An enthusiastic crowd attended the UNB TME conference titled The Future of Innovation in Canada this weekend, learning about innovations in such fields as transportation, cybersecurity, and entrepreneurship.

The University of New Brunswick’s J. Herbert Smith Centre for Technology Management and Entrepreneurship – commonly known as UNB TME – held the conference to celebrate the program’s 30th anniversary. The TME program is the university’s entrepreneurship program, and what makes it special is it’s headquartered in the Engineering faculty.

The conference featured a range of speakers from around the world, including San Francisco-area entrepreneurship professor Steve Blank, who was beamed in via a video link-up. There were also panel discussions on such subjects as the future of education and cybersecurity.

Here are a few of our favourite quotes from the conference. Apologies for the weighting toward Steve Blank, but the guy is awfully quotable.

Steve Blank, Father of the Lean Startup movement

“In the 20th Century, startups were the best example of fiction-writing. In fact, the writing of business plans should be taught in the English Department.”

 “Founders of startups are closer to artists than any other profession. One of the mistakes we’ve made is treating entrepreneurs something like accountants. Accountants don’t start something. Artists do.”

“We realized that large companies do something called execution of a known business model. But startups have no known models at all, or very few. In startups, you’re not executing a business model. You’re searching for one.”

Ann Makosinski, 21 Year Old Serial Inventor

“I’m interested in the intersection of art and technology. That’s where the magic happens.”

Devesh Bharadwaj, CEO of Pani Energy

“We’re engineers, future leaders and optimists, so for me, there’s no better problem to solve.”

Referring to the proliferation of carbon emissions.

Bibop Gresta, Co-Founder of Hyperloop Transport Technologies

“Toronto, Pittsburgh, Cleveland – they can be all one city. This is not science fiction. We are actually working on a project to make an entire area into one big city.”

Spencer Boyer, Former Obama Policy Strategist

“The threat is bigger than Russia – it is bigger than any single nation state. It is a threat to transatlantic security writ large. … I think it will require a whole society response with multi-party participation.”

Referring to cyber-threats from Russia