Exuberant? Yes. Eager? Yes. Counting down the days? YES! I can’t wait to welcome you all to Digital Strategy Conference & Workshops Ottawa, September 30 – October 2, 2014.

As Chair, I have the great pleasure of introducing our great line up of keynotes and speakers. We’ll hear from brands such as Canada’s FGL Sports (parent of SportChek), Blackberry, BRP, CanadaHelps, CBC, and from our neighbours to the south with speakers from AT&T and IFT. As we first articulated when co-founding this conference, we believe that digital impacts horizontally across function, and that its lessons can be leveraged across sector and industry.

As ever, Digital Strategy Conference is intended to help you achieve perspective while planning and implementing your organization’s digital strategy. Our speakers provide the best of professional education – practical, relevant and applicable – and are experts with knowledge to share.

In the spirit of back to school and all that it represents, I’m excited to announce:

New this year at Ottawa 2014:

1. Thirteen fantastic speakers you didn’t meet last year: digital practitioners from across North America with in-depth experience tackling this year’s key areas of learning: Content Strategy, Social Business, Data & Analytics and Channel Strategy;

2. Two new workshops on October 2, 2014 – The Nuts & Bolts of Content Strategy taught by Joe Gollner and Establishing Your Road Map to Digital Maturity, taught by yours truly;

3. Our new location – Carleton University’s new River Building with its lovely views, and its fantastic patio overlooking the Rideau River rapids. Can there be a better way to escape Ottawa’s construction and traffic gridlock while problem solving with peers? I think think not.

Back by popular demand – the tried and true!

1. Joe Gollner and Isabelle Perrault return, respectively tackling content strategy in government and digital transformation. Co-presenting with Isabelle is Erin Crowe, EVP and CFO of Ottawa’s very own Senators Sports & Entertainment;

2. We’re very excited to introduce you to three of our top rated speakers from our Vancouver 2014 event: Scott Abel from the Content Wrangler, Stephane Hamel from Cardinal Path and Bryan Robertson from Open Road. Thank you all for crossing the continent for our Ottawa 2014 audience!

3. Six Dimensions of Digital Maturity – not only the pillars that form the Digital Strategy Conference agenda, but a business planning tool which you, our community, received with great enthusiasm. So much so, that when we first introduced the dStrategy Maturity Model, you demanded “What’s next?” Thanks to your input, we’ve got new a new video to explain how the model is being used by organizations, new data to share and that new workshop to announce!

As we begin our final countdown, our thanks for the renewed commitment of sponsors Adobe, the Ottawa Business Journal, the Ottawa Chamber of Commerce and IABC Ottawa. Speaking of commitment, a big ‘welcome back’ to multi-city sponsors FreshGigs.ca and Women in Communications and Technology (WCT). Thank you all for your continued support.

I would also like to welcome our enthusiastic new sponsors: many, many thanks to eMarketer, Reachology and the Canadian Public Relations Society (CPRS) Ottawa-Gatineau and Vancouver chapters. We’re so pleased to have you join the #dstrategy crew!

I hope you will join us for our next deep dive into digital strategy, and I look forward to seeing you all on September 30th, 2014!