Top 10 Highlights of CENGN Summit 2019
It is hard to believe that CENGN Summit was only two weeks ago! This was our most well-attended event yet, and it was full of highlights that made 2019’s Summit one to remember. We have put together our list of the top 10 highlights for you to reminisce on, or if you didn’t have the chance to attend, you can see what you missed!
10. PRESENTING THE STUDENT OF THE YEAR
CENGN showcased the 2019 Student of the Year at the Summit! This award is given to students who go above and beyond during their internship. This year’s winner was Kyler Manseau, who was a Cloud Infrastructure Engineering student. During his time at CENGN, he used Python to communicate with Cisco’s Redfish API, ensuring the collection of information from CENGN’s new servers could be done seamlessly.
Check out the video below that premiered at the CENGN Summit, to hear more about the Award and how Kyler took home the prize:
CENGN Student of the Year Award 2019
Are you interested in becoming a CENGN Student? Learn more about our student program here.
9. A FULL EXHIBITOR SHOWCASE
CENGN Summit 2019 boasted 15 exhibitors who brought their A-Game! This year’s lineup included our Platinum sponsor, CWTA, silver sponsors, Wind River and Huawei, reception sponsor, ThinkOttawa, as well as, CANARIE, Carleton University, CIRA, CloudOps Inc., EXFO, IDEaS, Infinera, Invest Ottawa, Juniper Networks, ORION, and the University of Ottawa.
The exhibitor area was packed with people from the different corners of the ICT industry, excited to learn about the new products and innovations coming from the leaders in the sector. It also introduced a CENGN Zone, where attendees were shown interactive demos on our services, training offerings from CENGN Academy, and exposed to the CENGN Experience!
Learn more about our exhibitors and sponsors by visiting our digital tote page here!
8. CWTA AND ACCENTURE DELIVER AN INCREDIBLE LOOK INTO THE FUTURE OF 5G NETWORKING
Robert Ghiz, President and CEO of CWTA, and Tejas Rao, Managing Director and Global 5G Offering Lead at Accenture presented on the arrival of 5G and how it promises to completely change the telecom landscape. Each speaker emphasized the economic and societal benefits that will come from deploying 5G within our urban and rural communities, as well as how the right support will make the fifth generation of networking different from all past iterations.
Watch the platinum keynote session below:
Keynote Speakers: Robert Ghiz. CWTA & Tejas Rao, Accenture
Click here to download the Accenture report
7. AN INSIDE LOOK AT CENGN’S EXPANDING ONTARIO PRESENCE
A huge highlight of the day was taking the opportunity to showcase our partnership with the three major networking innovation hubs of Ontario, Communitech, Invest Ottawa, and MaRS. Over the past year, CENGN has expanded its infrastructure through the Ontario Next Generation Networks Program (NGNP). As part of the program, each innovation hub has become a host of our infrastructure, housing a CENGN data centre on location. These data centres connect to CENGN HQ to make up the complete CENGN Cloud Native Testbed, which growing Canadian businesses across Ontario can leverage to test their solutions and overcome commercialization barriers! These hubs are an essential part of our ecosystem, and we were more than happy to show off their hard work and the local success stories of tech companies in their regions.
To learn more or submit a proposal for a CENGN Project click here.
6. AN INSPIRING TALK BY AMY J. RADIN
Providing CENGN Summit’s morning inspiration was Amy J. Radin! Amy is the author of The Change Maker’s Playbook and a start-up adviser, making her the perfect person to speak on leveraging innovation to make a commercial impact. Her insights on buyers, payers and influencers, as well as how to listen to your customer base made this talk a value-filled start to the day!
Watch the recording of her presentation below:
Keynote Speaker: Amy J. Radin
BONUS!
Every attendee was provided a copy of Amy’s book, The Change Maker’s Playbook, which is a valuable guide on how to seek, seed and scale innovation in any market. This book is chock full of tips for entrepreneurs, executives, and anyone in between, and was a big hit for bringing the inspiring talk home with you from the Summit!
