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BARRIE TECH COMPANY FULL OF GEORGIAN CONNECTIONS The majority of staff at Turning Technologies Canada has Georgian connections. Pictured from left to right, first row: John Andreadis, President Paul Franchetto, Peter Ferreira. Middle row: Jamie Clarke, Lori Fera, Jacqueline Ornhjelm, Andrew Aloussis, Kimberly Rowntree. Back row: Jeff Monger, Jerry Charbonneau, Derrick Abram, Adam O'Regan and Matthew Saunderson. Interactive audience polling is one of Turning Technologies Canada's specialties and a recent poll of its own staff revealed that almost everyone on the team has a Georgian background. Of the company's 15 employees, 87 per cent are Georgian alumni or take Continuing Education courses at the college. Their education includes a range from Business — Marketing to Computer Systems Technician — Networking. "We liked these candidates because they had the passion to go to school, the ability to inspire and the desire to learn. All we needed to do was teach them to leverage the success," said President Paul Franchetto. Headquartered in Barrie, the company's flagship product is TurningPoint. Using this leading-edge software, an audience can be easily polled using ResponseCard keypads or mobile devices. That data is analyzed for real-time results and stored for reporting. When Col. Chris Hadfield presented at Georgian in May, Turning Technologies was there to engage the audiences with space trivia while they waited to hear from the retired astronaut. The results from the morning audience of mostly adults were compared to the responses of the afternoon audience of Grade 6 students and it was revealed that the first group failed the "are you smarter than a 6th grader" test by 14 per cent. Growing trends for the company include serving educational institutions, as well as political parties, boards and Fortune 500 companies whereby they pass resolutions and bylaws tabulating results in minutes for what previously took hours or even days to calculate. "We work to maintain our status as the global leader who is first to market with data collection technology," said John Andreadis, Vice President, Operations and Support, of the company that continues to expand and serve a national audience. GEORGIANVIEW 2014 28 LIFELONG LEARNING AND CONNECTIONS