The Wired West

“The Wired West” is a metonym for Western Canada’s Emerging SME (Small and Medium Enterprise) Technology Community. (Other examples of metonymy are Hollywood − for the American entertainment industry, Madison Avenue − for the advertising industry, and Silicon Valley − for central California’s high-tech community).

The term was coined in 2007 by Calgary-based technology marketers and entrepreneurs, Sharon M. McIntyre and Claudia Moore, and introduced at a December 2007 tech-entrepreneur panel moderated by American venture capitalist and best-selling author, Guy Kawasaki.