Very successful Open House and 50st Anniversary at DRAO

With blue skies and temperatures up to 23 C, the Open House at DRAO was a big success.

The 50th anniversary was celebrated with speeches John McDougal (President NRC) , Ron Cannan (MP Kelowna - Lake Country) representing the Federal Government and Hon. Stockwell Day, John Slater (MLA Similkameen - Boundary) representing the Provincial Government, Tom Chapman (RDOS) and Dr. Om Malik (President IEEE Canada). On the left John Galt, the former Director of DRAO.


At the ceremony, the Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) bronze plaque was revealed.

ORIC had a booth and showed the time line since 2005.

Join the Open House birthday celebration at DRAO on September 25th

Join the Open House birthday celebration of 50 years of radio astronomy at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory (NRC-DRAO) located south of Penticton on Saturday, September 25th from 10:00 - 17:00.


Free admission. 


Visit the ORIC booth on the second floor. 


For more info click here

Interesting advice for founders from Adeo Ressi

Watch Adeo Ressi of the Founders Institute



Adeo Ressi on Company Vision: 6/8/2010 from Adeo Ressi on Vimeo.

We are recruiting an Acceleration Program Manager

The Acceleration Program Manager will act as the point of entry and coordinator for all of ORIC’s business and entrepreneur acceleration programs. The current programs include business incubation, mentorship and entrepreneurial training; and are planned to expand once the planned merger with OSTEC is completed. This position is part of the joint initiative between ORIC and OSTEC.

The Acceleration Program Manager will undertake the initial needs assessment with each company and entrepreneur, matching them with the available resources and acting as their “champion” as they continue their growth and development.

The Acceleration Program Manager will also create and implement process and procedures to manage the program activities and work closely with the marketing team to help design and promote future programs to help grow and develop technology companies in the Okanagan.

More about this job can be found at ORIC

ORIC celebrates its 5th anniversary

ORIC (at that time Okanagan Valley Research & Innovation Centre) was born on August 15, 2005.

Jack, Kathleen, Tom, Bob, Peter and Diana.
Andrew is missing in this picture.

The founding Board members were: Dr. Tom Landecker (NRC-DRAO), Kathleen Wallace (SkyTrac), Bob Bissell (Industry Canada), Andrew Hay (Okanagan College), Jack Van Der Star (WaveTeq) and Diana Groffen (OSTEC).

We celebrated with the current Board and staff members, spouses and a cake with 5 candles.

ORIC's current staff: Peter, Anna, Martin, Kathryn and Wilfred.

The birth of an incubator

The Okanagan College Centre of Excellence building in Penticton is progressing rapidly.

On the picture the 3,000 square feet ORIC Cleantech incubator (on the 2nd floor) is taking shape. Hopefully we can move in around April 2011.

Here is the link to a webcam (on the other site of the campus) that shows the progress.

ORIC received a $200,000 grant to support technology SME's

On Friday June 25th, 2010 Hon. Ron Cannan announced a $200,000 grant from NRC-IRAP for ORIC to support technology SME in the Okanagan Valley. 

Dr. Tony Rahilly (right in the picture), Director General of NRC-IRAP from Ottawa joined the annoucement. The grant will enable us to support the mentorship program, help start-ups with access to capital, improve training support for entrepreneurs and install benchmarking software.

Successful 2nd High-Tech Round Table in the South Okanagan

On Thursday March 18th we had over 30 visitors at ORIC Penticton Innovation Centre for our second High-Tech Round Table. A very divers attendancy: start-up CEO's, consultants, media, education (Okanagan College and UBC-O), service providers and support organisations (Community Futures, NRC-IRAP, BDC). There was an energetic discussion on the needs for the South Okanagan and how ORIC could support creating a stronger high-tech community.

We celebrated our first sponsor: SOS LINK. The Penticton high-tech start-up delivers security solutions for people, placs and things ~ on the move. CEO Raymond Sobol and I named the SOS-LINK Innovation Plaza. This is a drop in place for entrepreneurs, angel investors and supporters. We will also have events and presentations at the Plaza.

We are still actively looking for start-ups and anchor tenants to become clients of ORIC Penticton Innovation Centre. Drop me an email if you like to know more.

We received furniture for ORIC Penticton

This week we received furniture for all the offices in our downtown incubator in Penticton. We have one, two and three person offices.

We are still looking for a bigger board room table, but this will do for the moment. Watch the big hole in the middle of the table. 

We also got our reception desk

Please contact us if you want to know more about technology business incubation and find out if you qualify for the (pre-) incubation program.

Local company brings carbon reduction innovator to town

The latest event in the ORIC "Innovation Plaza" series last Wednesday, Feb 24 played host to one of the world’s foremost scientific minds, Kent Knaebel, PhD.

Dr. Knaebel visited the Okanagan as a guest of local companies, WearAir Oxygen Inc. and WearAir Industrial Inc. (http://www.wearair.com/ ), and kindly agreed to share his insights and perspectives with members of the ORIC community on the topic: “Carbon Capture Techniques via Adsorption”.

WearAir generously sponsored this "Innovation Plaza" event in order to provide the opportunity for our local community to share in the very latest thinking on this key global issue.
Photo courtesy Kelowna Capital News

ORIC Kelowna receives $150,000 from SIDIT

Peter Haubrich, President, Mayor Sharon Sheperd and 

Martin Yuill Director

Photo from Kelowna Capital News

ORIC Kelowna Innovation Centre received a cheque for $150,000 to expand the downtown Kelowna facility to 15,000 sq.ft. This extra space was needed because of the explosive growth of our tenants Vericorder Technology and Vineyard Networks. This freed up some offices so we can accept new startups to join our incubator/accelerator.

The grant came from the Southern Interior Development Initiative Trust or SIDIT an organization seeded $50 million from the Provincial Government to support economic development in the Southern Interior of BC.

Please read the news article in the Kelowna Capital News

Small steps, a door sign and furniture for Penticton

We are making small progress with our Penticton Innovation Centre.

A sign was put on the door, so visitors will be able to find us. Hopefully by the end of next week we will see some furniture being delivered. We are also in discussion about sponsorship and anchor tenants. An announcement will be made soon.

Getting ORIC Penticton Innovation Centre online

Last month (January 2010) we opened the doors of our 3rd high-tech business incubator in the Okanagan Valley. We found a very good location in downtown Penticton. The building does not need a lot of renovations to make it suitable for a start-up business incubator. It comes with 9 offices which accomodate 2-3 persons, a large boardroom, kitchen, a nice reception area and space for the innovation plaza.

We are signing up new clients for our programs : pre-incubation, incubation and affiliated clients. A start-up should be in the Information & Communication Technology (ICT) or Clean Energy Technology area. We will perform due diligence to see if the start-up qualifies. More about the programs can be found at ORIC. Together with ORIC White Lake Innovation Centre and ORIC Kelowna Innovation Centre we offer now 20,000 sq.ft. incubation space in BC's Okanagan Valley.