Elevate Toronto Festival Showcases Vibrant and Innovative Tech Community

This week Toronto plays host to the Elevate Toronto Festival, a three-day tech festival aimed at showcasing the city’s vibrant and innovative tech community. Elevate Toronto was first announced in July, when leaders from Toronto’s corporate and startup industries joined with Mayor John Tory at the top of the CN tower to launch the city’s very first technology-focused festival.

“We are the financial and innovation centre of Canada and it’s time to showcase all of this,” declared the Mayor, who praised the innovation and creativity of Toronto’s expanding tech community. The event is an opportunity not only to celebrate the city’s tech ecosystem, but to promote Toronto on the world stage as an industry leader. “[W]e have a great place to build a career, a great place to build a business, and a commitment to disruption,” continued Tory. “This is our opportunity to showcase that.”

The Festival, which runs from Sept. 12 to 14, is a collaboration between seventeen different technology-focused organizations, in partnership with the City of Toronto. It will consist of educational panels and talks, presentations that showcase the best of Canadian innovation, and opportunities for visitors to network while sampling Toronto nightlife at locations across the city. Sectors such as AI, fintech and health technology will be represented. Investors, employees, entrepreneurs and industry partners will have the opportunity to listen to over 100 speakers and experience the city at over 70 venues.

Significantly, the Festival is designed to promote the desirability of Toronto’s tech culture as much as showcase its talent. The central themes of the Festival are diversity and inclusion, an explicit signal that the future of Toronto’s tech growth involves the participation of under-represented and under-utilized groups. It’s just one more way in which Toronto’s tech industry hopes to set itself apart from the rest as a community of innovation and opportunity.