Some of our Canada-based team attended the recent Collision Conference in Toronto. Referred to as “America’s fastest-growing tech conference”, the event certainly didn’t disappoint. Bringing together inspiring speakers, tech’s leading companies, and top media, the team enjoyed making new connections and learning about the latest tech developments.
Below Jordan Holmes, HR Manager (JH), Adrien Labelle, Software Development Manager (AL) and Pawel Blazeiewicz (PB), Senior Cloud and Infrastructure Architect, share their highlights and learnings from the global conference.
What did you enjoy most about the event?
JH: Collision certainly lived up to its billing as “North America’s fastest-growing tech conference.” The production value was incredible. Everything from Boston Dynamics’ mobile robots roving the halls to keynote addresses from the likes of Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google.
AL: The variety of companies present at the event was very impressive.
PB: For me Collision was an opportunity to investigate the start-up markets and ideas that they are trying to push as well as where the digital industry and currencies are going. The scale of the conference was mind-blowing. I did speak to a lot of vendors and listened to some very good interviews about current and future trends.
What tech brand stood out to you?
JH: There were several exciting offerings but from my corner of the world, a Canadian tech talent recruitment platform called Vanhack seems very promising.
AL: Brands that try to address and automate traditional business issues like Float and Jeeves (paperless automated expense systems) stood out to me.
Who was your favourite speaker, and why?
JH: Garry Kasparov delivered a sobering but highly insightful talk about the conflict in Ukraine and the impacts on global cybersecurity.
AL: Andy Yen (founder and CEO of Proton – the world’s largest secure email provider) about online privacy issues. He provided a very insightful explanation on what needs to be fixed and how to do it.
PB: A significant element of Collision 2022 was cryptocurrencies and all that comes with this. I managed to listen to two interesting interviews. First was with Kathleen Breitman (Co-founder and CEO of Tezos) and Kyle Samani (Co-founder and Managing Partner of Multicoin Capital) who spoke about the next challenge for the crypto market as it moves towards global adoption.
The second one was with blockchain.com CEO, Nicolas Cary, who has been a pioneer in this market for the last 10 years. It was a fantastic occasion to see the leaders of this community describe how blockchain could shape our future!
What one thing did you learn that will most influence how you do business going forward?
JH: It can be a bit of a tired refrain in the tech industry, but we need to automate. From a human resources perspective, I want to maximise our greatest asset – our people. The best way to do that is to automate as many time-consuming, administratively burdensome processes as possible to free our people to create, innovate and grow.
AL: The focus needs to be put on data: how we use it and how we can automate it.
PB: I am very interested in seeing where part of our world is going, and how far it will digitalise. At this moment in time, you can put on a set of VR goggles, and you can see and immerse into a virtual office working from anywhere in the world! Will it adopt? Maybe 😊
What technological innovation are you most excited about?
JH: Certainly not the robot dogs! That is not a paradigm in need of disruption.
AL: AI assisted automation in general, it will help identify areas of business where manual work is redundant and data underutilised.
PB: The pace of change and innovation in tech is accelerating A LOT. With automation, we will be doing things so much faster. This will of course be a positive for Continent 8, and there are plenty of examples whereby automation can support us.
Let’s take our Public Cloud setup as an example. We are currently in the process of automating the installation phase, which will significantly speed up deployments.
I look forward to seeing what innovation we will witness next and what we can do with the current products that we offer.
Anthony Abou-Jaoude, Chief Data Officer at Continent 8, added: “There was a lot to take from the Collision conference, and a fantastic experience for myself and members of the team. What was particularly rewarding or me, was that I got confirmation that our digital transformation at Continent 8 is on the right track, especially when it comes to APIs, and how we must start thinking more about an API first model, to enable more data to be shared with our customers.”
Learn more about the Collision Conference here
