Went to ACE-Canada 's "edge of opportunity" national entrepreneurship conference this week, running from wednesday to friday, mainly in the northern lights ballroom of the renaissance hotel at the skydome but with minor events taking place at various places around toronto - all part of the event schedule. There were about 200 students from ACE chapters across canada in that ballroom, huge windows curtained to our left and right, nice carpets and hotel chairs, tables with water at the back (they need more pitchers) and speakers at the raised platform at the front.

The entrepreneurs who spoke, were for the most part sharing inspirational personal experiences about funny and not so funny challenges they had to face and overcome in starting and running their biz- exactly the kind of thing you'd expect from speakers at a conference like this.

Only one speaker, despite talking with varying volume and speed/etc, still made me want to fall asleep , I felt he was more about promoting his already sold business than about sharing his experiences.

Other speakers and speaker panels were much more inspirational. I liked the choice of speakers -one of them, Marlene, was an entrepreneur of a green business (environmentally-good-for-the-planet business). Years ago as a mother she found diaper waste to be equal to regular household waste, so she looked for a way to deal with this waste. She eventually found a way to make use of the diaper material and turn it into commercially profitable fertilizer-absorber/releasers for agriculture - use it on your farm or you potted plants. Another great speaker choice was an entrepreneur who had just started after years of soul-searching and decided to explore music - Michael Lake of Freshwater (hey, I'm promoting you!) - who finished by nice performances with his guitar. We wouldnt let him go without playing more than one song =)

Shown at the right: part of yet another fun speaker presentation, Dianne of Roundtop windows, who won Canadian Women entrepreneur of the year 2000.

The ACE delegates (that would be me, and every one of us university/college ACE-affiliated students attending this ACE conference) were nice people. Brock will be representing Canada at SIFE (students in free enterprise) this year. I had lunch on thursday with the Brock students.. they were very quiet, didnt talk much even amongst themselves. But then ... maybe they just needed some beer =) I wouldnt know, cuz I didnt go to the 3 late night conference pub/social events..

Thursday was the most hectic day for me, because right after the ACE lunch I went back to U of T and the TIG office to help susheela help jarra find architecture students to participate in a videoconference next week as part of a TIG co-organized workshop with slovakian architecture students. I hope susheela and karis were okay being surrounded by my classmates... because I pretty much had to leave after showing them to my prof, i still dont know how it went , i'll find out next week...

So I went back to the skydome to the remaining speaker events for thursday, which ended at around 4:30. Then, I didnt stay for the 6 pm dinner gala and awards presentations because at the same time 6 pm, there was the UTEC speaker event at U of T - it was Jay Gould founder of New York Fries , which I really wanted to attend so I came back to U of T for that, it was worth it. Then I went home, so the next day friday, I pretty much found out I didnt miss much from the gala dinner, found out the winner of the student entrepreneur of the year was Ben Berry of U of T, and other details.. then pretty much continued friday until the end of the conference.

Generally it was fun, food was great, the only thing is , I wish that next time they plan this event during the weekend as Laurier did with the central regional conference, so I wouldnt have any reason to miss any part or whole of the event due to U of T classes & related things that happen during the week.