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The digital transformation of events, according to one expert

“You cannot translate a live event into a digital format,” says Microsoft’s Bob Bejan. “You must remake the event entirely.”

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One hallmark of this pandemic age?

Virtual events — and lots of them.

Since March, professional events like conferences, workshops, summits, and teambuilding meetings have flourished online — alongside everything from fitness classes and concerts, to mental health management and doctor visits. 

Another observation? This shift to virtual events was incredibly fast. 

The World Health Organization designated the COVID-19 outbreak as a pandemic on March 11. Just 12 days later on the 23rd, we published a guide to eight digital transformation events that had already shifted to a digital format. 

From the frontlines

One event expert we featured in our digital events write-up is Bob Bejan, Corporate VP of Global Events, Production Studios and Marketing Community for Microsoft.

In early March, Bejan published an insightful article on LinkedIn: Digital Transformation of Live events: Observations from the front line.

“It’s been a pretty intense few weeks for those of us working in events and experiential marketing,” he began, as he outlined what he and his team learned over the course of those first few weeks — many of which are still highly relevant for event producers. 

At the top? “Accept that there is no playbook.” Bejan emphasized empathy and understanding — towards both audiences and your team — and offered useful steps for organizations pivoting quickly to digital.  

The prevailing tone in March and of Bejan’s piece was that adapting and learning as you go was part of this “new normal.”

Where are we now? 

In May, Bejan followed up his March insights with a piece for Fast Company, 8 ways to rethink virtual events for the age of social distancing — published two weeks before the major event, Microsoft Build.

In the article, Bejan reflects back on the previous few months, collecting the biggest lessons him and his team learned in those initial months: “[Microsoft] Build for us, was the first acid test of the programming and production approach we developed as a result of a 14 show crash course in digital transformation. At that time, we didn’t know whether any of this was going to work.”

By the end of March, the Microsoft team had shifted 30 internal and external events to digital through June 2021, and by early May, they had produced 5 large-scale virtual events.

In late September Bejan was back with another update via LinkedIn, on the eve of the “flagship of the flagship” Microsoft event, Ignite. 

“Now, four months later, we believe that this kind of approach to events and experiences can work,” he writes, “and is rapidly becoming the center of gravity for our event strategy both in the short and longer term.”

Bejan shared plenty of great reflections on this digital transformation of live events, not to mention some pretty eye-opening data. At the top of the list:

“Virtual events are crazy effective!…At the highest level it’s about the scale. We are experiencing orders of magnitude growth in the number of people who are participating with us at our events….The mix of our audience has completely shifted. Historically, our events would breakdown to 80% US and 20% global; today that mix is 70/30 Global!”

He also shared insights on how digital events are more efficient (“we have been able to reduce our production cost dramatically”), and can — despite common pushback — foster community/create networking opportunities.

Finally, The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) announced that Microsoft will be the technology partner for CES 2021, which is transitioning to an all-digital event in mid-January. 

“Our past live events were theatrical, with dynamic speakers on stage commanding a rapt audience,” Bejan explains in a Microsoft write-up. “But the all-digital format requires something more cinematic. We now tailor our content to that format, and we have transformed from a live show production team, to a 24/7 television production network, complete with live anchors from around the world. This new direction required collaboration, hard work and a lot of humility.”

An all-digital CES will be a big step forward for both Bejan and the Microsoft events team and the nature of virtual live events in general. The pandemic isn’t going away any time soon, and organizations are waking up to the overall idea that digital events can balance both cost-effectiveness and high quality. 

It’ll be interesting to see the lessons learned from the digital transformation of such a massive event like CES, and how these can be incorporated into the future of live virtual events.

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Events

Top 5 tech and digital transformation events to wrap up 2023

A curated list of conferences and trade shows to help you plan your schedule and get the most out of these learning opportunities.

