‘Expect the unexpected’ is one of the catch phrases that draws audiences to ideacity, the annual conference of visionary speakers, innovators, technologists, scientists and academics.

This year, for example, attendees heard from a serious mathematician – who had fun playing some great rock and roll! Audiences were shown advanced new neuro-scientific equipment that monitors brain activity – developed by a dance performer!

We heard about new life-preserving medical treatments, developed by an architectural software company and delivered much like a movie from an online subscription service.

Also unexpected: for the first time in its 15 year history, you were not necessarily expected to attend ideacity in person – a live stream webcast presented the unexpected to the audiences around the world from the stage at Koerner Hall in Toronto.

The presentations were recorded, of course, and many are now archived and accessible online at the ideacity website.

There are dozens of video streams there, capturing speakers from this year as well as years past, and the presentations are categorized by speaker or topic, searchable by the viewer, cross-referenced by the programmers.

Online now, for example, is a talk with unexpected self-deprecating humour and musical passion from a leading Canadian mathematician.

“Who wants to learn more about Fourier transforms?” asked Dalhousie Professor Jason Brown, expecting – and getting – little response.

“OK, well, who wants to sing Beatles songs?!!”

Much different reply – yet Brown managed to combine them both, and in his talk, he showed how advanced mathematical formulae can be used to decipher some of the greatest music in generations.

Brown explained how math helped him decode the opening chord from A Hard Day’s Night, one instantly identifiable to a generation of fans, but one also nearly impossible to re-create – until he figured out mathematically just what notes are used in the hit song’s iconic opening salvo.

In his recent book, Our Days Are Numbered, Brown explains how mathematics plays an active role in everyone’s life, not just pop musicians.

Surely, health plays a critical role in everyone’s life, too – advice on good health and human longevity is often given at ideacity, just not often by software people.

Canadian Andrew Hessel works with Autodesk, the company that is known for Autocad and other powerful software programs for architects and product designers, but he often puts such tech tools into the context of health care and medical research, not building buildings.

He talks about open source software, cloud computing, mobile applications, and online subscription models, but in the context of fighting cancer as much as watching movies.

The process he envisions is a new way to make medicine – by harnessing the flexibility of custom-written and openly shared software, the power of cloud computing and the organic capabilities of 3D printers.

These are not mass market drugs; these are highly targeted treatments that recognize the unique genetic make-up of each individual, like the way streaming movie sites try to recognize the different viewing habits of each of its members. Hessel talks about us subscribing to a digitally designed drug services online, much the way we sign up for streaming music or movie services.

Hessel’s ideas for a new business model for drug development are potentially just as disruptive to pharma-care as other online ideas have been to, say, the music industry.

That’s about the only thing that is expected at ideacity – innovative ideas and provocative presenters.

Like Ariel Garten, a Canadian performance artist involved in dance, music and art – and, somewhat unexpectedly, neuroscience and human cognition.

Garten is co-founder (with Trevor Coleman) and Chief Executive Officer of InteraXon, a Canadian company that’s now selling a wearable head band that helps you control your own mind.

Muse monitors mental activity and reads brain waves by way of several tiny sensors embedded in the headband – these headbands read brain waves and converted the signals into digital data, which are then process and displayed on a PC or smartphone screen.

Such information can be used to assess sleep patterns, manage stress levels, even – the investors say – to interact with other gadgets that have their own embedded sensors, and to control physical objects with the power of the mind.

 

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