In this case, I would attribute it to the province and wise choices with the allocation of government money.
Ontario, the province Waterloo is located in, has historically been pretty good about pushing technology, especially in rural areas. For instance, in the early to mid-nineties the rural public schools local to me had high speed internet connections, while I was reading articles about schools in big city USA that had no access to the internet at all. Today, we have a fibre optic internet connection to the farm, while I read about farms in the US still struggling with dialup connections. Additionally, programming has virtually always been a part of the school curriculum. My father even talks about programming on punch cards in high school. Again, I read about US schools only thinking about introducing this today.
I think that lead to a disproportionate number of young people growing up in the area of Waterloo with a strong technological mindset, due to availability of technology that much of North America did not have easy access to. Then, Waterloo, due to its reputation, gets the best of that bunch.
With all that said, I feel the government has pulled away from a lot of that technology spending in more recent times, so it will be interesting to see if Waterloo can maintain the quality of output for decades to come as the young children today come up through the system.
Ontario, the province Waterloo is located in, has historically been pretty good about pushing technology, especially in rural areas. For instance, in the early to mid-nineties the rural public schools local to me had high speed internet connections, while I was reading articles about schools in big city USA that had no access to the internet at all. Today, we have a fibre optic internet connection to the farm, while I read about farms in the US still struggling with dialup connections. Additionally, programming has virtually always been a part of the school curriculum. My father even talks about programming on punch cards in high school. Again, I read about US schools only thinking about introducing this today.
I think that lead to a disproportionate number of young people growing up in the area of Waterloo with a strong technological mindset, due to availability of technology that much of North America did not have easy access to. Then, Waterloo, due to its reputation, gets the best of that bunch.
With all that said, I feel the government has pulled away from a lot of that technology spending in more recent times, so it will be interesting to see if Waterloo can maintain the quality of output for decades to come as the young children today come up through the system.