Three Highlights from Toronto’s Collision Conference
From May 20-23, Toronto became the epicenter of tech when it hosted the fifth annual Collision Conference at the Enercare Centre. During the four-day event, more than 25,700 attendees gathered to hear 700 speakers discuss the latest trends and innovations in the tech industry.
While we’re unpacking everything that happened at Collision, we’ve rounded up three highlights from the event.
Diversity and inclusivity are key
As Prime Minister Justin Trudeau noted, “Canada is realizing we need to stay open and draw in the best and the brightest from around the world.” He went further, explaining that tech is one of the industries that is flourishing here because of immigration: “As we see anxieties and worries around the world, Canadians know that we get more resilient communities, we get better solutions, we get better innovations, when we bring in people from all around the world.”
True to this theme, a diverse group of people attended the conference. More than 100 trade delegations from all over the world, including Germany, Hong Kong, India and South Korea, sent representatives to Toronto’s Collision. In fact, attendees came from 125 countries, and almost half of them were female. With so many exciting developments at the conference, it’s clear that diversity and inclusion aren’t just talking points anymore. Meaningful changes in tech are now fueled by the international community.
A who’s who event
We would be remiss if we didn’t mention the all-star roster of speakers at Collision. In addition to the Prime Minister of Canada, speakers included Ev Williams, the co-founder of Twitter and CEO and founder of Medium, Peggy Johnson, the Executive VP of Business Development at Microsoft, actor and co-founder of Houseplant Seth Rogen, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, actor and co-founder of HITRECORD.
One of our favourite moments came out of Ev Williams’ conversation with editor-at-large of Recode and New York Times columnist, Kara Swisher. While discussing what he looks for as an investor, Williams shared an uplifting approach: “We invest in what we call ‘world-positive investing,’ things that address big, systemic problems in society.”
Innovations big and small
While there were many larger companies like the Royal Bank of Canada, Cisco and Amazon Web Services displaying their services at the conference, the real excitement was on the floor in the startup exhibitor spaces. From EPICA’s AI-powered, decision making platform to Avastus Analytics’ use of deep learning, computer vision and NLP to make the shopping experience more seamless, there were a ton of exciting, new products to discover.
To cap off the event, a pitch competition took Collision’s Centre Stage by storm, with the final three startups, Loliware, Korapay and Spero Foods, showcasing their companies to key investors and media.
With plans for Collision to partner with the City of Toronto in hosting the conference here until 2021, we can’t wait to see what’s coming up at next year’s event.