mesh conference, Author at mesh

Mar 07

Announcing mesh12: It’s time to mesh

By mesh conference mesh news, mesh12

It’s hard to believe the seventh mesh is just over the horizon. From its humble roots as an event created so Canadians could come together to talk about the exciting things happening on the Web, mesh has become Canada’s largest digital conference with speakers coming from around the world and more than 700 attendees.

We’re proud about what we’ve built but the reality is you need to keep evolving to stay fresh, current and relevant. With this in mind, we’re excited to finally unveil a new and, hopefully, improved mesh featuring a different format and focus.

The biggest change is the four dedicated streams – media, marketing, business and society – are disappearing. Instead, discussions about each topic will happen on both days to provide attendees with more choices to meet their personal and professional needs.

Second, there will be fewer sessions overall. How come? As much as it was great to offer an extensive “menu” of options, we believe (based on lots of feedback) that attendees are interested in delivering content that’s challenging and provocative that will resonate with mesh attendees and provide tons of food for thought.

We believe these are changes that will maintain mesh as an inspiring two-day event that educates, engages and entertains at a time when people have more options and, at the same time, only so much time to escape the office.

The one thing that won’t change about mesh is the importance of networking. As much as having great speakers is a must-have, a key part of mesh’s success is creating an atmosphere that encourages people from different sectors to meet each other, share ideas and establish new relationships. In other words, mesh remains about meshing.

As for who’s coming to mesh, we’re stoked about a line-up of speakers that includes Clay Hamilton, Dave Winer, Andy Carvin, Rebecca MacKinnon, Dr. Michael Evans and Stewart Lombard. We’ll announce more speakers over the coming weeks.

You can register for early-bird tickets for $579 (regular price $679), and we have student tickets for $99.

Nov 29

Love0

Sean Ellis Speaking at meshwest

By mesh conference meshwest

We seem to be living in the midst of a startup renaissance with a flurry of entrepreneurial activity. Heck, it’s even happening Canada, including the emergence of a growing amount of seed capital to turn ideas into companies.

Given all this activity, we’re thrilled to have Sean Ellis speak at meshwest. An entrepreneur, startup executive, one of the leading startup thought leaders and popular blogger, Ellis will offer valuable insight for startups and entrepreneurs looking for an edge in a highly-competitive landscape.

Ellis is the founder and CEO of CatchFree, an online service that makes it easy to find and compare the best free online solutions to meet your needs. CatchFree has raised $5.5-million in venture capital, and launched in May 2011.

Before founding CatchFree, Sean ran marketing at LogMeIn and Uproar from launch to NASDAQ IPO filings, and helped bring Dropbox, Lookout, and Xobni to market in interim marketing leadership roles. He also helped accelerate growth at Eventbrite, Socialcast, Webs, World Golf Tour, WordPress.com and Songkick.

Tickets for meshwest can be purchased here.

Nov 21

Love0

Vancouver, Here We Come!

By mesh conference meshwest

Coming off a successful meshmarketing last week, we’re getting ready to host meshwest in Vancouver on Dec. 5 at the Salt Building.

Vancouver is the third leg of our Western Canadian tour that started in Calgary in June, before hitting Edmonton in early-October. So far, it’s been a great ride with some terrific speakers and, as important, an engaged group of attendees. As much as compelling programming is part of the mesh DNA, it’s the connections and networking that make help make mesh more than just your typical conference.

We’re excited about Vancouver because it not only does it give us a chance to hit the “Left Coast” but we finally get to follow through on the requests we’ve received since mesh started in 2006 to take mesh a cross-Canada affair.

meshwest kicks off with a keynote from Stewart Butterfield, who has moved into the gaming world with Tiny Speck, whose debut title is an ambitious massively multiplayer online game called Glitch.

We’ve got a great “Standup Panel” with Erik Blachford, Carl Schmidt and Jason Bailey. You might be wondering what “Standup” means; it’s a look at companies that have moved beyond being startups but still have to tackle key growth challenges and issues.

Janice Diner is going to deliver valuable insight into what to do with a Facebook Page to make it an effective marketing and sales machine.

We’ve also got Alexandra Samuel, Caroline MacGillvray and Elijah van der Giessen doing a panel on social media and political activism, which will be moderated by Darren Barefoot.

And Zite CEO Mark Johnson is going talk about the fast-moving world of tablet computing and how it’s changing how content is created and consumed.

For anyone interested in how the Web is impacting how we work and live, there’s something for everyone at meshwest. And we’ve got a great end-of-day social to wrap things up.

Tickets for meshwest are now on sale, including a block of tickets for $249 (a $40 discount) available through our friends at CIRA.