The entrepreneurial community at University of New Brunswick will hold its annual Future of Innovation Conference on Oct. 19, with a special focus on the future of work.

The J. Herbert Smith Centre for Technology, Management and Entrepreneurship will host the conference at the university’s Wu Conference Centre from 8:30 to 1 pm. You can register for the event here.

The event will feature key note speakers, panel discussions and a book launch, and will be a hybrid format after being held virtually for the past few years.

After being forced online for two years, it's nice to welcome people back to the audience to hear about the Future of Work,” said Dr. Dhirendra Shukla, Chair of the J Herbert Smith Centre. “We have so many amazing speakers lined up to cover this and other exciting topics. We are confident that the panels and speakers will spark different conversations about innovation as they do each year and are excited to offer this incredible event in a hybrid format.”

The keynote speaker for the conference will be Chris Velis, a serial entrepreneur from Cambridge, Mass., who specializes in medtech ventures. With a LinkedIn bio that says he is “building incredible companies so that others may live,” Velis has founded such Boston-area companies as Miraki Innovation and BOA Biomedical.

In addition to the keynote, the program features panel discussions on immigration, the myths of innovation and entrepreneurship, new work, and rural growth and development.  

The conference will include the launch of Jonathan Calof’s latest book Gaining Market Insights from Events: A Lifetime Journey. Calof is a professor of competitive intelligence at University of Ottawa, and has also worked with Atlantic Canadian entrepreneurs through UNB and Venn Innovation. He is the UNESCO co-Chair in Anticipatory Systems for Innovation and Venture Creation.

His latest book views trade shows as a a great vehicle for developing the insights needed to win in the marketplace. The use of the event intelligence toolkit (which will be outlined in this book) has had a major impact on organizations’ trade show returns on investment.

You can order the book here.