It’s been a few months since I instigated the return of a Montreal technology news site. And today I’m pleased to announce that things are actively moving forward on the project.

NextMontreal.com will be a news and opinion site for Montreal technology.

The site won’t be launched for awhile, but you can stay up-to-date by following NextMontreal on Twitter.

I’ve assembled an initial team including myself, Phil Telio, Sylvain Carle and Patrick Tanguay. I’m certain more people will join this team in the very near future. We need more people to join.

I’ve got great sponsors already on board (I won’t name them yet!) and more on the way. As I said in a previous post, it’s important to establish financial stability, so people that dedicate their time to NextMontreal on an active basis are compensated. We won’t be able to pay everyone — but we hope the community will rally to support NextMontreal and we’ll bring on great volunteers to cover events, stories, etc.

NextMontreal won’t be exclusively about Web and mobile startups. Certainly the team involved spends most of their time in that world, but we want to expand NextMontreal to cover a much broader range of technology: gaming, life sciences, etc. We won’t get perfect coverage – there’s just too much going on – but our goal is to get substantial coverage across multiple tech sectors and communities in Montreal.

The site will be news-driven, first and foremost. We’ll have op-ed pieces as well from great columnists in multiple tech sectors.

We’re also very pleased to have Heri involved from Montreal Tech Watch. We’ll be working with Heri to make sure his content gets added exposure through NextMontreal. We’ll be exchanging ideas, stories, and working to collectively connect the various tech sectors in Montreal and raise Montreal’s profile as a vibrant tech center.

I believe there are 3 key audiences we need to reach:

1. Grassroots Recruits: There are more and more students and young people that have yet to discover Montreal’s tech world. Startupifier is a group of students from various schools / universities in Montreal that have self-organized to help out. This is a key audience for NextMontreal. We want to draw grassroots recruits into the tech community.
2. The Community Itself: Truth be told it’s not really a community. There are too many people doing too many different things to lump everyone into one giant “tech community.” But it’s clear that people within each individual community aren’t even getting the news they need.
3. The Corporate World: Tech companies (of any kind) need customers, investors, partners, acquirers, etc. All of those entities are in “the corporate world” (versus “the startup world”). I’m making broad generalizations, but I’m sure you understand what I mean. The tech community, especially amongst startups, does itself a disservice if it doesn’t draw in investors, large corporations and other organizations that have an interest in what we’re doing. And this is both in Montreal and outside. We need the corporate world’s attention, and NextMontreal will drive that.

Montreal needs a central tech news hub – and our goal is to realize that through NextMontreal.com.

Over the next little while, here’s what we’ll be looking for:

• Contributors. If you believe you can contribute to NextMontreal in some way, please let me know. We’ll need volunteers to cover events. We’ll need people in various tech sectors (that we’re not experts in) to partner with us to find interesting stories, report the news, etc.
• Story Ideas. If you’ve got an interesting tech story, we’d like to hear it. Doesn’t matter if you’re in Web, mobile, gaming, security, hardware, or something else. We’re looking for all sorts of stories. We’ll be covering the investor world and bootstrapped businesses as well.
• Sponsors. One of my primary goals for NextMontreal is that it be sustainable (even if I get hit by a bus, NextMontreal must live on!) Anyone interested in reaching the broader tech community in Montreal should speak with me about how we can work together.

Getting to this point has already been a challenge. And the future isn’t entirely clear either. This is a major undertaking with quite a few moving parts, lots of varying interests, and a very important mandate. Montreal needs NextMontreal. It’s why I decided to instigate the project in the first place. And I’m certainly not the only one that believes in it. My hope – over the next month or so – is that we’re able to coalesce all the necessary pieces and launch something significant, meaningful and valuable. Stay tuned…