Vancouver Enterprise Forum - Fireside Chat with Morgan Sturdy October 28, 2008

Morgan Sturdy is truly a legend in the Vancouver tech community. Whether it was hardware or software; public or private; large or small; success or failure: Morgan has seen it. In addition to building and selling Dees Communications; Morgan has served on the board of 23 technology companies ranging from Chair of Hothaus (which sold for a record breaking sum to Broadcom) to Creo (sold to Kodak) to failed dot-com ventures. With Dick Hardt as moderator for our "fireside chat”, he and Morgan will get to the bottom of what it takes to build, run and exit a technology company.

The VEF's new format from last year involves kicking off the event with the presentations - now going first at 6:00 p.m. The bar will be open at 5:30 for some pre-event networking. The presentations will be followed by our networking session beginning at around 7:00 pm. In addition to the guest speaker, 100-second lightning talks by local entrepreneurs will kick off each month's event. This format change has been designed to provide attendees with time after the presentations to chat in an unhurried fashion with their colleagues and the presenters about ideas raised in the talks.
This light dinner/networking event should be of interest to business entrepreneurs in every industry, and will provide a unique forum for networking with members of the technology community, including some of our top local VCs and entrepreneurs.

About Morgan Sturdy

Morgan Sturdy is a high-tech entrepreneur and executive with an impressive 20 year track record. Morgan was the President of Dees Communications Engineering, a market leader in call center solutions. He joined Dees Communications when it was a 10 person company supplying telecom peripheral equipment to BC Tel. Over the next 10 years, Dees was transformed from a regional hardware supplier to a prominent player in the call center technology solutions market. In 1997, NICE Systems, an Israeli based NASDAQ traded company, purchased Dees Communications. After the acquisition, Morgan remained as President of Nice Systems Canada and later as Executive VP and COO of Nice Systems North America. During this period under Morgan’s leadership the revenue of the North American operation increased by 300%.
Morgan has been very active in the BC technology community serving as a board member of 20 technology companies. These included CREO which was sold to Kodak for $1 Billion, Hothaus Technologies which was acquired by Broadcom for the one of the highest amounts ever paid for a private BC technology company, UB Video which was sold to Cisco, and TIR which was sold to Phillips. Morgan currently serves as a director of Lighthaus Logic, Teraspan Networks, and ResponseTek.

In addition, Morgan was a founder, chair, and/or board member of many organizations formed to support technology entrepreneurs and build the technology industry in BC. These include the Vancouver Enterprise Forum, Acetech Academy for Technology CEO’s, the BC Technology Industry Association (BCTIA), Science World, and the Premier’s Technology Council. In 2001, he became Acetech’s first “Fellow” in recognition of his distinguished service to the Vancouver technology community. In 2004, Morgan was the recipient of the BCTIA Bill Thompson Life Time Achievement award and he also received the Distinguished Alumni Award from BCIT for Significant Contribution to a trade or industry.