Session Title: Fashioning Reality
Presenter: Ben Barry
Description: Ben outlines the ups and downs of starting a venture with limited capital, developing mentors, finding your niche, generating media attention, growing a project, and creating social change through business.

Session Title: From Passion to Profit: How to Change the World by Doing What You Love
Presenter: Ryan Little
Description: Veteran entrepreneur Ryan Little shares key lessons learned from the founding of two wildly successful companies and one of Canada’s fastest-growing charities. Join him as he explores the relationship between personal conviction, financial success and positive social change.

Session Title: Doing Well by Doing Good: An Introduction to Social Entrepreneurship
Presenter: Tonya Surman
Description: Tonya Surman will talk about the creation of the Centre for Social Innovation and provide an overview of social entrepreneurship and the emerging hybrid space.

Session Title: Don't Finish School Without Three Things
Presenter: John Philip and Malgosia Green
Description: John Philip Green and Malgosia Green explain how to make sure you get everything you need from university before you become an entrepreneur.

Session Title: Don't Finish School Without Three Things
Presenter: Ann Kaplan
Description: There is a successful entrepreneur in everyone! From start up to a multi million dollar business: join Ann Kaplan as she weaves you through her bumpy road to success. She'll speak about the challenges of finding balance while launching a startup and learning from your mistakes.
Return to Top

Session Title: Startups 101 - Both in the Financial World and Venture Capital
Presenter: Duncan Stewart
Description: Duncan Stewart discusses finding start-up capital for launching your own business and jobs in the finance industry!

Session Title: The Psychology of Entrepreneurial Success
Presenter: Chuck Reynolds
Description: Preparing to succeed as an entrepreneur requires confidence, not just competence. It's a mindset needed to succeed and Think Big. Chuck will speak to how to overcome challenges, and will outline the common mental habits of the most successful entrepreneurs. Learn the 5 D's of success to move forward by practicing effective self-leadership.

Session Title: International Entrepreneurship
Presenter: Tobias Lütke
Description: Now is the time- anyone can do it! Tobi talks about the global world of e-commerce while guiding you through launching a startup from the ground up.

Session Title: Balmshell: The Beauty of Launching a Cosmetic line
Presenter: Jennifer Lees
Description: How we launched a successful cosmetic company, the mistakes we made and the lessons we learned. The Good, The Bad and the Beauty.

Session Title: Brand Building 101
Presenter: Linda Haynes
Description: Find out how the ACE Bakery evolved from a small family business into an industry leader. Linda Haynes, founder of the ACE Bakery, discusses how to turn start-up challenges into opportunities and creating a brand people trust.
Return to Top

Presenter: Bob Young
Description: At some point, we all fail. Whether it is due to plummeting markets or lack of experience does not matter, only that you will someday lead a project that fails and it will be all your fault. The mark of a successful entrepreneur is their ability to learn from their mistakes and overcome their failures.
With the 1992 failure of the computer rental business he was running, Bob's net worth was reduced to something less than it had been when he graduated from Vic College at UofT 16 years earlier. Yet but for that failure Bob's greatest success, Red Hat Inc., would never have happened.
Bob will use his career from typewriter rentals to Lulu.com, his current online self-publishing project, to explain how he managed to overcome his (many) failures. Hint: Beer is helpful but optional.

Session Title: FUNNY MONEY
Presenter: James Cunningham
Description: James Cunningham’s FUNNY MONEY program burst onto the scene in Canada in 1998 and has since grown into North America’s #1 “fun-ancial” seminar. FUNNY MONEY brings humour into the often dry subject of personal finance, encouraging people to take a greater interest in their own financial futures. It covers everything from the basics of budgeting and debt management to investing, and teaches students and young adults how to break their bad financial habits so that they can regain control of their financial lives. The program has already prepared ten of thousands of high school seniors and college and university students for the realities of their financial lives after their educations.

Funny Money addresses what is a growing problem – young people leaving school unprepared for the day-to-day realities of paying the rent, properly using a credit card, or budgeting for the basic necessities. The Funny Money mission is simple; take all of the confusion out of the complex world of finances and empower today’s youth with the knowledge they need to make good financial choices.

