iVentures Conference Comes to MaRS October 26 and 27

October 16, 2017

The 10th anniversary of Interactive Ontario’s flagship conference will prove to be a special one.

The two-day conference, now billed as iVentures 2017 (formerly GameON: Ventures), is taking place in Toronto on October 26 and 27 at the MaRS Discovery District. IVentures 2017 will feature entrepreneurs, educators and industry vets, all coming together to speak on ideas such as alternate realities and talent management.

This year’s conference is a bit different as iVentures is expanding to act as a marketplace for ideas across every form of interactive digital media. These ideas will be focused on three streams:

Ideas to Watch: innovation in technology, business models and content.
Collaboration: partnerships between interactive digital media producers and other sectors, from healthcare to education.
GameON: ihe business of video games.

IVentures is guided by an advisory panel made up of industry veterans. Kelly Lynne Ashton, a screen media consultant; Sasha Boersma, the co-founder of Sticky Brain Studios; Jeremy Friedburg, the co-founder of Spongelab Interactive and more all sit on the panel, helping to guide the conference in the right direction.

The keynote speaker for the event is Catherine Winder, a partner and the CEO at Skybound North. Winder produced multiple animated hits including The Angry Birds Movie and Star Wars: The Clone Wars Movie. Other speakers include Hao Lin, a development manager for Alibaba Cloud; Angela Robert, the CEO of Conquer Mobile; and Avinash Kumar, the co-founder of Quicksand.

There are speakers from over 10 countries discussing the roots of their growth and how to make it in the industry. There is also a performance by Ascension Aton:wa Harjo, a hoop dancer from Six Nations. The full schedule can be found here.

Tickets to iVentures for Interactive Ontario members start at $450, and for non-members, the price is $650. Event organizers have created a promo code for Techvibes readers to save 15 per cent (or nearly $100 off standard passes): iventuresTF15.