Canada’s Tech World: Make news on the 4th of July

It’s a slow news day. In fact, the first few days of July are always slow here in North America. Two of the three nations that make up the continent celebrate their nation’s sovereignty within that span, and other than discussions about hockey signings in Canada and fireworks displays in America do we hear much in the way of anything really newsworthy. But that’s especially so in Canada, because Americans tend to make news on July 1, as if they’re ignoring our country’s birthday.

But they’re not ignoring it. At least, not on purpose. For them, it’s just another day. A day that they can make news.

American tech firms have to think very little about when the plan to “break news” because there tends to be a spotlight shining on the American tech community much of the time. Certainly there are holidays throughout the year where the news is quite slow, but generally a lot of the world is dormant at the same time. but on the 4th of July, only America seems to take a day off.

That’s why Canadian startups, tech firms and all Canadian companies in between should take a good, hard look at making news on that day.

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Announcing a truly newsworthy story on July 4 essentially grabs the spotlight from America, and it’s not as if the tech community there will mind. They may notice, though. And that’s what companies making great work in Canada want…and need. Sure, the users for a lot of software solutions and apps are based in America, but if a news story stands out like it would if dropped on America’s Independence Day then the users may hear about it sooner rather than later.

To further illustrate why the 4th of July should be a consideration (if not an absolute), here are just three major tech announcements delivered on Friday July 1:

• Apple seeded its Gold Master of Mac OS X Lion to developers
• Zynga filed for a $1 billion IPO
• The remaining Nortel patents were sold off

That’s just three stories on Friday — and Fridays are normally considered to be slow news days.

The window to make a big splash and stand out from the rest of the crowd is very small in the tech world. There are many players, and many of them are taking today off.

As a fan of technology and a Canadian, I strongly believe the 4th of July would be a great day for Canada’s tech world to step up and say “game on”.