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Dan Fumano: It took more than a year of behind-the-scenes work and at least $14 million in public funding to bring a major tech conference, Web Summit, to BC.
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Published June 14, 2024 • 5 min read
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BC Minister of Innovation Brenda Bailey (centre) attends an event announcing Vancouver will host the 2025 Web Summit, an annual event billed as the “Olympics of Technology,” on Friday, June 14, 2024. Photo by Jason Payne/PNG
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The two former classmates embraced each other tightly and slapped each other on the back.
“We did it. We did it,” said Casey Lau, Asia-Pacific head of Web Summit, the world's leading organizer of technology conferences. As he embraced Ken Sim, his classmate at Vancouver's Churchill Secondary School decades ago, Lau told the current mayor, “I'm so proud of this city.”
Lau and Sim were among a crowd of excited government officials and businesspeople at an event at the KPMG office building in downtown Vancouver on Friday to celebrate the news this week. The Web Summit is expected to be held in Vancouver for three years from 2025, bringing tens of thousands of delegates and hundreds of millions of dollars in economic impact to the city.
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Bringing the event to the West Coast required a lot of behind-the-scenes work from government officials at various levels and private sector players, as well as at least $14 million in public funding.
An event celebrating the announcement that Vancouver will host the 2025 Web Summit, an annual event billed as the “Olympics of Technology,” on Friday, June 14, 2024. Photo: Jason Payne/PNG
The event, formerly known as the Collision Conference and often referred to as the “Olympics of Technology,” has been held in Las Vegas for the past few years, then New Orleans and most recently Toronto from 2019 until this year's edition. It will be held for the last time in Canada's most populous city later this month before moving west next year.
“My contract with Toronto was coming to an end,” explained Lau, who is now based in Hong Kong. “I said, 'I know this guy in Vancouver,'” Sim said. “And that's how it started.”
It didn't happen overnight: Sim said he had had the event in mind to host in his hometown since taking office in late 2022.
Sim, an entrepreneur before entering politics, is a big driver of Vancouver's tech scene. He seems to love big business conferences and international events that put the spotlight on Vancouver and raise the city's international profile. Sim was at a tech event in London when news of Web Summit Vancouver 2025 broke earlier this week.
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Long before this week's headlines hit, government officials, private companies and lobbyists were working toward this outcome.
Last year, Destination Vancouver hired the services of ThoughtBridge Management Consultants, led by Bill Tam, to assist Vancouver in its efforts to put together a competitive bid to attract the event, then known as the Collision Conference, according to B.C.'s lobbyist registry.
A spokesperson for British Columbia's Ministry of Jobs, Economic Development and Innovation said the province has contributed $200,000 to support Destination Vancouver's attraction and development efforts.
The British Columbia government then committed $6.6 million to sustain the Web Summit for three years, including $3 million in cash for organizers and $3.6 million in “in-kind contributions” that have yet to be finalized, a ministry spokesperson said.
A spokesman for the Canadian Pacific Economic Development Corporation said the federal government has also contributed $6.6 million to help host Web Summit Vancouver.
Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim attends an event celebrating the announcement that Vancouver will host the 2025 Web Summit on Friday, June 14, 2024. Photo by Jason Payne/PNG
Brenda Bailey, B.C.'s Minister of Jobs, Economic Development and Innovation, says this public investment will have significant benefits for British Columbia.
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“It's natural for people to ask that question. This is the public's money and we have to spend it very carefully,” Bailey said. “You can imagine how much analysis goes into making a decision like this to support an event like a fancy conference. But it's not the fancy that attracts me, it's the investment community and the opportunity that comes from it.”
Earlier this year, some of the Web Summit organizers traveled to Vancouver and met with Sim and others there, and with Bailey in Victoria.
Organizers also attended a Vancouver Canucks game during their stay.
The mayor's office said in a statement that neither Sim nor his chief of staff attended the game with the group, but that the hockey tickets were “generously provided by the Vancouver Canucks to local tech industry leaders, allowing the Web Summit team to experience the energy and vibrancy of Vancouver first-hand.”
Vancouver's ABC-dominated city council publicly supported the bid to host the event in September after a motion was put forward by Sim and seconded by Green Party councillor Pete Fry.
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Frye said the effort represents a “rare moment of cooperation” across party lines.
Then in April, the City Council conditionally approved a $250,000 cash grant to event organizers and up to $1.32 million in “in-kind grants” over three years, including waiving fees for operations, public safety, street banners and permits for Web Summit to host the event in city-owned outdoor public spaces.
The April meeting was closed to the public, which is normal for certain types of conferences, but information about the meeting was made public this week as it was announced that Web Summit will be held in Vancouver.
As Web Summit has grown over the years, the company and its CEO, Paddy Cosgrave, have also attracted controversy and criticism. Not everyone in Toronto's tech industry was sad to see Collision leave the city. In an op-ed for The Globe and Mail last year, Philippe Theriault, founder of Canadian tech conference Startupfest, argued that public funding would be better directed to Canadian organizations. Theriault wrote that Collision receives about $6.5 million a year in public funding and is seeking more funding to stay in Toronto, and that the government should reject its requests.
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Vancouver's bid was also backed by Frontier Collective, a nonprofit group working to promote Vancouver's tech sector, whose co-founder and CEO Dan Berger said the Web Summit would be a “game changer” for Vancouver.
Berger said Vancouver has a burgeoning tech industry but lacks access to early-stage capital and international recognition to help companies scale. He said Web Summit will help with both of those things.
dfumano@postmedia.com
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