The Cyber Summit will be a hybrid event taking place November 8-10, 2021
Canada, like much of the world, has been grappling with the disruptions brought on not only by COVID, but also new technological advancements, shifting government budgets, and calls for social and racial equality. The 2021 Cyber Summit keynote series will offer two complementary outlooks on this time of change: one looking at how humanity adapted to such disruptions in the past, the other looking to new disruptions we can expect in the future.
The theme of the 2021 Summit is Moving to the “new normal”. One of the first recorded uses of this term was made by American inventor Henry A. Wise Wood following World War I, who stated: “To consider the problems before us we must divide our epoch into three periods, that of war, that of transition, that of the new normal.” Coincidentally, at that time, humanity was also dealing with one of the worst pandemics in history.
Laura Spinney is a journalist and author of Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World. She will be speaking at the Summit about the societal changes brought about by the global Spanish Flu pandemic, which killed 50-100 million people (potentially more than World Wars I and II combined). She will also talk about the lessons we can learn from those who were forced to reinvent themselves and their workforce / education systems due to that pandemic.
Looking to the future, Heather Russek and Jessica Thornton will present their findings from Yesterday’s Gone: Exploring the future of Canada’s labour market in a post-COVID world. This report is part of the Brookfield Institute’s multi-year study into what employment will look like in 2030. Russek and Thornton will speak about the major trends that have been accelerated, disrupted, or created by COVID-19, and which could greatly impact Canada’s labour market over the next decade.
The Cyber Summit is one of Western Canada’s largest gatherings of public, education and start-up technology leaders. It provides an opportunity to explore the latest in technology trends and applications that can be leveraged within organizations, and also network with other leaders in this field.
The 2021 event will be a hybrid conference, with in-person sessions taking place in Banff, Alberta, at the Banff Park Lodge, as well as sessions streamed online. The conference will take place November 9-10, with workshops on November 8.