Theme: Perspectives

TEDxMontréal’s is 5th main event on Feb 9th: Changing Perspectives!

Join our incredible community of change-makers, artists, scientists, business professionals and idea enthusiasts!!
Our speakers will challenge our paradigms and hopefully bring you new perspectives that will broaden your intellectual horizons.
9 bright ideas will grace our stage, presenting new twists and innovative work that is impacting the world in their own way.

This year, we are aiming to create an intimate setting for ideas to flourish onstage with new ways for you to engage with our speakers. We have purposely reduced the onsite audience to 350, which is nearly half the size of our previous events to increase the quality of interactions between attendees, speakers and our team. So get your tickets fast!

Some of the paradigms we want to challenge include:

- How we assess risk in our lives
- Our outlook on the political world
- Mobile game economies
- The use of public parks at night

Come be awed, puzzled and inspired by the talented people creating significant impact in our Montreal community and worldwide.

Salon 1861
550 Ave Richmond
Montreal, Quebec, H3J 1V3
Canada

Allen A Champagne

Neuroscientist specializing in neuroimaging and sport-safety

Dr. Allen A Champagne (PhD) is a medical student at Queen’s University (Kingston, ON, Canada), and former football student-athlete and Morehead-Cain scholar from the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill, USA). His research seeks to integrate neuroimaging, helmet accelerometers, film analysis and motion capture to characterize the effects of head trauma on brain health, while uncovering the relationship between impact biomechanics and sport-specific mechanisms of injury in athletes. Allen hopes that his research on sport-related concussions and head impacts will catalyze the development of novel biomarkers for head injuries, while informing the design of evidence-based behaviour modification interventions that will promote safer playing fields in contact sports.

Brie Code

Founder and CEO, TRU LUV

Brie Code is the Founder and CEO of TRU LUV, a Toronto-based company that is changing our relationship with technology. TRU LUV makes AI companions. Companions are not personal assistants, apps, nor games, but a new category of human-computer interaction that feels more like friendship. Inspired by social neuroscience, adult developmental psychology, art, game design, and AI, TRU LUV brings life to experiences that naturally create feelings of deepening calm, joy, insight, and personal development. Their model is an alternative to the gamification model of rising challenge and has broad and deep implications. TRU LUV’s first experimental companion, #SelfCare, was one of Apple's Best of 2018 Trend of the Year selections. Previous Brie was an AI lead at Ubisoft on the soft, ethereal game Child of Light and three Assassin’s Creed projects.

Éric Montpetit

Professor - Political Science // Université de Montréal

Éric Montpetit est professeur de science politique de l'Université de Montréal et vice-doyen – personnel enseignant – à la Faculté des arts et des sciences. Il a complété un doctorat en politiques publiques comparées et canadiennes à l’Université McMaster. Il est l'auteur de 3 livres, il en a co-écrit 3 autres et il a publié plus de 80 articles ou chapitres de livres. Son dernier livre, In Defense of Pluralism: Policy Disagreement and Its Media Coverage, a été publié par Cambridge University Press en 2016. Les travaux de Montpetit examinent la politique de l’expertise scientifique qui s’enclenche lorsque les parties prenantes des politiques publiques commencent à exprimer des points de vue divergents sur l’action gouvernemental. Éric Montpetit is a political science professor at the Université de Montréal with a Ph.D. in comparative & Canadian public policy at McMaster University. He has authored 3 books, co-authored 3 others and published over 80 articles or book chapters.

Isabelle Mocquard

Head of Product Strategy

Les jeux vidéo sont la passion d’Isabelle Mocquard, qu'il s'agisse de les développer ou d'y jouer. Elle est Responsable de la stratégie produits à Behaviour Interactive, le plus important développeur de jeux vidéo indépendants au Canada. Elle a accumulé une vaste expérience à l’échelle internationale dans la gestion de produits et s’est bâti une solide réputation dans l’établissement de modèles d’affaires pour les jeux vidéo. Sa philosophie est simple : elle croit fermement que les meilleurs modèles d’affaires reposent sur le respect, la confiance et la transparence. Video games are Isabelle Mocquard’s passion—both building and playing them. She is Head of product strategy at Behaviour Interactive, Canada’s largest independent game developer. She has significant experience in Product Mgmt with a reputation for building business models for video games. Her philosophy is simple: she firmly believes that the most effective business models are based on respect, trust and transparency.

