Shad Valley Manitoba
Shad Valley is a summer program in technology and entrepreneurship run by the Canadian Centre for Creative Technology. Each year the program gathers approximately 400 of the most exceptional high school students from across Canada at university campuses across the country for four weeks. During that time, students are given lectures, seminars, and hands-on experience in technology and entrepreneurship from experts in their chosen fields. Students also have the invaluable opportunity to discover what life is like in other parts of the country; to work alongside people as exceptional as themselves; and to realize what incredible things can arise from their talents.
Students may be sponsored by companies interested in supporting technological and entrepreneurial education. After the program, they work for their sponsor for the rest of the summer. Sponsored students have the added opportunity of working in an environment that is challenging and rewarding. Sponsors have the opportunity of employing one of the most talented young people in the country.
Sadly, Manitoba is no longer a Shad Valley Campus, but I am still just as proud today as I always have been of my work with the program. It'll always be one of the highlights of my life, and I met some great people through it. And yes, if you're a previous Manitoba Shad student who's gone nostalgic and tracked this page down, it means I have likely thought of you more recently than you might guess, and I'd be happy to hear what you're up to these days.
The first time I worked at Shad Valley was the first time I was ever in the media, so you can look here to see me looking all naive with a four-dollar haircut.
For those of you here to reminisce, I have preserved the Simply Soda Home Page, one of the earliest webpages ever, used for our web design seminars in 1993 and 1994 (and of course it looks it). And for those of you not here because of Shad, no, it's not the real Simply Soda Home Page. Please don't send me product inquiries (yes, indeed, people have). For those intersted in a bit of context, we had a limited budget for snacks, most of which was spent at Costco, and Simply Soda was their internal brand of soda/pop. So it appeared very, very regularly and much discussion was devoted to the degree to which their flavours seemed to be similar to commercial brands.
If you're interested in Shad Valley, know someone who might be, or know a company interested in sponsoring a student, contact the current organizers through the main Shad Webpage. I may be able to answer questions for you as well.