Tanya McGinnity

Well not only was I happy to see the bright, beaming face of snow/skate guru Shaun White on the cover of February’s Issue of Fast Company magazine but my smile widened when I noticed a feature article on “The Most Influential Women in Tech”.

The magazine admits that they were quite surprised with both the volume of nasty comments generated when they first nominated some top lasses on the fastcompany.com website back in November, 2008 as several trolls went a bit wild with sexist, hateful comments.

The nominees are broken into key categories such as: evangelists, entrepreneurs, gamers, evangelists, activists, bloggers and brainiacs and some of the best of the best are part of Fast Company’s list including:

Sheryl Sandberg, COO Facebook

Padmasree Warrior, CTO Cisco

Gina Bianchini, cofounder and CEO Ning

Sara de Freitas, Director of Research Serious Games Institute

Tara Hunt, cofounder Citizen Agency

Charlene Li, founder Altimeter Group

Yvette J. Alberdingk Thijm, executive director Witness

Xeni Jardin, Boing Boing

Jill Tarter SETI Institute

It inspires me to see so many great tech-savvy women being featured in Fast Company and it gives me hope.

I moved to Montreal back in 1999 to work with a graphics card manufacturer and this you could say was my first foray into the world of technology

The reality of coming out of university with a degree from the then economically disadvantaged province of New Brunswick helped in my decision to leave home to start a new life. New Brunswick had since realized that branching out and attracting top-level companies through a trained, tech-savvy bilingual workforce could guarantee that its youth wouldn’t have to leave home for greener pastures.

Election time is on its way and a group of business, marketing and technology professionals have decided to put pressure on Premier Jean Charest to develop a digital strategy for the province of Quebec. Backed by statistics from the Canadian Internet Project, and those from an Index of e-commerce statistics in Quebec which show that Quebec is lagging behind the rest of Canada with regards to several leading indicators such as a lower level of technology adoption by francophones, low levels of online purchases from Quebec-based vendors and the fact that many Quebec small-medium businesses don’t even have a website to make themselves locally and globally competitive among other statistics.

The key pillars which this proposed Digital Plan for Quebec has focused upon are as follows:

1. Eliminate the barriers to entry for Quebec citizens to allow full access to digital services in order to perform online transactions.

2. Encourage Internet adoption amongst Quebec businesses, especially small to medium organizations.

3. Offer technology training for Quebec youth.

4. Start laying pipe for high speed internet for all communities in Quebec, Reinforce internet safety and a perception that digital transactions are a viable means for purchasing goods. Allow for digital governance and citizen participation with politicians and guarantee the rights of expression for the community at large.

For the link to the full letter (in French), please visit this site and do help to evolve this plan by lending your voice to the wiki http://www.unplannumeriquepourlequebec.com

Now more than ever, we as Quebec citizens can influence the accountability of our political leaders. We just need to get involved.