The story of his ordeal, and the trial that ended it in Marshall, Texas, last November, was the subject of an ambitious, magazine-length feature by Communitech News to kick off the new year. The story serves as a cautionary tale for tech entrepreneurs everywhere.

Throughout the journey, the guiding principle for Caputo – and for Sandvine itself – was to “do the right thing.”

The same principle has been top of mind for many companies in Waterloo Region lately as preparations continue for True North Waterloo, the conference taking place May 29-31 that aims to “reset tech’s compass,” and address head-on the eyebrow-raising headlines generated by tech companies large and small in recent months.

The principles of philanthropy and generosity are certainly hard at work at Shore Centre (formerly Planned Parenthood). A story by Communitech Newsdescribed how local companies stepped up in the wake of Shore Centre’s participation last year in the Fierce Founders Bootcamp. Free of charge, they helped the agency retool its website and develop a mobile app that has fundamentally changed the way it offers services to women in Waterloo Region – “a game changer,” says its executive director.

In the same vein, Ora, a startup in the latest Fierce Founders Bootcamp, talked to Communitech about how it’s using technology to rethink the medical alert device and keep lone workers, and particularly women, safe.

Likewise, Melanie Baker addressed the gender imbalance in technology in a recent M-Theory piece, linking it to the TIME’S UP initiative highlighted during the recent Golden Globe awards. And the Waterloo Region Record published a story about 74 local women who are serving as mentors for 169 girls in a 12-week international program on tech and entrepreneurship called Technovation.

Hot off the press...

Amazon, the Seattle-based e-commerce giant, announced its shortlist of 20 North American cities being considered for its second headquarters, and Toronto made the grade, generating discussion along the length of the Toronto-Waterloo Corridor about whether an Amazon campus in Ontario would be a net win for the region’s technology sector or a vacuum for already scarce talent.

Still with the Corridor, Toronto-based AI firm Layer 6 was acquired by TD Bank Group – TD, you’ll recall, maintains an innovation lab at Communitech – in a reported $100-million deal. Layer 6 played a significant role in the creation last year of Toronto’s Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence, of which several Waterloo Region players, including Clearpath Robotics and Thalmic Labs, are a part.

The Corridor certainly figured prominently in a $2-million seed extension announced by Kitchener’s Nicoya Lifesciences. A consortium of 11 investors, all affiliated with the Toronto-Waterloo Corridor, were involved, lead by Ripple Ventures and GTAN.

Money on a vastly larger scale, meanwhile, was at play with Igloo Software, the Kitchener-based SaaS firm that specializes in corporate intranet platforms, which announced it was on the receiving end of a US$47-million investmentfrom Charlotte, N.C.-based equity firm Frontier Capital.

And another big Canadian bank served notice it’s prepared to invest in the Waterloo Region ecosystem, announcing $1.78 million to support a new cyber security lab at the University of Waterloo.

Speaking of University of Waterloo, it’s well known that the school’s influence in technology is felt worldwide, but sometimes that influence bounces back and amplifies locally: Instacart, the billion-dollar, San Francisco-based online grocery and delivery service that was founded by University of Waterloo grad Apoorva Mehta has now expanded into … Kitchener, Waterloo, Cambridge and Guelph.

Instacart’s success and arrival in the region notwithstanding, Auvik CEO Marc Morin made the case at a Communitech event called Pizza with the Prez that Waterloo Region’s tech community should resist emulating the Bay Area and Silicon Valley, and focus on growing local talent and a creating critical mass of solid, profitable companies.

To that end, Communitech’s own Alex Kinsella penned a piece for Betakit listing five local companies to watch for 2018, among them: SSIMWAVE, Thalmic Labs, Kiite, Meya.ai and Miovision.

Data driven

Kitchener-based Miovision was back in the news later in the month as the recipient of a $1.5-million investment from the Government of Ontario’s Southwestern Ontario Development Fund, which will help create 275 new jobs and in turn allow Miovision, which focuses on traffic data and smart cities, to obtain a further $13.5 million in private investment.

Miovision, currently with 175 employees, last September moved into Catalyst 137, the 475,000-square-foot maker space on Glasgow Street near Belmont Village, which is due to officially open this summer. Data is at the heart of Miovision’s technology and that of many other players in the region, and on the topic of data, Jim Balsillie, the former chairman and co-CEO of RIM (now BlackBerry), weighed in with a story in the Toronto Star about the importance of developing a “National Data Strategy to protect our prosperity, security and values.”

Creative thinking

Communitech’s third annual Code to Win/Design to Win challenge generated an unexpected and unique outcome. In the Code to Win portion of the contest, 14 of the 50 coders tasked with solving a complex problem in under two hours finished with a perfect score. William Wen, a first-year computer science student at the University of Waterloo, won the $5,000 top prize by finishing fastest. But organizers then faced the problem of deciding who among the 13 remaining participants with perfect scores should get the $1,000 second prize. Organizers got creative, found more money on short notice and gave $1,000 to each of them.

Likewise, sparking creativity and involving as many people as possible is the thinking behind Thomson Reuters’ Catalyst Fund, an initiative described by Thomson Reuters’ Communitech lab director Brian Zubert in an early January story by Communitech News.

Another of Communitech’s corporate innovation partners, General Motors, generated headlines, opening a 150,000-square-foot facility in Markham last month called the GM Canadian Technical Centre, which will focus on autonomous and connected vehicles. At the opening in Markham, GM also launched a $1.8-million fund for educational programs and scholarships in STEM, with the first one rolling out at University of Waterloo.

And for companies looking to achieve the kind of results that Thomson Reuters and GM are well-known for in the innovation field, Communitech’s Nimble Hippo made a return with a new series of columns on how firms can generate better results from innovation initiatives.

To boldly go...

University of Waterloo provided a reminder that cool tech isn’t always driven by startups or for-profit entities: Scientists at the university’s Institute for Quantum Computing announced they “have captured the first images of ultrafast photons that are energy-time entangled.”

“This technique will allow us to explore all sorts of quantum effects that were inaccessible because the detectors were simply too slow,” said Jean-Philippe MacLean, lead author of the study and a PhD candidate in UWaterloo's Faculty of Science.

Still, local startups continue to pioneer some pretty impressive developments, as Terry Pender described in a story in the Record about a firm called Salient Energy. It has patented technology for building zinc-ion based batteries that are less expensive and longer-lasting than lithium-ion batteries, and can be recharged thousands of times.

In other news

• Navdeep Bains, Canada’s Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, said Canada remains committed to net neutrality. Bains was responding to a petition from 25 Canadian media companies who aim to convince the CRTC to block access to websites trafficking in pirated content.

• KPMG says Canada ranks seventh worldwide in terms of being ready for self-driving vehicles. The Netherlands, it says, is first.

• Banknotes, a monthly column geared to improving financial literacy for entrepreneurs, returned with solid advice about how to approach a meeting with a banker or investor.

• Fierce Founders got some attention Down East, with the Halifax Chronicle Herald highlighting the fact that the latest Fierce Founders Bootcamp cohort has five companies with ties to Atlantic Canada.

• Downtown Kitchener’s THEMUSEUM has a technology-based exhibit on display called Interaction, running until May 13.

• Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Arctic Wolf Networks, which has a robust office in Waterloo, has completed a US$16-million fundraising round. The company provides outsourced security operations centre services.

– This edition of the roundup compiled by Craig Daniels

Stay current on Waterloo Region tech by visiting Tech News.