Strategy
Canada’s magnificent 7
Key sectors drive meetings and events in vertical shift
anada is blazing a new
conference trail, bringing
its inward investment
teams together with its
conference ambassadors and business
events advocates as national agency
Business Events Canada’s Executive
Director, Chantal Sturk-Nadeau and
Director of Business Development
Virginie de Visscher explained to
CMW’s Iain Stirling recently during
London Tech Week.
CMW: How have things progressed, on the
technology side of things in particular, since
London Tech Week last year and your
‘Innovate Canada’ event in Montreal?
CSN: We’re constantly looking at our
main seven sectors in terms of getting
all the collateral and support materials
to be able to help build the tools to tell
our Canada story.
Last year was technology. London
Tech Week (LTW) was our first event,
so after that there was a continuation of
a deeper dive into tech on what we
achieved.
All the rest is about building six
other profiles of sectors – Canada’s
aerospace industry, Canada’s natural
resources, etc. So, those deep dives, that
knowledge of Canada that you’re seeing
right now (technology, life sciences) is a
display of each sector.
We have some very good wins out of
technology - the biggest being the
World Summit AI, and that came from
exhibiting at LTW last year.
looking to expand on their European
operations and launch a North
American version of the show. We were
competing against the US and we
showed them why AI is really strong in
Canada and why we would be the best
hosts. We invited them to Canada, they
visited both Toronto and Montreal and
were shown the strength of our AI
ecosystem. They ended up choosing
Montreal and booked a four-year event.
They had their launch event in April
this year with 1,000 attendees. We’re
building a case study with them to
showcase how that worked and they’re
looking to grow that within four years
to 6,000 people. A true success story
that came out of the tech sector focus
and being at LTW.
Last year it was just the two of us at
LTW; this year we have five cities
partnering.
CSN: As a national tourism
organisation, we’re also working very
closely with our invest agency, Invest in
Canada. This doesn’t happen in many
parts of the world. They lean on us, too,
to find out how they can help. We share
leads and opportunities whether it’s for
business events, to trade, to invest and
how do those business events become a
catalyst for future trade and investment.
Now we have a sizeable booth with
Invest in Canada at LTW. We have
presented to a full house every day.
Some were tech companies looking for
investment or something of that sort,
but ended up going, ‘Yes that makes
sense, how do we bring our convention
to Canada and take that next step’.
So, we’re still going to work the
technology strategy, but now in 2019
we’ve introduced life sciences.
Top: Chantal Sturk-
Nadeau, Business
Events Canada’s
VdV: So, at this year’s Innovate Canada,
we tried to attract international C-Suite
executives from corporations and
Executive
Director
Above: Virginie de
Visscher, Director
of Business
Development
VdV: The World Summit AI is
organised by British company Inspired
Minds. We connected at LTW last year
and worked with the High Commission
for Canada in London. They were
Left: The Montreal
McConnell Brain
Imaging Centre
ISSUE 102
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CONFERENCE & MEETINGS WORLD
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