Bishop’ informative blog on Microsoft