An ominous black cloud has hung over Calgary’s high-tech landscape in recent months with a litany of stormy financial reports exacerbated by plunging technology stock prices.

But you’d never know it to listen to one visionary. Earl Hickok stands amid the tech carnage and the hand-wringing with fist-pumping enthusiasm, bullishly forecasting blue skies for technology in these parts.

“There’s never been a more exciting time in the 20-odd years I’ve been in business,” gushes Hickok, a Winnipeg native who came to Alberta to work in the oilpatch during the oil boom in 1982.

“Our school kids of today should be able to do almost anything they want and stay in Alberta.”

Hickok is as well connected to technology as any Calgarian. He is president and chief executive of Tecskor Software, a privately held company that provides practical solutions for leading, managing and working in the digital economy.

He chaired the SMART2000 conference in Calgary in October and is chairman of the provincial government’s Information and Commu-nication Technology (ICT) committee for e-health and e-government.

He is a lecturer on business in the digital economy and played a key role in the Alberta Growth Summit on the province’s future.

Hickok predicts Alberta, due to its growing reputation as an innovator in technology, will become a high-tech hotbed by 2005.

“When I came to Alberta, I believed that when I had children, there would be a high likelihood that if they didn’t want to be in oil and gas, they’d leave the province,” says the father of three. “Today, I don’t believe that’s going to be the case. Our kids will have the future and the kind of opportunities that they need.”

Hickok, one of several former Calgary oilpatch stars heading high-tech companies, believes the tech industry will rival the oil-and-gas industry in Alberta within five years.

“I think a lot of people are underestimating the 1,500 technology companies. A lot of people say it won’t be that big that fast. I say it’s doable.”

The foundation of Hickok’s optimism is the Alberta Supernet, a $300-million project in which 420 Alberta communities will be wired in a high-speed broadband network. The fibre-optic link is scheduled for completion within three years.

The potential economic spinoffs of Supernet are enormous. For instance, a broadband connection to all learning and health facilities will benefit 800,000 students and professionals.

“With the Supernet, we are setting the cement right now for the next 20 years. I’m saying that, if we do this right, our kids and our grandkids are going to enjoy the fruits of this very strategic time phase. If we don’t do it right, it’s lost. The technology clusters will form somewhere else.”

Hickok cites numerous other examples of Alberta’s leadership as a technology innovator, including:

* The Galileo Educational Network, which has drawn rave reviews at Bragg Creek’s Banded Peak School (Grades 1-8), where learning is enhanced by sophisticated information technology;

* Careers: The Next Generation, in which Alberta high-school students are introduced to career opportunities in ICT through paid summer internships;

* Major expansion of educational institutions such as the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology.

“When I speak to business schools, what I say to the new grads is: ‘You guys are going through a time unprecedented in the adoption of technology,’ ” says Hickok.

“I bring out a chart that shows that, to get to 100 million users, it took 60 years for radio to 1980, it took 30 years for television to 1980, it took 15 years for cable to 1995 and 36 months for the web. Now there are 300 million web users and a new person coming on every six seconds. And 60 per cent of Calgarians are on the Web.

“When you look at the ICT for this province, our goal is to go from 40,000 knowledge-based workers to 140,000 by 2010.”

Hickok, as CEO of a private company, hasn’t directly felt the blow of plummeting stock prices that have wounded public tech companies. “The technology market has got a black eye because there have been a whole bunch of people with empty promises, promising exponential growth and what could be,” he says.

“A lot of it was smoke and mirrors and they’re getting hammered now.”