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Mar 19,2005 - Tri City News

 

By Diane StrandbergThe Tri-City News
Mar 19 2005

After a year of trying to make citysoup.ca pay for itself, the cities of Port Moody and Coquitlam, and the Smart Choices Society are awaiting provincial confirmation of $400,000 to market the technology.
And the cities are looking for someone to do the marketing and provide back-up services for the software, said Coquitlam Mayor Jon Kingsbury. The citysoup.ca web portal would continue to be maintained by Coquitlam employees. But the city may not keep the online business services component, Kingsbury said, which isn't a civic function.
"If you follow it through, [citysoup.ca'> has been very successful. I think business is the one that needs to make it more successful," Kingsbury said.
The cities are casting a wide net in the hopes of selling the software for the project that has so far cost them about $4.5 million, including staff time.
Lise Picknell, acting manager of Smart Communities for the last two years of the program, said citysoup.ca was one of strongest projects to come out of a $60-million federal initiative to develop 12 smart communities across the country.
But the cities and Smart Choices faced an uphill battle trying to sell advertising to sustain cash flow.
"Now it's been proven you don't sell advertising on your portal, you can't, people don't want to pay, they say, 'I'm paying for the line, why would I pay for advertising on it? It should be free, it belongs to my community.' But it takes people to keep it up-to-date and clean it. It was all built on the thinking it could sell advertising, no one has been successful," Picknell said.
Another problem has been marketing the technology, which Port Moody Mayor Joe Trasolini said isn't the cities' strong suit. That's why provincial support is needed, said Trasolini, who said a funding announcement is imminent.
"There's no secret the provincial government will be granting money towards marketing to the UBCM (Union of B.C. Municipalities)," said Trasolini.
Smart Choices chair Jennifer Wilkie, also a Coquitlam city employee, said in an e-mail statement that the content management system that was designed for citysoup.ca to make it easier for Tri-City residents to get local information on the internet and even pay bills online is state-of-the-art and the envy of other cities.

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