Top 12 Collision 2019 Talks Every Practitioner Should Check Out

If you’re in the Toronto area on May 21-23, you’ll definitely want to check out Collision, the fastest-growing tech conference in North America. It’s now in its fifth year and is expected to host over 25,000 attendees. 

We’ll be there at Booth E218 at the Enercare Centre where you can meet some of our Connectors, learn all about Connected, and enter our draw to win a Portal from Facebook (which isn’t available in Canada yet). 

With so many great talks happening at this 3-day conference, we decided to narrow down the list to highlight some to look out for based on your practice.

Design 

‍Snap’s vision for the camera 

Speakers: Eitan Pilipski (VP of Camera Platform, Snap Inc.); Steve Kovach (Technology Editor, CNBC)
When/Where: Tuesday, May 21 (10:30 – 10:50) at PandaConf + ContentMakers 
Summary: The democratization of augmented reality is throttling innovation and its widespread adoption. In this talk, Eitan Pilipski outlines the vision for a future where computing is no longer confined to a screen in our hands, it’s overlaid on the world around us.
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PlayStation at the intersection of entertainment and technology

Speakers: Dominic Mallinson (SVP of R&D, PlayStation); Robin Hunicke (CEO, Funomena LLC); Tanya Watson (Co-founder, Squanch Games); Dave Smith (Senior Technology Correspondent, Business Insider)
When/Where: Wednesday, May 22 (14:00-14:20) at CIS Stage
Summary: PlayStation is investing in technology that empowers creators to push the boundaries of play while offering consumers an immersive gaming and entertainment experience. One area that demonstrates the company’s commitment is virtual reality. Join Dominic Mallinson, Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Global Head of R&D, Tanya Watson, Squanch Games’ Co-Founder and CEO, and Robin Hunicke, Funomena’s CEO, to learn how great content built on the foundation of innovative technologies enable new ways for players to interact and engage.
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Customer experience is the future of design

Speakers: Michael Litt (Co-founder & CEO, Vidyard); Evgeny Tchebotarev (VP of Growth, Skylum); Tracy Lawrence (Co-founder & CEO, Chewse); Michelle Manafy (Editorial Director, Digital Content Next) 
When/Where: Thursday, May 23 (11:25-11:45) at Startup University 
Summary: This session examines why customer experience should be at the heart of design. Show your customers you care, and they’ll value your company in return. Simple.
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Engineering

‍Building a more reliable internet by engineering chaos 
Speaker: Kolton Andrus (CEO, Gremlin Inc.)
When/Where: Tuesday, May 21 (14:20-14:40)
Summary: Join this session to learn how you can prevent major downtime and outages by automating chaos experiments throughout the software delivery process and across hybrid infrastructure.
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‍Deep science for agile innovation 
Speakers: Tolga Kurtoglu (CEO, PARC); Lawrence Lee (VP of Incubation & Strategy, Xerox); Namiko Kajiwara (Partner, World Innovation Lab (WiL))
When/Where: Wednesday, May 22 (11:50-12:10)
Summary: Businesses today are competing in a world transformed by the rapid adoption of advanced technologies. In this new world, breakthrough innovations and business models separate leaders from the competition. In this talk, executives from Xerox and PARC will discuss how they are using deep science and an agile innovation methodology to create new growth opportunities.
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Open source in the SaaS era 
Speakers: Elliot Horowitz (Co-founder & CTO, MongoDB); Rob Pegoraro (Contributor, Yahoo Finance/USA Today) 
When/Where: Thursday, May 23 (13:30-13:45) at SaaS Monster
Summary: In a new era of open source, SaaS, and cloud computing, technology needs to adapt to help businesses move towards the cloud.