Tens of thousands of tech professionals, innovators, and entrepreneurs gathered in Toronto for the Collision 2024 conference where the gamut of tech and latest trends were addressed. Replacing Collision next spring will be Web Summit, which will take run from May 27-30, 2025, in Vancouver.

Collision 2024 Themes and Topics

“AI was a key theme across all Collision stages this year,” shared Web Summit director of Impact Alice McDermott. “Talks by Geoffrey Hinton, the British-Canadian Godfather of AI, and Aidan Gomez, co-founder and CEO of Cohere – a Canadian company that provides large language models (LLMs) to enterprises – attracted a lot of media attention and offered different perspectives on the future of AI.”

Added McDermott, “Other notable voices in the AI world who spoke at Collision’s final edition included Jonathan Ross, founder and CEO of Groq; Kanjun Qiu, co-founder and CEO of Imbue; and Waabi founder and CEO Raquel Urtasun – who revealed at Collision that the company expects to have self-driving trucks on the road as early as next year with the help of its recent US$200 million Series B raise.”

“Jeff Shiner, CEO of 1Password – representing Waterloo and Canada – generated a lot of interest at the event, discussing the threat AI poses to cybersecurity. Canada was well represented overall, with a number of top Canadian speakers, investors and startups attending the event.”

McDermott also shared, “Of course, sustainability was also a key topic at Collision, with one of the Centre Stage talks answering the question, “Can climate tech save the world?”. This discussion brought together several entrepreneurs working in the field, including Gigascale Capital founder and former Meta CTO Mike Schroepfer; Dioxycle co-founder and CEO Sarah Lamaison; and GlacierGrid founder and CEO Manik Suri.”

Additionally, McDermott remarked, “The VC market in 2024 was another prominent topic during Collision’s final edition. Renowned Forbes’ Midas List investors, including Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures; Wesley Chan, co-founder of FPV Ventures; and Nigel Morris, co-founder of QED Investors, shared their viewpoints on the challenges facing venture capital.”

Data as it relates to democracy was also addressed said McDermott.

“With nearly 50 percent of the planet set to vote this year, the potential for technology to strengthen democracy also became a widely discussed theme at Collision. Speakers on this topic included United Nations chief of data, analytics and emerging technologies Lambert Hogenhout, and DeRay McKesson, American civil rights activist and early leader of the Black Lives Matter movement.”

“Lastly, it’s worth noting that this year was big for women entrepreneurs, with 45 percent of startups at the event being founded by women, the highest proportion ever at a Collision event, up from 30 percent in 2023,” added McDermott.

Sustainability and Tech

I asked McDermott to elaborate on sustainability and tech, particularly as conference organizers, to which she responded, “Technology presents a huge opportunity to promote sustainability, because as humans, there are a lot of things that we can’t do at scale that technology enables us to do, such as data-driven conservation efforts, or using technology to see things that we wouldn’t typically be able to without sensors and satellites.”

“Earlier this year, for example, Web Summit – the company behind Collision – formed an all-women Impact steering committee with representatives from key areas to ensure sustainability remains a priority,” said McDermott. “We want to make sure that there are less barriers to entry for our partners that may be NGOs or conservation and biodiversity companies.”

“Our final Collision event featured nearly 200 startups in the Impact program, showcasing promising climate tech, healthtech, and deep tech startups,” stated McDermott.

“We’ve also had several leaders in sustainability speak at our events, including Al Gore and Microsoft CSO Melanie Nakagawa,” McDermott added. “Other notable speakers have included Climate Cardinals founder Sophia Kianni and Perfect Day co-founder and CEO Ryan Pandya, who shared their ideas about tackling the climate crisis at scale.

“Bringing together Impact investors is an important part of our event for the Impact attendees who want to move into the sector. We’ve had funds such as Obvious Ventures, DCVC, Contrarian Ventures and Gigascale Capital attend our events,” said McDermott.

“There is a clear and enthusiastic audience for this type of content,” McDermott summarized.

Sustainability in Practice

I also asked McDermott to share how Web Summit employs sustainability.

“Sustainability is a core focus when planning our events, particularly since 2016, when Web Summit first publicly pledged support to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),” answered McDermott who then also offered the following examples of how Web Summit addresses sustainability:

• Zero-waste events: We try to ensure our events are zero-waste. Uneaten food items, for example, are recovered and donated. In 2022, we successfully recovered 110 kilograms of food across all our events. This is the equivalent of approximately 220 meals, resulting in avoiding 462 ppm of CO2 emissions.
• Plastic reduction: We have eliminated single-use plastics at our events and are working towards making our conferences as close to carbon-neutral as possible.
• Stage and event materials: Centre Stage at Collision in Toronto was built using 77 repurposed agricultural water storage tanks that are redistributed and reused post-event. Collision also uses a 100 percent recyclable FSC board name badge for all attendee types, as an alternative to plastic badges, and all startup boards used throughout the event are fully recyclable.
• Impact: Our Impact startup program showcases the startups working to have a positive impact on their communities, industries and ecosystems, and introduces them to some of the world’s leading investors, companies and media.
• The Earthshot Prize: Since being launched by Prince William and The Royal Foundation in October 2020, Web Summit has been an official nominator for The Earthshot Prize, a global challenge based on five ambitious goals to fix the world’s biggest environmental problems. With Web Summit’s network of startups, the prize enables us to spotlight and help support innovative solutions working to repair and regenerate the planet.
• Onstage discussions: Our events promote discussions on how businesses and leaders can improve and create new sustainability practices.
• Impact partnership initiative: This year, we established the Impact partnership initiative to ensure that we have multiple partners from different industries at the event, helping to minimize the barriers to entry for our partners that are NGOs, or conservation and biodiversity companies. For example, we partnered with the Canadian arm of the UN Global Compact Network, a United Nations pact to get businesses and firms worldwide to adopt sustainable and socially responsible policies.

-30-

More articles on sustainability