Alberta has a reputation for being deal and infrastructure focused, and a new tech conference taking place this November is looking to apply that brand to a fresh style of conference.
Future Summit 2025 bills itself as North America’s premier conference on emerging technology and business innovation, built to skip the speeches and focus on deals, collaboration and results.
“I’m looking to measure impact, rather than attendees.”
Josh Rainbow, Future Summit
“You can’t build momentum in Canada if every conversation ends up on a panel,” said Josh Rainbow, Founder of Future Summit.
“You build it by putting the right people in a room and giving them time to work things out.”
Taking place Nov. 18 to 20 at Calgary’s BMO Centre, the conference marks the first full-scale edition of the event after a series of smaller pilots last year.
Summit programming focuses on the intersection of legacy industries and AI, with sessions on the future of work, infrastructure readiness, and scaling pilot projects into full production.
Future Summit’s goal is to convene builders and buyers to solve problems and close deals.
Eric Gales, president of AWS Canada, will deliver the keynote “Unlocking Canada’s AI Potential.” Amazon Web Services opened its Canada West computing hub in Calgary in 2023, and has announced plans to invest more than $4 billion in Alberta through 2037.
The conference will focus on convening specific conversations about the challenges and opportunities of such large scale moves, with the smallest curated sessions bringing together just 12 people to workshop solutions in private, off-the-record settings. The largest sessions will cap at 200 people, with 30-minute breaks between panels for conversations necessary to move deals forward.
Rainbow said that total conference attendance will also be capped at about 1,200 people, which he sees as “the sweet spot” for meaningful engagement.
“It’s an ROI-driven event,” Rainbow said. “Every single conversation will be focused on that.”
The approach has already proven itself. At a 45-person VIP dinner last year, Rainbow said three seven-figure deals were struck in a single night. The pilot events also included a 200-person breakfast on data centres and energy, designed for decision-makers to connect without the typical conference performance.
“For Future Summit, we just 10x’d that,” Rainbow said of the conference format.
The event reflects a deliberate shift from performance to productivity. There are no paid speakers, no pre-panel calls and no sessions designed for cameras. Panellists don’t even meet beforehand, in order to make way for more authentic conversations.
“If you have people who are actually really smart, they’re doing live solutions on stage that people can empathize with and react to,” Rainbow said.
Calgary’s reputation for deal-making, combined with Alberta’s energy resources and infrastructure expertise, made it the natural choice for the event.
“You’re always one coffee chat away from your next collaboration,” Rainbow said of the city’s innovation ecosystem.
Future Summit’s timing also aligns with the federal government’s AI Strategy Task Force, which was launched in September to shape Canada’s approach to sovereign AI. Key members of the task force are expected to attend Future Summit.
Business leaders who will be participating in the event say Canada has the talent, capital, and technical know-how to lead in both energy and AI. What’s missing is stronger alignment across those areas.
“Alberta has attributes that make it an attractive market for data centre expansion,” said Carson Kearl, Lead Data Centre Analyst, Enverus, who will be speaking at the conference.
Attendee Yuri Navarro, partner at Kanata Ventures, hopes events like Future Summit will help propel real action across the country.
”Canada has a small window to capture a huge AI opportunity and the time to act is now. Capital and operators need to get aligned if we hope to turn Canadian research strength into global technology companies,” said Navarro.
To get there, Future Summit is being deliberate about the conversations it hosts, and who is a part of them and Rainbow said he’s not afraid to make some calls about who gets in the room.
“We’re built for senior decision-makers,” Rainbow added. “If you’re not wielding a budget or looking to drive investment or make change on the regulatory side, you’re not really getting any value from being there.”
“I’m looking to measure impact, rather than attendees.”
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Join the most ambitious founders, investors, and tech leaders at Future Summit, November 18–20 in Calgary. Get your tickets here.
All photos provided by Future Summit.