Knowledge industry set to honour its best

At a time when the recession has slowed growth for many companies and caused layoffs and closures for some others, the knowledge industry is preparing to celebrate its successes.

The 11th Annual KIRA Awards are set for Thursday night at Delta Fredericton to recognize achievements by companies and individuals over the last year.

Planning committee co-chairwoman Carolyn Kervin says the knowledge industry may have a little more to celebrate than most others do.

"As in any industry there's going to be successes and failures," she says, "(But) I don't see from where I sit that we're being as heavily impacted."

She says the industry felt more of the crunch around 2002/03 after a combination of big Y2K spending and the panic after 9/11 dried up the IT budgets for many companies.

The company Kervin works for, SwiftRadius, has hired three people this year.

"We're doing well and I know other companies in town are as well," she says.

Some of the KIRA planners were worried companies wouldn't be interested in sponsoring the event this year because the downturn has tightened budgets, but that wasn't the case. All the sponsorship spots for the event have been filled.

"That is kind of a sign of how important companies feel it is to go out there and celebrate the successes," Kervin says.

The awards create awareness across the industry by familiarizing companies with one another, she says.

"If you have an opportunity that you may need to partner with somebody it makes you aware of what else is out there," Kervin says. "It's not just knowledge across the industry but knowledge of our industry to the economy in general, or to somebody who would be interested in buying services or products from the knowledge industry."

"It's promoting what we have to offer and celebrating successes in New Brunswick."

And this year there are more new successes than usual.

Sixteen different companies are nominated in seven categories, some in more than one. Only eight of the nominees have won an award before.

Though all the nominated companies are from the knowledge industry they are all very different.

"You're not seeing 16 different companies who offer the same type of services," Kervin says.

Beyond the handing out of awards the event will also take the time to recognize an achievement the whole industry can take some credit for as opposed to just one company.

"In addition to celebrating the knowledge industry, we're going to (acknowledge) that Fredericton and Moncton have been named on the smart cities list," Kervin says.

She believes all the celebration is good for the industry.

"It helps promote health within industry just by that recognition," she says. "If everybody is very negative I think that will contribute to even more downturn."


John Pollack
Telegraph-Journal