The Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation is rolling out a social media campaign to engage Canada’s tech employees with a blogging and video story-sharing platform. OCRI launched www.82000reasons.com last week as part of its mission to boost the image of Ottawa’s tech sector (with a tech workforce of 82,000 people) as Canada’s Silicon Valley North.

The site ties together blogs, RSS feeds and YouTube videos as a means for tech workers to share their stories. Initial sponsors include Air Canada, Research in Motion and the Ottawa International Airport Authority – with each offering prizes for the best stories (a trip from Ottawa to Frankfurt or a Blackberry Smartphone, anyone?).

Ottawa companies such as Enablence Technologies, Liquid Computing, Macadamian, March Networks, Fuel Industries and QNX Software Systems have added either blog profiles or YouTube videos to 82000reasons.com. Participation is also being promoted to the Ottawa tech community with banner ads on Facebook, plus local print, banner ad and radio advertising.

‘In the era of user-generated content, every one of Ottawa’s technology success stories can be told, tagged and distributed online to a global audience,’ says Michael Darch, XD, OCRI Global Marketing, who adds that the site ‘leverages our greatest asset, our people, to tell the ‘Why Ottawa?’ story. They are better qualified than anyone to describe Ottawa’s lifestyle and technology strengths so we can attract the people and investment dollars we need to fuel our growth.’

Ottawa-based market2world communications is executing the campaign.