Downtown campus receives tech boost

TechAlliance and Fanshawe College are teaming up to give students at the downtown campus increased access to high-tech mobile devices and invaluable entrepreneurial mentorship.

Students in the digital media programs offered at the downtown campus — Interactive Media Design and Production, Interactive Media Specialist, 3D Animation and Character Design, and Game Development Advanced Programming — will benefit immensely from this partnership.

“TechAlliance offers services to help start, grow and connect companies in many industries including digital media, the life sciences, advanced manufacturing, and clean technology,” according to its website. These services include access to funding, workshops, industry-specific events and more.

Its partnership with Fanshawe started nearly a decade ago, when TechAlliance formed in London and began to build relationships with different programs at the College to put on events and work on client-based projects.

“We already knew the players there — the people who are the leaders at TechAlliance,” explained Dana Morningstar, chair of Fanshawe's School of Contemporary Media. “When we were discussing what was going to be in the new building downtown, we mentioned that there would be a mobile testing lab.”

The mobile testing lab is a room with a variety of brands of smartphones and tablets that have different operating systems. TechAlliance is adding more devices to the lab and connecting students with mobile developers so they can build on their expertise.

“Students can test what their apps or their web pages look like on each device — sometimes their colour choices are different, sometimes the way it shows up on the device has a different look,” Morningstar said.

Michelle Giroux, supervisor of the Centre for Digital and Performance Arts, added another huge benefit for students. “They will also get the opportunity to interact with live clients and live industry people to see how they run their testing, not just from a classroom perspective, but that real, hands-on, real-world environment where they are in a lab running the simulations that they would in the workforce.”

When TechAlliance reps offered the new devices for the lab, they mentioned they also wanted to build a partnership with Fanshawe to give students access to their services and mentors.

“If students want to talk about an idea — maybe they're developing an app, maybe they just have a concept and they want to know how to flesh that out into a business plan and something they can move forward with — our team's going to be there and accessible to them,” said Greg Picken, manager of communications at TechAlliance.

Morningstar said this is a great opportunity for students. “They already have great knowledge from their teachers, but they'll be meeting other people in the community who might be job leads, who might have a slightly different perspective from a professor. It just widens their horizons a bit and gives them access to business planning and some of the things that TechAlliance does for other companies in the community.”

Picken called the collaboration a natural fit. “What this collaboration is designed to do, in large part, is to help TechAlliance connect with the students. If they're looking at entrepreneurship, or if they're looking at connecting with the local tech community to stay in town and keep the talent here locally, we can help do that.”

This may only be the first step in a long and fruitful partnership. “It's definitely going to be a relationship and a collaboration that's going to grow,” Picken said. “We'll see new opportunities come around and new events and activities. Anything we can do in collaboration with the school to give students the opportunity they need to succeed, we're glad to be part of that.”

“This is the beginning of something long-term and great.”

TechAlliance offers resources for tech companies at any stage of their growth, and you can access their services even if you're not a student on the downtown campus— check them out at techalliance.ca.