On an annual basis a group of Ryerson University’s commerce students come together to create a unique experience: Connect IT Conference. Every year the group strives to explore the various interrelated dimensions of information technology (IT) by featuring thought leaders, industry professionals and business visionaries. This year the conference looks to go big by taking on open and creative communities’ full steam.
Hosted at the Arcadian Court offsite from Ryerson’s urban campus Ted Rogers School of Management (TRSM) students are given the opportunity to include themselves in a discussion of tomorrow’s business and IT challenges and opportunities. By attracting Toronto’s biggest and brightest tech leaders the conference is positioned to bring strategies for managing technology and innovation developments while positioning Ryerson students as leaders in the sector.
With Cities increasingly taking the lead where regional and federal governments fall behind, Connect IT Conference 2009: Small Rooms | Big Ideas will explore the relationship of IT and the social fabric. Small Rooms | Big Ideas speaks to the power of collaboration and sharing ideas through the use of participation-centric technologies. The Conference organizing team imagines this power as so massively huge, like that witnessed in the Obama movement, that no room or City can possibly contain it.
Discussions led by policy, design and change organizing practitioners will focus on what is required of a City from a technology perspective to drive innovation and creativity. The conference hopes to expose Ryerson students to grass-roots movements—enabled by technology—by engaging local technology professionals and the City of Toronto’s leading tech authorities: Dave Wallace and John Cannon, both of whom hold CIO titles with the City of Toronto and the TTC respectively.
Keynote Address:
- Mark Surman - Executive Director at Mozilla Foundation, community technology activist, writer and blogger
//commonspace.wordpress.com/
Speakers:
- Abby Goodrum - Rogers Research Chair in News, Media and Technology at Ryerson University
//abbygoodrum.net/ - Diane Francis - Editor-at-Large for the National Post, author, distinguished visiting professor at the Ted Rogers School of Management
//dianefrancis.com/ - Heloise Emdon - Acacia Program Manager at International Development Research Centre
- Mark Kuznicki - Principal at Remarkk! Consulting, researcher, writer, strategy consultant, and ChangeCamp organizer.
//remarkk.com/ - Matthew Milan - Principal and CEO at Normative Thinking, designer, spatial tech geek, information architect.
//mmilan.typepad.com/
Background:
By partnering with the Ted Rogers School of Information Technology Management at Ryerson University, the Connect IT conference is the only student-run conference in Canada that explores the various interrelated dimensions of IT for the ultimate purpose of encouraging tomorrow’s business leaders to develop strategies for the management of technology and innovation.
Conference Mission: To provide Canadian students with unparalleled appreciations and knowledge of opportunities and challenges currently facing communities and information technology in order to facilitate change and adaptability in one’s personal and professional life.
###
Jaime Sorgente
jsorgente [@] connectitconference.com
Connect IT Conference
Ryerson University
350 Victoria St.
TRSM 2-004
Toronto, ON
M5B 2K3
Tags: change, City of Toronto, creativity, open communities, participative technology, ryerson university, Toronto tech authority