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If you’re looking to round out 2023 by attending a tech conference or two, you definitely have options. From niche events about specific technologies to massive expos, there’s something out there for everyone. 

Here are 7 of the top tech events for November and December 2023, focused on North America.

The 2nd Annual Digital Modernization Summit

November 2
Virtual

While not a full conference or trade expo, this two-hour session focuses on how to retire technical debt in an effort to accelerate business transformation. 

The pandemic forced many organizations to rush forward with DX projects, leading to less-than-ideal coding and design decisions. Now, CIO reports recent survey results, showing that 72% of respondent organizations are behind on their DX goals because of these “debts.”

The Digital Modernization Summit focuses on the business implications that come with moving from legacy systems to those that are cloud-based, the talent/technology/tactical perspective of operations, how emerging technologies can take their place in this modernization, and more.

More on the Digital Modernization Summit


TECHSPO 2023 

Dallas (November 2-3)
Las Vegas (November 6-8)
Phoenix (November 13-14)

TECHSPO brings together developers, brands, marketers, technology providers, designers, innovators, and evangelists to set the pace in our advanced world of technology. It’s a series of expos that take place at the intersection of business, tech, and innovation.

All three of these events showcase the next generation of Internet, Mobile, AdTech, MarTech & SaaS technology, and how these can help grow your business.

More on TECHSPO Dallas, Las Vegas, and Phoenix


FWD50

November 6-8

Ottawa, ON and online

FWD50 looks at the cross-section of policymaking, technology, ethics, and invention.

Focusing on public sector innovation, FWD50 invites together technologists, industry partners, government executives, academics, civic technologists, and policy makers from around the world to talk about all things digital when it comes to governments. 

With an incredible range of speakers — including public servants from all three levels of government — you’ll learn how tech can reimagine how governments can work in a more streamlined way.

More on FWD50


DeveloperWeek Enterprise

November 15-16
Virtual

Join over 3,000 enterprise dev professionals converging for a 2-day virtual conference & expo, featuring technology innovations and trends that corporations need to know about. Topics will include: DevSecOps, Organizing Dev Teams, DevTech Trends, Microservices, Containers, Kubernetes, and more.

More on DeveloperWeek Enterprise


mesh Toronto 2923

December 6-7
Toronto, ON

Billed as Canada’s transformation and innovation event, mesh conference’s successful Calgary event took place back in April, with big ideas and insightful discussions taking place over two packed days.

‘Connect, share, inspire’ is at the heart of mesh — especially since it’s a proudly no-Powerpoint event! This conversation-driven event is packed with Q&As, panel discussions, and fireside chats. Audience participation is highly encouraged here!

More on mesh

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Where will AI go next?

This year’s Collision conference featured a wide range of buzzy AI solutions — both B2B and for consumers.

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The buzzy topic of AI was not in short supply at this year’s annual Collision conference in Toronto. The list of applications using the technology was seemingly endless — from both the presenters and exhibitors. 

It comes at a unique time, as analysis of the industry reveals that we’ve crossed into the “era of deployment.” At the same time, it’s imperative that we think critically and ask questions about said deployment.

In June, Research and Markets revealed a study demonstrating how the AI industry has experienced immense expansion and maturation in recent years, from a $62B market in 2020, to projections saying 40% growth annually until 2026. 

Meanwhile, the 2023 AI Index, an independent initiative at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), reports that:

  • AI systems can both have a large carbon footprint (when training), and be “used to optimize energy use”
  • Incidents of AI misuse is “rapidly” on the rise. As the Stanford team explains, ‘more AI, more problems”
  • There was a 27% decrease in Global AI private investment (year-over-year) from 2021 to 2022. At the same time, over the last decade, investment has increased —  in 2022, it was 18 times greater than in 2013.
  • Companies that have adopted AI are pulling ahead, while the proportion of those adopting AI has actually plateaued.
  • Only 35% of Americans surveyed agree that “products and services using AI had more benefits than drawbacks,” compared to 78% of Chinese respondents, 76% from Saudi Arabia, and 71% from India.

