C2 Montreal 2019 | Day 1, Goat Yoga

For C2 2019, MTL’s theme is enabling paradigm-shifting experiences today, to ensure we understand how to build a better tomorrow. These conferences, labs, interviews, and workshops are built around 5 primary themes. Shifting Perspectives through arts and design, Moving Audiences with marketing and media, Living in Ecosystems of society and environment, Cultivating Innovation with leadership and talent and The Next Frontiers of science and technology. Let’s take a look at the experiences of day one at C2 2019 and perhaps peek into what tomorrow might bring.

Cultivating Innovation with leadership and talent

Standing shoulder to shoulder with a group of random people all staring at the screen at the front, you are presented with a few simple but poignant questions about your work environment. ‘Would accept 10% less pay to be happier?’ or ‘Is lack of conflict a sign of a healthy work environment?’. The last question was the most impactful; ‘If the company you work for agreed to contribute funding to one of your personal goals, what would it be?’. The idea of a company, supporting its employee’s personal development should not feel so foreign a concept when it makes perfect sense. Cultivating innovation at a company begins by cultivating those who’s innovation you rely on.

The Next Frontiers of Science and Technology:

D-BOX, the famed company who bring you the augmented movie experience of ass rumbling theatre seats (which is different from the rumbling from movie theatre popcorn butter), brought their wares to the world of virtual reality. Experiencing the lives of astronauts through the eyes of an astronaut is empowering and leaves you feeling ready to conquer the day. But are you really ready? Is this not a false sense of security gained by virtually experiencing was only a few actually have? Or has it brought me an experience I could never have had otherwise, which left me enriched for having had it?

Living in Ecosystems of Society and Environment:

Goat Yoga held every morning from 9:45-10:15, in the Community Garden by the people at Facebook. That’s right, a social media company build a public green space so people in suits can perform ancient Indian practices with farm animals. What a perfect example of the ecosystem we live in today and what is both so wrong and yet strangely so right about our society and the environment. But it is Facebook, so maybe this belongs more under the title of Moving Audiences with marketing and media.

Doors open on Day 2 at 7 am. For those of you who are ‘one with’ the tranquility of a silent morning, there is a Morning Meditation session from 7:15 to 7:45 am. For those who are pretty sure they would fall asleep in 7 seconds meditating that early, there is a Morning Music session at 7:30 am.

In case you missed opening day at C2, get your fill here.