On Saturday, students from universities across Southern Ontario convened at the second annual Young Entrepreneurs’ Conference, hosted by the Digital Enterprise Management Society to promote innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship.
Over 150 students and faculty attended the event from U of T, Sheridan, Waterloo, Western, McMaster, and other postsecondary institutions.
Co-chaired by U of T students Nicolo Marchisio and Karen Yu, the event featured talks by keynote speakers, including Mississauga mayor Hazel McCallion and Anthony Wensley, UTM’s director of the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information, and Technology.
During the breakout session after opening remarks, participants dispersed into various tutorial rooms to hear from different speakers. Notable speakers included Kal Mokhtarzada, the CEO and founder of the socially conscious design agency Pixel Dreams, Adam Deremo, the founder and managing partner at Awake Chocolates, Kim Relliinger, the senior account manager at Google, and the four-time TED Talk keynote speaker Bobby Umar, who is the president of Raeallan, a company that trains motivational speakers.
The event also included a Google Creative Design Challenge, a case competition in which teams of students were asked to design a feature for Google+ that would enhance classroom experiences for teachers and students.
The winning team—which was awarded a $1000 cash prize, a networking lunch, and a tour at Google Toronto—created a collaborative ecosystem for teachers and students for synthesizing information, making it understandable, and allowing students to express their needs and interests to their professors.
The winners, called Team Manu, were also awarded the Innovation Award by the representatives of the Research, Innovation, Commercialization Centre who helped sponsor the event.
The other sponsors included Bell, Scotiabank, and Google.