It seems clear that the sector is at something of a crossroads.

DX Journal spoke to four AI startups at Collision, covering areas like filing taxes, DIY home and appliance repair, game building, and building work teams — all showing how AI can have an impact both at home and the workplace.

DIY home maintenance, with a little AI help

Collision presenter Eradj Khaidarov, Chief Technology Officer of IrisCX, spoke on the topic of “Delivering a more human experience through visual intelligence and AI.” He transitioned from twenty years in the video conferencing field to IrisCX, a video-based troubleshooting app that helps users with DIY repair. Anything from appliances to home devices, AI determines the make, model, problem, and spits out possible solutions.

Eradj Khaidarov (Photo by Dave Gordon)

“All of us hate dealing with manuals from 10 years ago and only keep them around when we truly need them — and we also hate dealing with YouTube videos that may not necessarily answer all our questions,” he explained. “The interactions with our product can help you get to an answer faster, without having someone come to your home. It’s just the little bit of guidance that can help us solve a problem quickly and efficiently.”

AI allows the app to summarize certain markers in the conversation, to formulate what was truly the problem. 

Let AI help find your next hire

Meanwhile, Raphael Ouzan, co-founder & CEO of A.Team, wants AI to revolutionize how people build teams. 

Prior to helping found the startup, he served in the Israeli military for five years in cyberwarfare and cryptology, “finding the power-people you could work with, even in impossible missions.”

Later, he built teams as he built start-ups, and realized he wanted to build something that would enable anyone to find the right teammate — or teammates — to accomplish a greater goal.

Raphael Ouzan (Photo by Dave Gordon)

When a user logs in to A.Team, they will do a search for their preferred skill and industry, while the AI will detect keywords, suggesting the relevant team that matches the work desired. 

“I would describe it as a platform that enables the formation, management, and scaling of elite tech teams that drive massive change for companies,” he said. 

“You can look at it like a high-end UpWork, for teams.”

A.Team has raised $55 million, funded by the likes of rapper Jay-Z, and has advisors that include Fiverr founder Shai Wininger and former UpWork CEO Stephane Kasriel.

Creativity + AI

One very popular area where AI is being leveraged is for imagery, game creation, and video creation.

Unity offers tools and solutions for game developers, industrial customers, and professional artists. And as Chief Marketing Officer Carol Carpenter explains, “what we are seeing is that every pixel, every piece of art, every frame will be compacted on the creative side by AI.”

“If you draw two frames, then ask: ‘hey, draw ten more for me like this.’ Or, I want a scene in a digital twin or game, with snowing mountains. AI can offer some art to choose from.” 

Carol Carpenter (Photo by Dave Gordon)

One of their newest products, Unity Muse, launched during Collision. As Carpenter describes, it “has a feel like ChatGPT, where programmers can type in an image request, and either see it animated or developed on-demand.” 

For example, the user could input the text: “Ferrari driving down a steep hill,” and what would pop out would be AI’s creation based on the request. The user could decide to keep it as a standalone graphic, or instruct Unity Muse to make the image animate. 

From there, the sky’s the limit, although a human hand — and creativity — will always play a part.  

To build a game today with real time 3D, she explains, what’s required is experience and coding knowledge. “It’s not something you just pick up and do easily.” 

With Unity, there’s an “ability to use natural language to create, to accelerate the process,” said Carpenter. “We still very much believe the creator needs to have ideas; they need to have the spark of imagination. AI is good for getting started or a prototype. Then there needs to be polish and human element of judgment.” 

Your taxes, automated

Many believe that the best place to deploy AI is for truly mundane tasks that make sense to automate. 

In that vein, Ben Borodach and his team have brought it to tax filing.

April is touted as the first AI-powered tax system that both optimizes and files taxes, via a large language model and proprietary generative AI that reads tax law.

