Is Vancouver's Tech Community Broken?
That's the subject of this TechForum talk.
Now I can pretty much assume that I'm not the target audience here. But as someone who considers himself reasonably with it in the Vancouver tech crowd, I can pretty much answer "No the Vancouver Tech Community is not broken".
There's a whole pile of tech communities that meet and discuss things. Python, Javascript, Django, iPhone, PhoneGap: these are the one's I attend (or try to). There's also a large Drupal and PHP community here. We run conferences like DjangoSki, Open Web Vancouver, or Northern Voice.
...and what's the common connection of all these meetings? Open source software. If you are doing development using open source software, you join or build communities, it's part of it's success. Big business (generally) does not do this, to their detriment.
Having a quick look at the biographies and the companies involved, I doubt much of this will be mentioned.
The TechForum talk costs $49.50 to attend, so I won't be going. But if you are, be interested to hear the conclusion.