Session Title: How to have three successful technology start-ups in 10 years ….. with big pay days
Presenter: Bryan McLeod
Description: How to have three successful technology start-ups in 10 years ….. with big pay days

Session Title: So You Want to Be An Entrepreneur
Presenter: Mark Borkowski
Description: Entrepreneurship is about creating wealth. It is about building and growing much more useful enterprises. New wealth and economic growth in the future will come from commercializing new technologies and growing our smaller and medium-sized companies into international competitors. To those individuals interested in exploiting opportunities, there are a multitude of them available.
Every piece of the economic puzzle exists in Canada; we have the know-how and the investment capital. What we lack is the gumption to take the bull by the horns and realize our opportunities. These opportunities must be welcomed and not allowed to pass on to other nations. If there is money to be made, why should new Canadian entrepreneurs wait for others to make it? The economic pie is massive and if Canada is to survive the next century, it will need to grab a significant piece. Let us make one issue perfectly clear, our survival depends not on government intervention, but on the initiative and ingenuity of new Canadian entrepreneurs.

Session Title: Critical Communication: PR Essentials for Every Business
Presenter: Mia Wedgbury
Description: From entrepreneurs to entertainers, PR plays a huge role in shaping perceptions, creating credibility, and reinforcing reputations. In the business world, a single influential article or blog post can either do incredible damage to an organization’s bottom line or strengthen its stature. In a one hour interactive session, Mia Wedgbury, President and Co-Founder of High Road Communications, will delve into case studies of companies she’s worked with—from start-ups to multinationals—to illustrate the power of PR and the online influence.

Session Title: From Concept to Reality: Catering to the Market
Presenter: Teresa Snelgrove
Description: Great ideas need landing gear. Learn from successful entrepreneur and co-founder of Timothy's World Coffee, Teresa Snelgrove, as she describes the challenges and successes she faced when entering the entrepreneurial world.

Session Title: Social Capital Markets: Meeting the Double Bottom Line
Presenter: Bill Young
Description: What makes a social entrepreneur? How does the landscape of business today affect a company's ability to meet both social and financial objectives? Join successful entrepreneur Bill Young as he takes you through his experiences as a leader in the Canadian business community. Learn how you too can use social capital as an asset.
Return to Top

Session Title: A Day in the Life
Presenter: Jay Klein and Matthew Corrin
Description: Compare and contrast a day in the life of two young, energetic and successful entrepreneurs. Jay Klein and Matthew Corrin will share their experiences and lessons in a unique, funny and motivational presentation and Q&A session. Learn what it takes to succeed from the ambitious founders of Bonus Gum and Freshii.

Session Title: Successful Entrepreneurship: What the VC's are Really Looking For
Presenter: Greg Wolfond
Description: Greg Wolfond will share his views on what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur and hold an interactive discussion with a couple of Blue Sky Capital's investee companies.

Session Title: Entrepreneurship in Difficult Times
Presenter: Stuart MacDonald
Description: Stuart MacDonald talks about how the world economy looks set for some tough times. What do you, as an entrepreneur, need to do to be ready and succeed in the face of these challenges?

Session Title: Entrepreneurial Sales
Presenter: Gary Schwartz
Description: Gary Schwartz talks about the unique flexibility that comes with pitching your own company. He explores understanding sales through the eyes of the entrepreneur, the consumer and the market.
Return to Top

Presenter: Leonard Brody
Description: We are standing at one of the most challenging crossroads in human history. One that may not enable our past to predict our future. Technological evolution has, in less than a decade, connected every human being on the planet at the touch of button. Matched by demographic growth at both ends of the age continuum, we are fundamentally different people than we were only a few years ago. Combine this with the earth receding around us and the very foundations of our financial markets decaying and it is easy to feel disoriented, if not dismayed. Futurists are going to continuously be challenged by the pace of this metamorphosis thereby struggling in being able to predict where we are headed. Ten year, and even five year plans, are almost impossible. There are three drivers in this maelstrom that, if properly understood, can help one prosper in this chaos – mastering the concepts of the compression of time, the plentitude of access and the removal of value economics. This talk will help you put a plan together to master these concepts, to navigate the world around you and, to understand the future of Canada, and, most importantly, to be prepared for the next 730 days of your life.
Return to Top