When Philippe Burns was a customer experience team lead at Neo Financial in 2020, part of his job was to create a 50-person team to help onboard half a million new Neo/Hudson’s Bay Mastercard customers in just four months. After a promotion to talent marketing lead, Burns was helping Neo hire more senior-level tech staff when he noticed a lack of social and networking events for the tech community at large.
So, Burns created Tech Thursday, a weekly community networking event series. In July 2024, Burns left Neo (at that point, he was the lead, external relations) to co-found Tech Thursday as its own company, with Neo as the title sponsor for its events. Tech Thursday events currently run in both Calgary and Winnipeg.
In Calgary, Tech Thursday usually meets at The Pioneer and averages around 100 attendees per event. Each event focuses on one of four topic pillars: business, technical know-how, local trends and DEI. Past events have focused on innovations in hydrogen, the impact of AI and mental health tech, along with featured panels and fireside chats with various organizations. The company has city-specific steering committees that generate event and topic ideas. Around 65 per cent of the audience are senior-level tech managers, C-suite executives and founders, with the rest being mostly intermediate and junior tech workers.
“What we wanted to create is this environment where you could go meet with your peers, learn from what they were building and creating, and really showcase some of the awesome work being done in these two communities,” says Burns.
What’s Next? Tech Thursday plans to launch in Ottawa and Edmonton by mid-2025.