events
PowerPoint karaoke is back! PPTKTO #2
After the ridiculous success of last February’s PowerPoint Karaoke #1, Jay and I really had no choice but to do it once again. Powerpoint karaoke is where brave public speakers have 5 minutes to earnestly present an (invariably preposterous, verging on dadaist) slide presentation which they have never seen before in their lives.
Here’s some [...]
Got your ticket yet for PowerPoint Karaoke? [updated]
This Friday, my good friend Jay Goldman and I are organizing Toronto’s first PowerPoint Karaoke event. It’s going to be awesome. From the official description:
The Stage is Yours, the Slides Aren’t
PowerPoint Karaoke brings presentations from the conference room to the karaoke stage in an entertaining and competitive event. In PowerPoint Karaoke, contestants deliver PowerPoint [...]
Come discuss AR with me @ York Mobile Media Lab
Date: Monday Dec 7, 2009
Time: 3:00-5:00 pm
Where: Mobile Media Lab, York University
Technology Enhanced Learning Building
88 the Pond Road, Room Tel 2001
Link: Thomas Purves talk at Mobile Media Lab
Who knew that since I gave my first Augmented Reality talk back in April of this year that AR would become such a trending topic amongst marketers, geeks [...]
Announcing Lift@home Toronto and DemoCamp2019 [Location Updated]
ATTENTION NEW VENUE: Canadian Corps Association Hall 201 Niagara Street Toronto
Introducing Lift@Home Toronto and DemoCamp 2019 [ticket link]
LIFT Conference is an international tech conference based out of Geneva, with events in Switzerland, France and Korea. For the first time this year, Toronto has been invited to participate as part of the Lift@Home. Lift is not [...]
Some neat events coming up at Rotman this fall
My alma mater, the Rotman School at UofT has a great track record of bringing in some great speakers to Toronto and as well there’s a lot of excellent research that comes out of the school itself. I would say unfortunately though you may not hear about it if you are not on the alumni [...]
Get on this: CaseCamp is back, huger than ever and this time for SickKids
You might also call this CaseCampWorthTheWait, this one is bigger, huger and also larger than ever, featuring a full on mini-conference followed by a casecamp classic. The latter part is free as always, but your donations ($50 is suggested) is going towards SickKids. Eli Signer the superhuman behind CaseCamp and his team of rockstar collaborators [...]
Presentation: Design for an Augment Reality world
For posterity here is the slideshare version of my Augmented Reality talk, which I presented for the first time at Refresh Events in Toronto. As a first cut, this presentation represented more of a shotgun scattershot rather than a linearly coherent narrative of the various thoughts on this topic currently spinning in my head my [...]
Reboot11 is on the way. Theme is Action.
Love the theme of Reboot number, and according to Thomas the last, reboot conference. The theme is Action. The last 10 reboots have been about insights, this one is about action. June 25-26 in copenhagen, denmark.
The official announcement from Thomas Madsen-Mygdal:
this is a once in our lifetime opportunity, and so it could be the single [...]
Come hear me talk augmented reality on April 20th
The nice folks at refreshevents.ca have asked me to take part in their speaker series at their April event (20th of April at the CSI in Toronto). Here’s what I’ll be talking about:
Tom Purves, “How ‘Augmented Reality’ and the Mobile Web Changes Everything”
Mobile broadband access and ever-smarter phones are shaking the internet out its lofty [...]
Conferences to watch in 2009
Lift, the amazing European (and now Global) tech conference isn’t really a tech conference at all it’s really an inspiration conference. Think a TED talks meets Barcamp meets a cirque du soleil production. Hard core techies beware though, Lift is a lot more abstract, design and human-oriented than you may be used to. Nonetheless, [...]
The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed yet
I love that little inventions like the internets were invented nearly 30 years ago and yet we’re still figuring out, and still will continue to figure out wonderful things to do with them.
The distribution is here, the future just isn’t evenly invented yet
If the future is distribution, are we here yet?
The future is like a [...]
#hohoto the tech event of the season
description via leila:
HoHoTo
That’s the Toronto Technology Party we are planning! In Toronto, on Tuesday December 16. Of course this is a last minute thing, but we are used to it; we bring you DemoCamp, Mesh and all sorts of Toronto geek gatherings so we are used to putting our heads together and getting things [...]
Startup Empire, the conference you want to be at
This one is going to be the startup event of the season. Some great speakers (and more surprises to come, just you wait) and a great deal for a two day conference (thanks to some generous sponsors) . Very impressed by the job David, Jevon and Michele have done in putting this event together. There [...]
Toronto tech week is coming
In case you haven’t heard, Toronto Tech week is almost upon us. My top picks for next week:
THE CORPORATE ADOPTION OF WEB 2.0 Monday, Sept 22. Sounds like a good panel, and a bunch of great Canadian web companies will be represented as this event is (somehow) combined with the Pick20 web2.0 awards.
Entrepreneurial Summit Tuesday [...]
Planning Enterprise 2.0 seminars in Toronto
Jevon Macdonald and I are thinking to organize a new Enterprise 2.0 event in Toronto towards the end of October. It’s been a while since there has been one in the city, and a lot has been happening in the field. We’d like to structure this event as an intensive how-to session focused on workshops [...]
Open Everything Conference is Open
Mark Surman is proposing a very open series of discussions and events, so open that it’s etirely about the idea of openness itself. Very cool. Registration and propositions are now open. Are you for it or against it? How-to’s and success stories of “open” strategies in the fields of business/enterprise, tech, policy, education, health, [...]
Reboot 10 is on the way
Official Page (will be) here. By good fortune of being nearby in London at the time last year (close enough right?) I managed to catch the first for me, but amazingly ninth annual, Reboot conference in Copenhagen. Reboot is the grand-mum of open/un/bar-like conferences. A lot of smart people, 3 days and the conference is [...]
Startup Fuel
Rick Segal is doing a good thing. He’s organizing VC round tables around the country for start-ups offering conversation and “Sample Term sheets, documents, business plans, PowerPoints”. I caught an earlier iteration of a similar event by Rick and some others a year ago. Let me tell you this stuff is gold. If you’re a [...]


Thomas Purves
is a technology designer, futurist and sometimes entrepreneur living in the great city of Toronto. Thomas not currently available for hire (though you are always welcome to try).
