Meet Tech Town

The future of tech may not live in Toronto or San Francisco, but instead a small, quaint (yet growing) Canadian town called Innisfil.

Despite its size the area has garnered headlines from around the world for its tech dreams, attracting leaders from across the country and working with Fortune 500 companies to turn the sleepy town into a leader in innovation.

In this episode we hear from Mayor Lynn Dollin and CAO Jason Reynar about the future of Innisfil. Meanwhile local librarian Susan Downs and journalist Leyland Cecco offer their observations on the town's ambitious plans.

Make sure to follow us online at @Innisfilecdev on Twitter and Instagram as well as visit www.innisfilaccelerates.ca for more details about the podcast.

This week's guests: Mayor Lynn Dollin (Innisfil mayor), Leyland Cecco (award-winning journalist, Guardian), Susan Downs (chief librarian/CEO, Innisfil library) and Jason Reynar (Chief Administrative Officer, Innisfil).

Transcript

Takara Small (Host) (00:02):
What's your favorite underdog story. Everyone loves them. They're timeless. And maybe even the best kind of story. There's David slain Goliath, or any number of Hollywood movies. Do you remember cheering for will Smith as Chris garner in the pursuit of happiness and sport lives for them, remember hockey's famous miracle on ice or the Raptors shocking the world to win the NBA champion.

Background audio (00:32):
[Hockey game]

Takara Small (Host) (00:36):
Well, a small town in Canada is on its own underdog journey to stand alongside the big tech hubs of the world, Dubai, Toronto, New York. And Innisfil like, we are so punching above our weight. That's Lynn Dolan. She's the mayor of a place called Innisfil in Ontario. And this is a podcast about how it's transforming itself.

Compilation (01:01):
There's so much opportunity to lead. And I think that the benefit for the glory far outweighs any pressure from the skeptics.Innisfil is an interesting look at it, kind of risk aversion and also ambition. I think the most wonderful things emerge in the most unexpected places. It feels like we are at the beginning of something very big. That's happening up here

Takara Small (Host) (01:20):
Hi, my name is Takara small. I've been covering tech in entrepreneurship for over a decade. Right now you're listening to tech town and original podcast. 

All about rural innovation. First, a little background info just in case you've never heard of Innisfil. It's a picturesque Canadian town on the shores of Lake Simcoe, about 45 minutes North of Toronto green fields, cottage country. 

That sort of thing about 37,000 people are spread out across the town. A place people escape to when the big city becomes just a little too much. It's peaceful and quiet. And until recently wasn't all that newsworthy, but that's all changing though. Next we have Northeast from Waterloo to Innisfil Ontario drive 60 kilometers north of Ontario's capital city and you'll find the town of Innisfil. Well, they are calling it the city of the future. Innisfil is a commuter town....

Takara Small (Host) (02:22):
The town is attracting attention because it's decided to tear up it's old rule book and embrace innovation. It's making a ton of changes to how it operates. For example, it's partnered with Uber to provide a new on-demand version of public transit. It's also the first place in Canada to allow you to pay municipal taxes with Bitcoin. 

Plus, it's got a really interesting town planning strategy called the orbit, and it has its own accelerator program to attract startups to this sleepy town in rural Ontario. That's just for starters, of course, but what we want to find out is why are they trying to position themselves alongside the big tech hubs of the world? And is it likely to succeed in a small town throughout the series? We'll be talking to the key stakeholders in all of this first. I got together with mayor Dolan to find out how all this began.

Mayor Lynn Dollin (Innisfil) (03:14):
If I can tell you where we came from. Um, not that long ago. So in 2009, the province decided they were going to annex a big chunk of Innisfil and give it to our neighboring municipality of Barry. 

And at the time morale was so low and it was not a good time. We had trouble hiring good people because nobody knew whether or not we were even going to exist after the annexation. And it was just, we've just felt really down. And it was actually, there was a group of people at the time who thought that what we should do is actually change our name and start all over again. 

That's how bad we were feeling and how I won't say ashamed of our brand, but certainly not proud of our brand at that time. It always, at that time in his fill, um, it meant negative. Um, it had a negative perception and that was just 10 years ago. And if you look at where we've gone, so the first thing that happened from that is the, the residents had a bit of a meltdown and said, absolutely not. 

You're not changing the name of Innisfil. We're proud of where we, we love where we live. And I think it sparked if, if nothing else it sparked the community to say, heck no. And, and that in turn sparked our staff and ourselves to live up to the expectation that our residents had.

