In its first year in Toronto, Collision – North America’s fastest-growing technology conference – surpassed its attendance target, welcoming 25,711 attendees from 125 countries to the Enercare Centre at Exhibition Place from May 20 to 23.
The City of Toronto partnered with Tourism Toronto and Exhibition Place to bring the sought-after conference here for three years to build on the momentum of the Toronto region’s technology industry. This was the first time that the conference was held outside of the United States.
The conferences are expected to have an economic impact of $147 million over the next three years.
Collision concluded last night having brought more than twice as many speakers, start-ups and investors to Toronto compared to last year’s conference. The size of Collision’s sold-out floor space was seven times larger than last year’s event in New Orleans and also surpassed its flagship event, Web Summit.
A reported 850 investors attended, along with 100 trade delegations from more than 55 countries. The event also experienced an 83 per cent increase in start-up attendance, attracting 1,100 start-ups from 60 countries.
In addition to surpassing its attendance target, Collision in Toronto had the best gender ratio in the event’s history.
By hosting Collision, Toronto aims to attract direct foreign investment to Canada, promote international trade and partnerships with Canadian companies, entice venture capitalist investment in Canadian companies, and promote Toronto and Canadian innovation ecosystems.
The Toronto region ranks as the largest tech sector in Canada and the fourth largest in North America. The sector employs more than 300,000 people in 24,000 companies and accounts for 15 per cent of all the jobs in the region.
Collision is part of a series of technology conferences that include Web Summit in Europe and RISE in Hong Kong. More information is available at https://collisionconf.com/.
Quotes
“I am confident that the ripple effects of our first year hosting Collision in Toronto will continue to fuel our technology sector’s phenomenal growth, creating more employment opportunities, innovation and investments.”
– Toronto Mayor John Tory
“Hosting Collision in Toronto exceeded our expectations, surpassing our own ambitious targets for growth and impact. We look forward to returning for the next two years to Toronto’s diverse and dynamic tech industry.”
– Paddy Cosgrave, founder and CEO of Collision
“Hosting Collision in Toronto has been great for our company’s continued international expansion. We were able to meet with C-level executives from six different global automakers all in our hometown in the same week. The ability of Collision to bring international decision makers to Toronto represents a big step forward for our tech community.”
– Sheetal Jaitly, CEO of TribalScale
“We’re honoured to have shared the worldwide stage of collision alongside some of the most innovative start-ups in our ecosystem. We’re thrilled to have hosted Collision in our home city of Toronto this year and we can’t wait to witness its continued growth over the next two years.”
– Marie Chevrier, CEO and founder of Sampler and Growth Summit speaker at Collision
“Collision is a platform to explore the next generation of start-ups, and connect with individuals solving global problems with latest technologies in artificial intelligence, blockchain and virtual reality. Toronto has a great ecosystem for technology with MaRS and University of Toronto as an epicenter for talent.”
– Urmil Shah, Senior Software Engineer, Texas Instruments
“Collision is an amazing place for arranged serendipity. I’ve known a large part of my network virtually for years and we were finally all under one roof this week. As part of the Alpha start-up program, we made great connections with people from all parts of the ecosystem. The world stage was brought to Toronto this week and I’m excited to see what happens as we all continue to grow the seeds we planted here.”
– Sage Franch, co-founder and CTO of Crescendo
Toronto is Canada’s largest city, the fourth largest in North America, and home to a diverse population of more than 2.9 million people. It is a global centre for business, finance, arts and culture and is consistently ranked one of the world’s most livable cities. For information on non-emergency City services and programs, Toronto residents, businesses and visitors can visit http://www.toronto.ca, call 311, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, or follow us on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/cityoftoronto, on Instagram at http://www.instagram.com/cityofto or on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/cityofto.
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