Ben Borodach (Photo by Dave Gordon)

“It doesn’t matter if you’re an Uber driver, an e-commerce seller, or a family with two jobs, you still get the same experience,” explained the co-founder and CEO. “A personalized leveraging of AI, where we serve up 1.2 septillion unique paths to filing returns. So every single person gets a customized flow for their specific experience.”

There are, Borodach explained, thousands of possible tax questions across federal, state, and local jurisdictions that a taxpayer could be asked. Each time the user answers a question, the program learns more about the user.


As AI technologies evolve, its growth is poised to reshape virtually every field it touches.

It is already entering our lives in an accessible, individualized way, catering to the unique needs of each user. From healthcare and education to finance and entertainment, its capabilities will soon permeate unexpected areas, transforming our lives in profound ways.

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Global innovation comes to Collision

1,727 startups and partners from 76 countries descended on Toronto for one of the world’s largest tech events.

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​​Hoping to collide with angels and investors, nearly two thousands startups and partners from 76 countries and thirty industries convened at Collision in Toronto.

For attendees, it was a chance to take a peek at the future of tech. For exhibitors and startups, an all-access pass to global players, all under one roof. Indeed, floor exhibitors spanned the globe: Italy, Kosovo, Portugal, South Korea, and more.

The worldwide innovation and startup scene has had a rollercoaster few years. 2021 saw next-level growth, a trend that continued into 2022, until conflict and an energy crisis in Europe, supply-chain disruptions, layoffs, and inflation meant a period of instability. This has lasted into 2023, though at this midpoint of the year, there’s been an upswing. 

According to Startup Genome’s Global Startup Ecosystem Report 2023 — generated from analysis of data from 3.5 million startups across 290 global ecosystems — VC funding is still down, although gaming, blockchain, and fintech all saw increases. The AI and Big Data sub-sector has the highest number of total VC deals, with 28% of the global share. 

Entrepreneurs from around the world are seizing opportunities to disrupt industries, solve pressing challenges, and create innovative solutions. Collision is just one place to help make that happen.

Here’s a look at four countries that came to town.

Kosovo’s rapid growth

At just fifteen years old, the small Balkan nation of Kosovo came to Collision hoping to position itself as a burgeoning tech incubator — with a workforce less costly than most others in Europe.

Representing the country were Sedat Burrniku, Toronto’s Consul of Kosovo, and Fatos Idrizi from Pristina-based Kreahub, a company that mainly does web design, web development, branding, and digital marketing. Tenton, a software development company from Kosovo, was also part of the team.  

Fatos Idrizi and Sedat Burrniku (Photo by Dave Gordon)

Kosovo is a young country. It has a lot of potential in IT, among other fields and concepts. So, we would like to introduce our companies to the rest of the world,” Idrizi said, adding that his country has one of the highest Internet user rates in Europe, at 96.4% among a population of nearly two million. 

One of their biggest success stories was a made-in-Kosovo project dubbed “NatEv Explorer,” that detects natural disasters and catastrophes around the world, and won the NASA International Space Apps Challenge in 2015. 

“Kreahub is a young company with potential ahead,” explained Idrizi. “It is a first year for us. We finished, already, four projects in the US, one in Germany, and one in Switzerland. So, there is a huge market ahead. Also, today, I got a call for another project in the US.” 

Last year, Forbes featured an op-ed by Fatos Ameti, CEO of the Kosovo-based Sonnect, outlining the country as a “one to watch” in the tech and IT industries. He noted that the information/communications tech ecosystem, “is extensive, with numerous labs, innovation centers and workspaces… that provide startups with mentoring, financing, incubation, training and co-working spaces.”

Portugal: small but mighty

Isabel Advirta, from Lisbon City Council, noted that 13 startups from Portugal were present, showing as alpha or beta stages.

