The Knowledge worker. The high income earner, not tied to any specific geographic location, moving from project to project be it working remotely with a big company, or launching their own startup. The latte sipping, culture consuming, shopping, volunteering, all around great citizen. Every city would love to have more of them. But if you’re not a natural hub like Silicon Valley, New York, Toronto or a Vancouver, how do you get them?

The old adage the Kootenays have leaned on for survival and growth on some level has always been the fact that, if you could choose to live anywhere on earth, why wouldn’t you choose to live in The Kootenays?

With the levelling of the playing field in many ways due to the influx of fiber and truly high speed, reliable internet through the region, that dream of being able to live and work wherever you want has come true. Increasingly the migration of folks, largely in the tech and knowledge based world has begun.

What would it take however to turn Nelson, The Kootenays, or any small city or town for that matter into a Knowledge worker’s paradise?

Our obvious trump card is our spectacular natural environment, and one of a kind culture and lifestyle. Where you go from there has been a trial and error process.

Dominic Bortolussi, of Toronto and current part time resident of Nelson, moving towards becoming a full time resident, knows all about trial and error. A knowledge worker himself he’s become focussed in on the startup world, and recently presented on the idea of Nelson itself as a startup.

Take a novel, entrepreneurial approach with a startup mindset to solve the problem of How do we turn Nelson into a Knowledge Worker’s