5. THE PANELS EXPLORING THE FUTURE OF CONNECTIVITY
After Lunch, the program split into two tracks, Technical and Innovation. To kick things off, the Innovation Track showcased the ‘Open Source: Enabler or Threat?’ panel, featuring Daniel Bernier, Senior Technical Architect at Bell, Ian Hood, Chief Technologist at Red Hat, Ian Jolliffe, Senior Director of Engineering at Wind River, and moderator Natalie Giroux, Business Lead, Innovation Strategy, Stratford Managers Corporation. These panelists discussed how open source is leveraged by a variety of enterprises, and what its adoption means for the future of the sector. One of the biggest takeaways from this panel was how companies can retain their intellectual property while still leveraging the advantages of open source.
Watch the recorded video below:
Panel: Open Source, Enabler or Threat?
Closing the Innovation Track was moderator Ryan Anderson, President of Satellite Canada Innovation Network, and panelists Tim Brown, Director, Community Infrastructure, Community and Government Services, Nunavut, Ariane Cornell, Director of Astronaut & Orbit Sales, Blue Origin, and Stephen Hampton, Government Affairs, Telesat. These representatives came together for ‘The Opportunity of LEO’ panel, exploring how Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellations present new opportunities to connect remote and rural communities. The session highlighted the importance of providing reliable internet access to all Canadians, and debated whether the LEO satellite system can fulfill Canada’s goals for providing stable wireless access across the country.
Watch the recorded video below:
Panel: The Opportunity of LEO – Solving the Canadian Connectivity Dilemma
The panels were a great way to bookend our innovation track, and provided excellent discussions on technologies that will have wide, sweeping impacts across the entire country. These experts came from different companies and different perspectives, which provided a thorough exploration on the technologies, their usage and the challenges and opportunities we should be aware of.
4. INTRODUCING THE BRAND-NEW TECH TRACK
Juxtaposed to the Innovation Track was the newly introduced Technical Track, designed to allow experts in cutting-edge technologies to speak about how the tech they are working with can benefit the industry today.
Our lineup was stacked with some amazing speakers! Check out the star-studded line up:
The result was a packed room of eager industry professionals, who took away new knowledge about the tools shaping the sector.
Watch the recorded Tech Track videos and see their slides by clicking here.
3. INJECTING THE MUCH NEEDED FUN!
How do we put a smile on your face? Cool swag of course! This year’s Summit boasted some great takeaways; not only were Amy’s books a big hit, every attendee also got the chance to rep the CENGN brand, with smartphone compatible gloves. Looking good!
And after all the learning was complete, the real networking began with the CENGN Summit’s Traditional Craft Brew Tour. This year the tour featured Top Shelf Distillers, Calabogie Brewery, and Amsterdam Brewing Co. The evening was a great night cap on the Summit, letting our attendees network, discuss the day’s program, and get to know each other over beers and cocktails.
2. BRUCE ROSS TALKS TRANSFORMATION OF BUSINESS IN HIS CLOSING KEYNOTE
CENGN Summit’s final Keynote, Bruce Ross, Group Head, Technology & Operations at RBC closed off the day, with his presentation on “Harnessing Transformative Technology”. He spoke about how even large and established businesses, like RBC, are looking to the future and have put a large focus on innovation, as well as bringing new people into the ecosystem through external hiring and student programs. His presentation really underlined the benefits of the innovation ecosystem for all Canadians, and was the perfect closer as it truly embodied what CENGN and the Summit stands for.
Watch the video and hear what Bruce had to say below:
1. THE NETWORKING!
CENGN Summit really is a premiere event for meeting with the leaders of the networking ecosystem. With all the bright minds in attendance, you could learn a lot just by speaking to the person sitting next to you. Through the next generation network showcases during morning and afternoon, as well as the breakfast, lunch and reception, all attendees were encouraged to network and speak about their projects, current opportunities, and new innovations in the space. We are confident that everyone in attendance met someone new and formed a lasting connection with another person in the ecosystem.
And that’s that. We hope you enjoyed this trip down memory lane! With the amazing turnout, and incredible program, this year’s Summit was the best yet. We are going to build off of this momentum, so we hope you are all looking forward to what the future has in store!
Check out our CENGN Summit highlight video here:
CENGN Summit 2019
About the Author
CENGN, Canada’s Centre of Excellence in Next Generation Networks, drives technology innovation and industry growth through our testbed, technical expertise, talent development, and partner ecosystem. Through our projects, CENGN enables small and medium Canadian Enterprises to test and validate promising technologies, removing barriers to product commercialization and accelerating market growth.
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