2013 Innovation Fund

In 2013, New Dawn an­nounced a new and in­no­v­a­tive CEDIF that pro­vided in­vestors with the op­por­tu­nity to sup­port local, ex­port-dri­ven, in­no­va­tion-based com­pa­nies in the fields of arts & cul­ture, ed­u­ca­tion and en­ergy. The New Dawn In­no­va­tion Fund en­ables in­vestors the con­tin­ued op­por­tu­nity to grow their money through the CEDIF struc­ture while also grow­ing the com­mu­nity in which they live and work.

After con­sid­er­able and dili­gent re­search the $1.4 million raised in the 2013 New Dawn In­no­va­tion Fund has been in­vested in Mar­cato Dig­i­tal So­lu­tions Inc., Ad­vanced Glaz­ings Ltd., and Me­di­aS­park In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy So­lu­tions.

Mar­cato Dig­i­tal pro­vides web based col­lab­o­ra­tive plan­ning and lo­gis­tics soft­ware to the music, fes­ti­val and event in­dus­tries. Their flag­ship fes­ti­val plan­ning and op­er­a­tions ap­pli­ca­tion, Mar­cato Fes­ti­val, is cur­rently being uti­lized here in Cape Bre­ton by the Celtic Colours In­ter­na­tional Fes­ti­val, and by other world-renowned events such as JunoFest (Canada), Berlin Music Week (Ger­many) and the Life is Good Fes­ti­val (USA). Founded in 2008 by Dar­ren Gal­lop and Mor­gan Cur­rie, Mar­cato Dig­i­tal has over 150 clients around the globe and is trans­form­ing the way the music in­dus­try does busi­ness.

Me­di­aS­park is an award-win­ning soft­ware de­vel­op­ment, pub­lish­ing, and gam­i­fi­ca­tion com­pany founded in 1994 by Mathew Georghiou, for­merly an en­gi­neer with IBM. Me­di­aS­park’s prod­ucts have been sold to thou­sands of cus­tomers in every US state and Cana­dian province, as well as sev­eral coun­tries around the world. Hun­dreds of thou­sands of youth and adults are learn­ing using Me­di­aS­park’s prod­ucts.

Ad­vanced Glaz­ings was founded in 1995 by Dr. Dou­glas Mil­burn to de­velop, man­u­fac­ture and mar­ket sus­tain­able and com­mer­cially vi­able tech­nolo­gies re­lated to sun­light, in­clud­ing translu­cent in­su­lated glaz­ing units and trans­par­ent in­su­la­tion for green­houses. Ad­vanced Glaz­ings has in­stalled its state of the art day­light­ing glass in nu­mer­ous com­mer­cial ap­pli­ca­tions across North Amer­ica and has re­cently part­nered with Cabot Cor­po­ra­tion in Boston to de­velop and mar­ket their newest prod­uct, Sol­era + Lume­ria which of­fers su­pe­rior day­light with R18 in­su­la­tion value, which is con­sid­ered the best in­su­lat­ing com­mer­cially avail­able glass prod­uct in the world. The com­pany has a sig­nif­i­cant patent port­fo­lio re­lat­ing to day­light­ing and green build­ing prod­ucts.