Takara Small (Host) (04:46):
Against that backdrop, the town first dipped its toes into trying to do things differently with the local library. Back in 2012, the library reinvented itself as more than just somewhere to get books, they brought the hacker mentality from the tech industry and it's evolved into a community hub where people congregate and develop new skills. 

And now calls itself the idea lab and Susan Downs was the trailblazer in charge of it all. So because we were risk-takers and we tried to push ourselves, we thought about what does a hacker do? And so a hacker could be a cook, you know, trying a recipe and throwing new things in. 

It doesn't have to be detrimental, but when the library board and the town first heard that I wanted to set up a hacker ethic, they thought that was a little outrageous, but it really is that idea of trying things, making things so that you build skills.

Susan Downs (CEO, Innisfil Library) (05:40):
So I think that started the initial difference. We had already been very different with our children's programming. We were much more, um, uh, involved in how do we reach them from very many different literacy levels and through technology also through reading through that kind of community engagement again. 

So putting those barriers aside and not worrying about that, I think that was our big difference. We were willing to try new things and we were the first one in Ontario to have a laser cutter and a game that was a very big challenge. Libraries would call me and say, how could you do that? That's very dangerous. And I'd say, no, it's not dangerous. This is how you put the safeguards in place. And they would say, how do you get your staff to do this? And I would say, they love it because they are having fun.

Susan Downs (CEO, Innisfil Library) (06:37):
So I think that programming shift really started to look at what did the community need? We are a rural community. We have been primarily a rural community. And so a lot of the things that you would expect to be able to get in downtown Toronto, you can't get here or you couldn't not. 

Once the hacker lab opened everything that we were doing was far beyond what you could get. We went to Boston, we didn't see it there. We went to Europe, we didn't see it there. We knew that we were doing something really unique for our community, giving them that opportunity, that was going to meet the changes in technology for the future. And that's been one of the goals, attitudes like that make people pay attention. 

I've noticed the industry chatter building over the last year, as people are asking, what's going on up in Innisfil and why, and it's not just Toronto. I did a public Q and a with Twitter founder, Jack Dorsey last year. And when the subject of Innisfil was raised, he said he wanted to learn more and even visit. I guess we can all get fixed ideas in our heads of what small towns are and where progressive thinking can take place. Jason Rainer is one of the strategists behind Innisfil his plans. He's helped explain the why for me,

Jason Reynar (CAO, Innisfil) (07:49):
I would say the, the genesis is really around necessity. So because we're a small town, uh, we're a small staff. Uh, we don't have a lot of, uh, you know, it's not a billions of dollars in tax revenue. 

So we've had to, we've had to learn as a community and as an organization that, you know, supports the community as the town, um, how to sort of get what we want without going through the sort of typical bureaucratic, uh, very costly kind of work, because we just don't have the money or the people to do that kind of work. 

Um, so we've been looking for and I've explored different kinds of partnerships, you know, with startups or tech companies, um, that help us get where we want to get to, but don't follow the same kind of traditional path, um, in large part because we can't afford it.

Jason Reynar (CAO, Innisfil) (08:36):
Um, and, uh, and it seems to have, seems to, we've seem to have found a real, um, kind of a niche place where, because we're a small enough town that we're, um, not super bureaucratic. We don't have 23 layers of bureaucracy or authority that you have to sign off on before you can do anything. Um, uh, no disrespect to my, you know, bigger city colleagues. Um, but we can move pretty fast. 

We're pretty agile, we're pretty flexible. We've got a progressive council and a progressive community. And so when we make a decision, like we can do it tomorrow. Like we don't have to, we don't have to wait, you know? Um, and that seems to have been a real advantage to us as we look at partnering to deliver different kinds of services,

Takara Small (Host) (09:21):
It kind of sounds like you're a startup trying to make your own way. Do you see in as full as a startup?

Jason Reynar (CAO, Innisfil) (09:26):
Yeah, totally. Especially as we sort of think about what we want to be like when we grow up sort of quote unquote. Um, I feel like we're very much like a startup we're moving fast. We are making mistakes along the way. 

We're learning from them. Um, and, uh, we're, we've got big aspirations, right? Like we want, uh, we want to get a lot of the benefits that come with sort of the bigger city, um, uh, feel, but not give up the stuff that we think is really important for a community.

Takara Small (Host) (09:57):
But why are you deciding to do all of this right now?

Leyland Cecco (Journalist, The Guardian) (10:01):
Yeah. So, um, Innisfil is that this really interesting kind of precipice point where it's growing and people are moving into Innisfil, um, in part, because of the proximity to the GTA and part, because of the community aspects in the sort of recreational green space that people are really enjoying. 

