The Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance (CATAAlliance), in collaboration with its partners,  is holding the Advantage Canada Summit on November 2, 2006, in Halifax. The Summit will bring together a Pan-Canadian assembly of recognized public, private, academic and labour leaders to develop a Canadian Brand: a defining statement that clearly describes Canada's value proposition as a global sourcing destination of choice and differentiates the Country from competing Nations.

As preliminarily defined in the Global Sourcing Action Roadmap, summit attendees will be tasked to further define the strategies, challenges, and opportunities required to implement the Advantage Canada Campaign with a particular focus on developing the Canadian Brand.

Some of the areas preliminarily identified for discussion and information exchange include:

• Addressing and seeking solutions to the challenges/opportunities to developing the brand i.e. high Canadian dollar, FDI impacts, needed/existing skill sets and labour pools; taxation, competition among regions - how to implement fair and equal promotion from a National portal
• Identifying unique regional strengths, programs, offerings
• Sharing promotion strategies - seeking to collaborate/join forces to create stronger Canadian presence at international events
• Sharing event and research priorities - seeking to collaborate/join forces to avoid duplication and overlap
• Identifying needed partnerships - seeking out means for most effective private/public partnerships
• Identifying means to ensure Canada's largest business group - Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs) - can actively participate in and benefit from the Advantage Canada campaign activities and outcomes

Support - Participate - Lead

Participation in the Summit will be available through invitation only as issued through its supporting organizations. Support opportunities are available and open exclusively to provincial and federal governments/agencies and regional and industrial associations. While corporate sponsorship is not sought, private sector participants will be actively recruited as their input into the Canadian Brand is critical. Organizations that wish to support the Summit and thereby ensure their province/region is well represented, and who can secure local representatives from Industry, Government and Academic groups to attend, please contact Kevin Wennekes at kwennekes@cata.ca.

The Summit will be conducted using a Kitchen Table discussion format:

• Lead table will consist of noted speakers ideally from each Canadian province/region as well as Federal representatives potentially including Industry Canada and Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada
• Audience consisting of key corporate, government, academic, labour and industrial alliance representatives who are also expected to participate in event
• Lead table discusses the main issues among one another in a casual conversation format that defines the issues, challenges, opportunities etc.
• Moderator helps identify main themes to emerge from discussion - breaks discussion leaders and audience into different groups to brainstorm the issues and arrive at solutions/actions to address these
• Plenary to reveal each groups findings - validate and further elaborate on through audience feedback
• Create consensus on outcomes (National Brand, Regional Strengths Maps) and agree to next steps

Participating Organizations

Access Group Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency Barrington Technology Partners Biotechnology Human Resource Council Branham Group Business New Brunswick Canada’s Venture Capital & Private Equity Association Canadian Society of Senior Engineers Carleton University CGI Inc. CIPSNS Comprehendrix Group Contact Centre Canada Dalhousie University Farpoint Telecom Consulting Inc. Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada Gartner Hill and Knowlton IDC Canada Industry Canada Information and Communications Technology Council Information Technology Industry Alliance of Nova Scotia

ITC Inc. Just-in-Time Resources Keane Canada MathResources Inc. McInnes Cooper McMaster University Montreal International Nearshore Atlantic Nicom IT Solutions Inc Nova Scotia Business Inc. Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation (OCRI) PH Farmer Consulting Ltd. Province of Nova Scotia PQA RBC Financial Group Research in Motion Ryerson University Saint Mary's University SolutionInc Limited Stargate Consultants Limited TARA Thompson Consulting Xwave

CATAAlliance & NSBI Supporting Balanced Viewpoint Summit on Multisourcing

On the day before the Advantage Canada Summit, join over 200 delegates and 21 executive-level speakers from the U.S. and Canada at the Wu Conference Centre on UNB campus in Fredericton for the Balanced Viewpoint Summit on Multisourcing.

Supported by and featuring speakers from both CATAAlliance and NSBI, a key focus of the Summit will be on how the knowledge of outsourcing options has radically been altered by the successes and failures over the last five years and how the lessons learned from these experiences provide the framework for discussing a multisourcing lifecycle for vendors, organizations seeking benefits from outsourcing, and the benefits afforded by the multisourcing spectrum of service delivery options.

Frank Hart, president of EDS Canada is the Summit's keynote speaker and New Brunswick's Premier Bernard Lord hosts the day's luncheon. Confirmed participating organizations include Accenture, Allstream, BMO, CGI, Deloitte, Exxon Mobile, IDC, Sun Life, Xerox and Keane.

Visit www.balancedviewpoint2006.com for more details then e-mail register@balancedviewpoint.com to register.