By: Geeq  on Jul 2, 2020

It was Canada Day yesterday and, in honor of everyone working through yet another public holiday, we thought we’d take a little time to enjoy our first Throwback Thursday.

Today’s nugget takes us back in time to January 2016, when Cisco opened its ninth Global Innovation Centre in Toronto.

Our loyal followers and eagle-eyed researchers will notice that January 2016 was before Geeq CEO Ric Asselstine met Geeq Chief Economist John Conley, so Geeq blockchain had not been invented yet. Nonetheless, this ought to be logged into the Geeq canon.

When the Cisco Innovation Centre in Toronto decided to showcase some of the most forward-thinking Canadian technologies, one of the solutions Ric’s Waterloo-based company Terepac co-developed was selected: a novel, easy-to-install water distribution monitoring system, a full stack IoT entrant for smart cities large and small around the globe.

The Mayor of the City of Toronto, John Tory, found the digital fire hydrant on display fascinating.

The Mayor told a story of a time when a Toronto fire-hydrant was frozen and rendered useless to fire-fighters trying to control a blaze. Tory added that a fire hydrant commanded and remotely monitored would provide many benefits to the Toronto Fire Service.

Courtesy of Channel Daily News

The technology, deep subject matter expertise, and exciting prospects behind this Internet of Things solution has since successfully spun off into scale up Digital Water Solutions.

Ric, however, had not finished looking under the hood at all the data that came out of IoT, and it was right around that time that he began aggressively thinking about, and studying, how to put IoT data on blockchain.

We are certainly glad he did.

There are now twelve Cisco Global Co-Innovation Centers. However, the one in Toronto is still the only one in North America.

Happy Canada Day!

Photo by Ali Tawfiq on Unsplash

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