The rise in sharing economy businesses like Uber has prompted Hamilton’s first summit on how to push this model forward.
Ryan Moran, summit co-ordinator and partner at Co-Motion, a co-working network, says one of the goals is to educate people about the value of business centred on community and crowd-sourcing.
In the case of CoMotion, he says it’s about providing less expensive office space with more amenities.
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“The ability to share services, whether it’s dedicated reception or whether it’s a kitchen or meeting room and then building programming out of that,” Moran said.
The summit will also look to explore how current city regulations can be re-worked to allow for this emerging approach.
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“Kitchen Collective … is a shared kitchen space for culinary businesses,” he said. “Something like that would have potential trouble starting up just anywhere in Hamilton because of zoning bylaws.”
Moran also points to artists who take residency in a studio.
“Might be kind of blurring the lines of what mediums they’re working with and it actually kind of blurs into industry, which then potentially has challenges from zoning,” Moran said.
Moran says he is optimistic about the willingness of those in a position to make changes to policy and procedure.
“I think a lot of leadership whether it is within the city or chamber or even political level, recognize in some cases that even some of Hamilton’s zoning and bylaws are to some extent antiquated and need to be revamped anyway.”
Moran believes many jurisdictions have already come a long way towards supporting shared economy businesses like Uber, which he says could not have existed a decade ago.
The summit is free to attend and takes place May 4 at CoMotion on King.
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