Marie Belzil

Multimedia & Creative Director / Réalisatrice multimédia

As a multimedia director, Marie Belzil has a gift for shaping moments of collective awe. Blurring the line between the tangible and virtual, she invites audiences into universes imbued with magic and emotion. Pushing the limits of technology and storytelling, Marie has conceived some of Moment Factory's most emblematic projects: the permanent installation at the Los Angeles Airport (LAX), Montreal's Jacques Cartier Bridge Interactive Illumination and the award-winning Lumina night walks. Réalisatrice multimédia, Marie Belzil a le don de créer des moments d'émerveillement collectif. Brouillant les frontières entre le réel et le virtuel, elle invite le public dans des univers imprégnés de magie et d’émotion. Repoussant les limites de la technologie et du storytelling, Marie a collaboré sur plusieurs projets phares de Moment Factory: l'installation à l'aéroport international de Los Angeles (LAX), l'illumination interactive du pont Jacques-Cartier, et la série de parcours nocturnes Lumina.

Mylène Paquette

First person from the Americas to row across the North Atlantic

Mylène Paquette découvre l’univers de la navigation en 2005 et elle tombe en amour avec la navigation et plus tard pour la rame océanique. Après une préparation de 5 ans et une traversée de l’océan en 129 jours, Mylène Paquette devient la première personne du continent à traverser l’Atlantique nord à la rame. Elle est aujourd’hui conférencière et s’implique socialement et dans plusieurs causes qui lui tiennent à cœur. Mylene Paquette discovers the world of navigation in 2005 leading her to fall in love with navigation and ocean rowing. After a 5-year preparation and an ocean crossing of 129 days, Mylene Paquette becomes the first person from the Americas to row across the North Atlantic. She is now a speaker and she is involved socially and in many causes that are close to her heart.

Norman MacIsaac

Author, Advocate, Leader in International development

Norman MacIsaac is a leader in international development who believes that meaningful change and sustainable development takes place from the bottom up. He has worked in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Canada, with a wide range of non-profit organizations and government as staff, consultant, advisor, board member and volunteer. Following a career committed to improving the lives of marginalized and vulnerable populations, he has become an advocate for support and access to innovative treatments for the incurable disease that now afflicts him. He supports patient resilience through positivity. He is an ALS ambassador, public speaker and the author of The Best of the Worst News: Tales of Inspiration from Around the World and My Life with ALS.

Ryan Hillier

Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder

Equal parts business lawyer and social entrepreneur, Ryan Hillier is the chief executive officer of NOVAlex, which he co-founded in 2016 after having practiced for nearly 10 years at two national Canadian law firms. NOVAlex is the world's first "one for one" law firm: for every hour of paid legal services it provides to commercial clients, NOVAlex offers one hour of pro bono to eligible low-income individuals, non-profits and start-ups. In 2017, it became the first law firm in Quebec to receive certification as a B Corporation. Today, the NOVAlex team comprises 15 top-notch lawyers committed to reinventing the private practice of law, and continues to grow while balancing purpose and profit.

Tomislav Friščić

Professor - Department of Chemistry // McGill University

Tomislav Friščić is a Professor of Chemistry at McGill University, where he leads a team of enthusiastic students and post-doctoral researchers that question how chemistry is done. They want to make chemistry safer, cleaner and more efficient by using "mechanochemistry“ – chemistry by mechanical force, and "accelerated aging“ – chemistry inspired by geology. By doing so, Friščić's team is not only making chemistry cleaner, but is also discovering new, unexpected reactions and compounds.