IDC Canada’s Directions Conference: ICT On The Road to Recovery

  Line of business managers or tech types trying to figure out how technology will help lead Canada out of the recession should check out IDC Canada’s annual Directions conference this week in Toronto on Wednesday.

Technology can help lead companies out of the recession. Amid the carnage that is the global economy, there are opportunities to be had, IDC contends.

IDC, my employer, will help attendees spot opportunities with interactive presentations and breakout sessions complimented by our array of demand-side research, at the conference (entitled ICT on the Road to Recovery) on June 3rd at the Toronto Board of Trade.

Danielle Levitas, group vice-president of IDC’s worldwide, consumer, broadband and digital marketplace practice, will deliver the keynote presentation entitled: Harnessing the Power of the Marketplace. She’ll be preceded by IDC Canada’s managing director Vito Mabrucco who’ll give a brief Canadian market update to the audience.

Yours truly will be part of two such sessions on Wednesday. I’m first going to moderate/take part in a panel session on emerging firms with my colleague Krista Napier that we’ve dubbed Rising Stars.

Krista has recruited a variety of young Canadian social networking and mobility companies including CellWand, FileMobile, MedShare and Viigo (currently the most downloaded application from Research In Motion’s BlackBerry App World) to discuss their businesses and the issues early-stage companies encounter, such as available financing & access to mentors, among other topics.

In the latter part of the morning, I’m going to take part in a panel discussion that’ll focus on emerging opportunities around personal productivity and client devices, more commonly thought of as cell phones or personal computers. It’ll be a two-way exchange between the audience and IDC hardcopy and peripherals analyst Evan Hardie, desktop and PC expert Tim Brunt, as well as mobility analyst yours truly. The dialog will be moderated by 18-year IDC veteran analyst George Bulat,

The conference, which runs from 8:00AM to noon, is open to IDC subscribers.

For those that can’t attend, look for regular tweets and updates from the conference on IDC Canada’s Twitter page or by following the #idccanada hashtag.