torontoIT
This idea has been kicking around for a few years now; I'll admit it came to me during the dot-com craze. But I still think it's an entirely workable idea.
torontoIT would be a resource site for IT professionals in the Greater Toronto Area. Toronto's a great place for something like this; there are a ton of IT workers in the area. Even today, doing a search on IT-related jobs at monster.ca or workopolis.com brings up more results for Toronto than anywhere else in Canada.
It would have job postings (part of the revenue model) but with some extra twists; in addition to all the usual searches you can do on most sites, this would also have information like available parking (Y/N), close to TTC (Y/N), near a major subway station, front and back-end technologies used, etc. It could have mapping tools available to help you find the location of the company's offices. In short, the idea was to build a job posting service so extraordinary that IT people would find it an invaluable local resource with much more relevant information, and begin to use it over and above the usual job sites.
In addition to job postings, it would house the most comprehensive regional education database available online; every local IT-related school, course or program would be listed with as much detail as possible. In time, again, such a resource would make the site invaluable to IT workers (enough so that perhaps TO companies would make it a priority to get listed in the database — a possible revenue source?).
Eventually I had planned to integrate e-learning through the site itself, pehaps co-branded with or sponsored by Toronto training schools. Perhaps license some e-learning software and offer it to smaller training facilities so their courses could be available online, with torontoIT acting as a portal.
Rounding out the site would be Toronto IT event listings (SIG meetings, conferences, visiting speakers) and coverage of those events, as well as IT-focused career articles.
But wait! There's more.
Since I can't think anything halfway (you'll see this more and more as ideaBlog grows) I thought that once the site got well established that the idea could easily extend to other regional IT resource sites; chicagoIT, houstonIT, vancouverIT, etc.
In time citiesIT would be a conglomerate of all these regional sites.
As usual, my eyes are bigger than my stomach, and this idea was so huge that it would take MAJOR funding and a full-time staff to implement.
So here it sits in the ideaBlog, unused. For now. One day...
2002.08.21 10:11 PM