Um, but we also know that we don't want to grow and, and become just another suburbia of Toronto. And I won't name any specific municipalities that are around Toronto, but if you look at them, what they were like 50 years ago, uh, you know, just photos of farm fields and this kind of stuff, and then what they are today, a lot of them are just sprawling subdivisions, um, where people all have to commute somewhere to work.

And we're saying, you know, maybe there's a different pathway, you know, maybe we can help bring the jobs, uh, uh, sort of, of the future quote, unquote to Innisfil, um, so that people can telecommute or they can, you know, be in Toronto if they have to, but otherwise they can be working in a place that they really, uh, they really enjoy

Takara Small (Host) (11:03):
Kind of thinking has turned heads further, a field to the town has generated headlines both nationally and globally. One of the journalists who's been looking at what the town is doing is Leyland Cecco. He writes for the guardian, a daily newspaper located in the UK

Leyland Cecco (Journalist, The Guardian) (11:19):
A few months ago. A friend of mine had mentioned that there was a town North of Toronto that was experimented with the idea of using Uber is their taxi service. And it seemed like kind of a one off idea. 

You know, one of those kind of flash in the pan small town tries to make a headline type of story. And then I started talking to friends who are urban planners, and it felt like it was a much bigger story about the future of public transport in rural settings. And so I reached out to the photographer who had kind of put me on this and we decided, you know, what best way to report on this is to drive up to Innisfil.

Takara Small (Host) (11:59):
Were you surprised by what you found and what you saw there?

Leyland Cecco (Journalist, The Guardian) (12:03):
I didn't really know what to expect. We, when we did what I often do when you go to a small town, which is you just look for the Tim Horton's and you just set up shop in the parking lot. And we really had no clear idea other than some meetings that we'd set up with with city officials of how we were going to kind of go about reporting this. 

And within five or six minutes, a number of Uber is just kind of pulled into the parking lot. And we went up to the drivers and just, you know, asked if they'd be willing to have a chat. Um, and so in terms of kind of what we were expecting, I think I went in with an open mind. I'd spoken with friends who, as I mentioned, were, were urban planners and kind of had some perspectives, but, you know, as a reporter, I just wanted to see what it looked like in reality.

Takara Small (Host) (12:49):
So I'm curious, what was the town's response to Uber and all of these developments?

Leyland Cecco (Journalist, The Guardian) (12:55):
Pretty much everyone I spoke with was pretty excited about the fact that Uber was their public transit system. I think there was on the one hand, you know, the novelty of it, it kind of put Innisfil on the map and that map being kind of, you know, it was the subject of a number of news stories. 

People were chattering about it, it was on the radio. Um, so on the one hand, you know, people were talking about Innisfil on the other hand, people were excited about the idea that they could take transit for the first time in a number of years, because there were no buses there, uh, you know, there's taxis, but, but kind of a transit system that purported to serve the needs of, of, of what a transit system does. Moving people from point a to B felt like a pretty big development for the community.

Takara Small (Host) (13:39):
So were you at all surprised by the response to your article?

Leyland Cecco (Journalist, The Guardian) (13:45):
The public response made sense in, we saw a little kind of, um, hints that this was kind of a bigger story than we might've realized when, when the city mentioned that other municipalities around the world had been reaching out to them to get a sense of, of kind of how they had structured their program. 

It suggested that probably there was like this pent up interest and appetite for, you know, this is this intersection of kind of, we often face questions of, of transit, right? The TTC is always in the news. We're trying to figure out how do we improve it, what's going wrong. Fare increases. How do we manage fair evasion? You know, these are questions that often are our discussions. And on the other hand, we have questions about Uber all the time, you know, should they be allowed in cities? 

What should the requirements be? And it felt as though it was this intersection between two things that really rile us up or really interest us. And I think, so this idea that a town had just said, you know what, we're going to make Uber, our public transit felt like it, it kind of alighted two separate, um, and two very kind of, um, you know, ideas that are rife for kind of discussion.

Takara Small (Host) (14:54):
Next episode, we're going to have that discussion and so much more, why is the town gone down this route of outsourcing public transit to Uber? And how exactly is this supposed to help the town we'll talk in more detail or what that process looks like and how residents benefit?

Jason Reynar (CAO, Innisfil) (15:09):
We did not anticipate kind of a global reaction to this partnership, which, which was interesting and also created a whole bunch of, uh, you know, pressure, um, to make sure that this was something that was sustainable.

Takara Small (Host) (15:23):
This is a story about a small town with big ambition and what it does here could determine the direction of other small communities across the country. Stay tuned.