How to bring the Canadian tech community together?

I met Scott of ConceptShare at SXSW (he stayed at the b5 Ranch) great guy, sharp, and has some great ideas.  One that he wrote about today is the need for a Canadian tech group, something where we can all connect and exchange information on a regular basis:

This is certainly a 50000 ft view of what I think. Is it the answer? Who knows. All I hope is that someone out there will agree with me and tell someone else and it will spread.  I have a few people in mind that I think could certainly help. Need some feedback from across the country.  Am I out to lunch or is this a viable thing? It will require you to your civic egos aside and think from a nation wide perspective. Source: A national community for tech? | Thought Balloons

I certainly agree that it’s needed.  I also see it as a huge challenge.  Huge country, lots of busy people.  Sure I could set up a wiki or forum or social network on Ning or something … the problem is that how do we keep it going?

I don’t even want to get into the details of management …

However that’s throwing too much realism into this discussion.  Scott is bang on.

I try to cover as much Canadian tech as I can, I know I miss a lot of stuff though.  The other Canadian techblogs like Techvibes, Montreal Tech Watch, StartupNorth do an awesome job at connecting us all.  Now, how to to pull it all together…

Ideas?

Well I have two.  First, I just (like while I was writing this post) created a Google group called (of course) Canadian Tech … email is the first step so please join and tell others.  Second, shared bookmarks, I already have that on Diigo … so you can join that too.

Small steps, but maybe the important ones to take Scott’s idea and turn it into something.