“Portugal is not a very big country, and Canada is a very big market, and a way to enter a greater market – which is North American. So, there are a lot of startups looking for greater investments or to scale to different markets,” she said.

“We have a lot of different verticals that are growing strong in Lisbon. We have Web3. We are also investing in fintech, impact, mobility is also strong,” she said, adding that startups in Lisbon are especially focused on health tech, sports tech, and gaming.

To date, she said Lisbon boasts seven unicorns.

“The companies that want to scale to high levels of investment have to leave the country. What we are doing is trying to change this situation, bringing more investors to Portugal,” she said. 

“It happens all the time that when they learn what is going on there, hear the pitches, they get interested. The trick is to let him hear. Sometimes it’s hard for investors to have that space, but when they do have that space, the opportunities are there.”

Benvenuti Italia

While Rome and Milan both have active startup ecosystems, Startup Genome’s report lists Turin as one of the top 35 European ecosystems for affordable talent. With over 110k students, it’s easy to see why. An in-the-works Italy Digital Nomad Visa will also boost numbers to both the country and region. The northern city is specifically cultivating growth in the areas of Smart Cities, space technology, and AI, Big Data, and analytics.

And in the fintech space, Mara Vendramin — founder and CEO of My Money — was at Collision’s Italy pavilion showing off a completely biometric form of handheld payment device that uses a fingerprint instead of a plastic debit/credit card — just one of the country’s 12,000+ startups.

Mara Vendramin (Photo by Mara Vendramin)

“Most importantly, it will democratize payment for everyone. Because today, the latest technology you can use to pay is with a smartphone – an expensive smartphone. With our system, all the people around the world will be able to pay, even if they don’t have a smartphone.”

Fraud will be “impossible” because fingerprint readers are FBI certified, she said. “For example, if I chop your finger and use it to pay, it will not work. The readers have ‘liveness’ detection. So, they will be able to realize if the finger is alive or real.” This will, she hopes, eliminate credit card fraud, and streamline faster payment at store kiosks.

South Korea at the forefront of innovation

South Korea does have a reputation as a tech and innovation centre — after all, it’s the home of companies like Samsung and LG. But as a startup ecosystem, it’s one of the world’s most thriving. In fact, Startup Genome has Seoul at #12 in its global ranking. It’s also in the top 15 for knowledge and for talent and experience. The ecosystem’s strengths? AI/Big Data/Analytics, life sciences, and advanced manufacturing and robotics, reports Startup Genome.  

At Collision, Hyunjin Shin, CEO and co-founder of Seoul’s Hudson.ai, is featuring their AI-powered dubbing solution to the film industry. It matches translated audio with natural mouth movement in any language or voice.

Hyunjin Shin (Photo by Dave Gordon)

“Sometimes, people are struggling to see a movie because of subtitles or the awkward dubbing,” she said. “The voice actor’s voice is sometimes really different from the original content. Also, it doesn’t match the lip and sound. It makes you very disengaged. We would like to tackle that problem with generated AI technology.”

With a staff of nine, in its first year they have already dubbed two Korean feature films. She said the company is hoping to gain a foothold in documentary films and US major motion pictures.

Like countless other South Korean startups, Hudson.ai benefits from their government’s support, Shin added. “They also have many programs to help accelerate an early stage company – especially tech companies,” she said. “My country has more and more an entrepreneurial culture, with mentorship, funding, and networking opportunities.”

Companies like e-commerce app Coupang and mobile platform Kakao have achieved significant growth and valuation, inspiring and attracting aspiring entrepreneurs, she explained. 


The interconnectedness fostered by Collision has created a fertile ground for innovation, where diverse perspectives and expertise converge to tackle complex global challenges.

As a four-day innovation station, no doubt many deals were made — a testament to these startups’  hotbed of creativity, disruption, and economic growth potential. The global startup ecosystem continues to thrive, pushing the boundaries of what is possible and shaping the future of industries worldwide.

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