On Saturday, March 18th, TechAlliance had the pleasure of partnering with one of Western University’s largest student entrepreneurship organizations, Western Founders Network, to bring London’s first Future View conference. The conference brought together students, industry and hobbyists alike to learn about the future of technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship. Featuring speakers from across North America, the conference brought in “Ted talk style talks” on big data, tech disruption, artificial intelligence and sustainable global development.
The 100+ attendees heard from authorities such as IBM, Ellis Don and CARPROOF. Speaking with the organizers from Western Founders Network, they explained the inspiration for this event came about very entrepreneurially: “We saw a clear gap in the education and professional development landscape, and we took it”, says Western Founders Network executive, Nick Elder. While there are many academic conferences on these subjects, there wasn’t a forum to learn about the techs with the intent on activating them, creating value, and starting businesses.
The event was also a perfect fit with TechAlliance’s mandate of growing the innovative businesses of today, and launching the start-ups of tomorrow. Following the speaker portion of the conference, a small group of delegates were invited to the TechAlliance Value Creation Workshop, where our Business Analyst, Morgan Rosenberg, took delegates through an intensive, one-hour business creation process. This workshop drew from opportunity identification, design thinking and lean start up methodologies and created 13 new business opportunities for the London community. One lucky winner also received in-kind web development and graphic design services to launch his business, www.ceebos.com!
On behalf of both TechAlliance and Western Founders Network, we’re grateful to all those who made this event possible, notably: David Orr (CARPROOF), Bryan Addeman (Worklily), Chris Knowles (VMware), Andrew Bowerbank (Ellis Don), Ameer Rosic (Blockchain Hub), Alexandra Wood (Wearable X), Melissa Kargiannakis (Heuristext Inc.), Richard Zemel (U of T), Xianbin Wang (Western U), and Stephen Dantas (Digityll). Without our great speakers, and our sponsor CARPROOF, this event could not have been the success that it was.
