The winners of the university's United Way early bird draw — Maryann Gavin, Melissa Graham, Kerry Mahoney, and Suzanne Tyas — enjoy their prize lunch with president at the University Club on November 12. Another winner, Sean Harris, was unable to make the lunch.

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VeloCity unveils leadership team

with material from VeloCity

VeloCity, the University of Waterloo's innovative student startup incubator program, has appointed two leaders to its team.

Mike Kirkup (right) is VeloCity's new Director. He comes to the University of Waterloo from Research In Motion, where he was Senior Director, Global Developer Relations. "He has a wealth of technical and business development expertise in the mobile application space," writes Student Success Office director Sean Van Koughnett, "and brings with him a professional network encompassing several key industries and international markets." Kirkup holds a Bachelor of Mathematics in computer science and a Masters of Management Science, both from the University of Waterloo.

Beyond providing overall strategic leadership and direction, Mike will focus on key business development and partnership opportunities with the startup, venture capital, government and corporate communities. He will also act in an advisory capacity to VeloCity students while continuing to pursue the development of his own startup.

Brett Shellhammer (left) is VeloCity's new Executive-in-Residence. Currently an EIR with Communitech, Shellhammer "brings a wealth of knowledge and experience gained through 16 years in Silicon Valley, working for 5 startups, the last one as President and COO of iVenturi," writes Van Koughnett. "In addition to his experience in the Valley, Brett's previous roles include SVP of Marketing at Coreworx (Kitchener), SVP of Product Management at Eloqua (Toronto) and VP and General Manager of the Global 2000 and Government Business Unit at Open Text. Shellhammer has a Bachelor of Science in computer science from Penn State.

"Brett has worked with several of the VeloCity teams over the past year and the knowledge, expertise and enthusiasm he brings as the key coach for our student startups will be invaluable while leveraging his continuing EIR work with Communitech's Venture Service Group," writes Van Koughnett.

"The appointment of these two staff bolsters what is already an incredible network of VeloCity advisors focused on the coaching and mentorship of our students," he continues. "That network includes Ali Asaria (Well.ca), David Crow (Influitive), Ted Livingston (Kik Interactive, VeloCity alum), Michael Litt and Devon Galloway (Vidyard, Velocity alumni), and David Silivestru (formerly of TinyHippos, currently RIM)."

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Nominating committee seeks input

The nominating committee set up to identify a new Associate Vice-President, International has begun its work, says a memo distributed before the holiday break by provost Geoff McBoyle.

"Over the course of the next month, the committee will be consulting with members of the university community in order to define the mandate and responsibilities of the Associate Vice-President, International, as well as the experiences, skills and attributes required for success in the role. In particular, the committee invites your feedback on the following:

1. What are the major issues, challenges and opportunities facing the new Associate Vice-President, International in the short and long term?
2. What would you consider to be the essential mandate and short and long term priorities of the new Associate Vice-President, International?
3. In your opinion, what background, skills, qualifications and leadership/management style are required for success in this role?
4. Do you have any suggestions as to individuals to whom the search consultants should speak about this opportunity?

"Please send your comments to any member of the committee, to our search consultant or to the committee secretary, Marie Armstrong (x37549, marie.armstrong@ uwaterloo.ca), by January 13, 2012. All comments will be held in complete confidence.Here are the members of the committee:

• Geoff McBoyle, chair, x84766, gmcboyle@ uwaterloo.ca
• Brent Doberstein, x33384, bdoberstein@ uwaterloo.ca
• Tom Duever, x32295, tduever@ uwaterloo.ca
• Paul Eagles, x32716, eagles@ uwaterloo.ca
• Eric Helleiner, x33955, ehelleiner@ uwaterloo.ca
• Tim Jackson, x36888, tim.jackson@ uwaterloo.ca
• André Jardin, x36835, acjardin@ uwaterloo.ca
• Drew Knight, x32288, dknight@ uwaterloo.ca
• Shoufa Lin, x36557, shoufa@ uwaterloo.ca
• Doug Peers, x32217, dpeers@ uwaterloo.ca
• Ceylan Turkeri, x38686, cturkeri@ uwaterloo.ca

Search Consultant - Heather Ring, Caldwell Partners, 416-934-2210, hring@ caldwellpartners.com

A comprehensive position profile and advertisement will be added to the committee’s website once finalized by the committee.

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Last call for LabView licences

A message from Information Systems and Technology

We are now selling National Instruments software, whose flagship product is LabView, from the IST webstore. The cost is currently $50/computer/year. Licences are distributed by a network licence server, but off-line equipment can also be accommodated. All campus computers running Labview are expected to have a licence from the webstore. The annual cost of this licence has increased dramatically over the last several years, and our current campus licence agreement will expire in January 2012. It is important that we be able to recover the increased cost of the new licence, or we will have to consider dropping it. If you are operating computers running LabView, your participation in the site licence is requested.

This licence covers both research and teaching use on university-owned computers. The cost is a tiny fraction of the vendor's individual academic pricing, and per-computer pricing will distribute the cost fairly among our user base. Another advantage of this campus site licence is that it covers most other National Instruments software products as well. Assuming we get sufficient participation to continue, a purchase before the end of 2011 will be applied to the new licence until the end of the fiscal year, April 30, 2012. At that time, we will make adjustments to achieve cost recovery.

Prior to this year, LabView software was distributed using a single licence code. The old licence code is now invalid. This means that attempts to re-install with the old code will fail. Even if you are currently happy using an older version, we request your participation in our site licence to insure its continuation and keep the shared cost as low as possible.

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