Ontario Centres of Excellence are hosting their innovation-to-commercialization conference again in Toronto. The OCE Discovery 10 conference is happening May 17-18, 2010 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. They have a history of bringing great keynote speakers including Clayton Christiansen, Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Sir Terry Matthews. 2010 is no different, the OCE team is bringing Steve Wozniak to Toronto.
Sure we know Steve from the Apple I and Apple II computers. You might even know him from Dancing with the Stars. You probably didn’t know that the Gipper awarded him the National Medal of Technology, the highest honor bestowed America’s leading innovators, in 1986. And Steve Wozniak is still working on new technology. He’s a the chief scientist at Fusion-io working flash-based memory architectures for storage. He’s on a member of the board for member of the board of directors for Jacent, a developer of cost-effective telephony solutions, Danger, Inc., developer of an end-to-end wireless Internet platform, Ripcord Networks and others.
He’s an engineers engineer and knows a thing or two about tech startups. He’ll be at OCE Discovery from 2:00pm – 3:30pm and this includes a book signing opportunity (Mac nerds rejoice, even more impressive if you have an Apple I or Apple II to get signed).
“Every engineer—and certainly every engineering student—should read this book. It is about the thrill of invention, the process of making the world a better place, and the purity of entrepreneurship. I, Woz is the personal computer generation’s version of The Soul of a New Machine. It is, in a nutshell, the engineer’s manifesto. I hope that the so-called “innovation experts” and MBAs choke when they read it.” – Guy Kawasaki
The rest of the OCE Discovery 10 schedule is packed full of startups, policy makers, innovators, academics. We’ll be hosting a DemoCamp, while not currently as cool as the “Ontario’s Next Top Young Entrepreneur Start-up Pitch” happening on Monday, May 17 which will give grant the winning startup a “non-recourse micro-loan of up to $18,000 ($6,000 per team member) to launch a new start up, have access to advisory services and have the opportunity to network with key mentors and private investors”. It is a great opportunity for local startups to demo their wares and do demand generation with local investors, government agencies and businesses.
We’ll be doing a bunch of work to clarify what type of startups can maximize the value from presenting and start accepting nominations for demos in the next couple of weeks. What DemoCamp for details.
- Discovery DemoCamp
Tuesday, May 18, 2010 3:15pm-4:15pm EDT
Inspired by Toronto’s Tech community, see showcase technologies presented in 5-minute demos by some of the communities hottest inspiring web, mobile and social media startups.