One of the ways the Rainforest engages with the Edmonton entrepreneurial community is through events. This is because Rainforest is about bringing people together and facilitating those serendipitous collisions between diverse groups of people. It is unstructured, unplanned, unexpected introductions that start people down a path towards innovation, especially when individuals from a wide variety of backgrounds and skillsets come together.
We host three different events:
We host three different events:
- Weekly LWOL (Lunch without Lunch) sessions every Wednesday
- Monthly Connector sessions
- Annual Summits
LWOL is an Alberta-wide online informal get-together for entrepreneurs, academia, investors, and service providers. Join us if you are looking to encourage collisions and create connections that will help drive the success of entrepreneurs in Alberta's innovation system.
See all upcoming LWOL sessions here. |
Connector is focused on building stronger connections within the Edmonton ecosystem and on promoting collisions between people to drive the success of entrepreneurs in Alberta's innovation system. You can see all the dates for Connector here. |
Rainforest's first summit in September 2016 was held as a province wide collective. We scored 464/1000 according to the Rainforest Strategies framework — a failing grade. Rainforest Alberta has set a goal of 800/1000 by 2020. The score is generated from the community who answer a scorecard annually before summit.
In order to facilitate a broader conversation, and address challenges unique to each city, Calgary and Edmonton currently host their own summits.
Since that first Summit in 2016, Edmonton has hosted four immersion sessions locally, with summits in Sept 2017, March 2018, Sept 2018 and Nov 2019. Due to COVID-19, we have made the difficult decision to delay the 2020 summit as we believe that an online 'gathering' cannot replace the magic that happens when innovators gather face-to-face.
In order to facilitate a broader conversation, and address challenges unique to each city, Calgary and Edmonton currently host their own summits.
Since that first Summit in 2016, Edmonton has hosted four immersion sessions locally, with summits in Sept 2017, March 2018, Sept 2018 and Nov 2019. Due to COVID-19, we have made the difficult decision to delay the 2020 summit as we believe that an online 'gathering' cannot replace the magic that happens when innovators gather face-to-face.
