Wednesday, September 23, 2026
6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
CGI Victoria Office, 1175 Douglas Street, Victoria, BC V8W 2E1 (open in Google Maps)
Free Event
Presented by Victoria Data Society
Hosts: Anu Jolliffe on LinkedIn, Alyssa Foote on LinkedIn
Featuring: Rob Bennett on LinkedIn, Steve Harris on LinkedIn
Three people who have been inside Victoria's technology sector since the dial-up years sit down to work out how it actually got here: what grew, what stalled, and which turns only look inevitable in hindsight. The seats span the ecosystem rather than one company. VIATEC's chief operating officer has spent decades building and backing local firms; an independent generative-AI consultant covers the enterprise side and now advises on adopting the current wave. It runs as a conversation rather than a deck, with unstructured time on both ends of the panel, which is usually where the specifics turn up.
Anu's Take
Worth the evening if you want the version of Victoria tech that predates the word ecosystem. Victoria Free-Net came up in November 1992, and two years later it was running twenty-one dial-in modems for more than nine thousand registered members. Its sponsor list included the Vancouver Island Advanced Technology Centre, which is VIATEC under its old name. I have never found a decent written account of any of it, which is the real argument for hearing it said out loud.
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Published Sunday, August 30, 2026 by Anu Jolliffe on LinkedIn