For me, very little says more about the accelerated evolution of Atlantic Canada’s innovation economy than the maturation of Invest Atlantic.

The only pan-regional conference for investors and entrepreneurs in Atlantic Canada will be held at the World Trade and Convention Centre in Halifax on Sept. 26, the third of four events in Atlantic Innovation Week. For the third year in a row, I’m helping to organize the event, and I can’t help but be struck by how different the conference and the overall ecosystem are compared with when we began.

Consider this statistic: in the first Invest Atlantic conference in 2010, just 11 percent of the speakers were from outside the Atlantic region. This year about 37 percent of the speakers will be from other parts of the world. In fact, each of the panel discussions this year is led by an international expert.

The increase in international focus is only one aspect of the conference that is evolving.  Invest Atlantic this year will feature a new program allowing sponsors to nominate entrepreneurs for a cut-rate entry. The aim is to get more startups into the hall so young entrepreneurs can meet with potential funders, and the people who fund and support  young companies can learn more about what’s going on in the region.

The conference will be chaired by Permjot Valia, a London-based investor with several investments in Atlantic Canada -- the first time the chair of Invest Atlantic is someone from outside the region.

The keynote luncheon speaker will be Adam Jackson, a serial entrepreneur and investor from Silicon Valley, who will discuss the dos and don’ts of launching a successful web or mobile startup, explaining best practices in choosing partners, hiring, the timing of a launch, acquiring users and plenty of other hard-won lessons.

The featured speakers include: Thor Muller, CTO of Get Satisfaction, San Francisco; Nimeshh Patel, COO AOL Europe; Julia Law, former VP in charge of Global HR at Nike; and April Seggebruch, VP Finance & Operations, Merchant View LLC, Fayetteville, Arkansas.

The internationalization of Invest Atlantic has been helped by the birth of Atlantic Innovation Week, which begins with DemCamp Halifax on Sept. 23, continues with MentorCamp the next day and then ends with BioPort Atlantic on Sept. 26-27. Certainly there are challenges in holding so many events so close together, but it helps to have these experts fly in for several events rather than just one.

So what’s the big deal about the internationalization of the event?

First of all -- need I say it? – these people are tops in their field and will bring a vast  wealth of experience and wisdom to the discussion at the conference.

They are also coming to Invest Atlantic and MentorCamp at an interesting point in the region’s development. As I’ve written before in this space, the region’s young tech, biotech and cleantech companies are operating more frequently in an international market.  They’re establishing offices in California. The demands for capital by these companies can no longer be met by local sources. And their markets are dominantly global.

What’s more, the maturity of the innovation industries means there has never been a better time to fly in this calibre of individual. When these fund managers and tech gurus visit Halifax later this month, they’re going to witness better companies, and more of them, than they would have just two years ago.

If all these folks had come in two years ago, the effort might have been wasted. That’s how much the innovation segment has matured in the last two years.