C2 Montreal, also known as C2MTL or just C2, bills itself as "a business conference, only different." The three-day event closed out its fourth year last week and drew a sold-out crowd of 5,000 professionals -- a 25 percent increase from last year -- from a broad range of industries from creative to financial.
This year, headlining speakers included Alec Baldwin and Chelsea Clinton. The theme was "choices," with focuses in the areas of food, health, and energy.
If you attended C2 and felt like there was a lot going on, there's a reason for that. The C2 team provided tracks to follow, including Social Business & Innovation; Investment; Technology; Health; Food; and Energy. These tracks were supported by workshops, labs, and master classes. Attendees held brainstorming sessions in chairs attached to nets strung from the ceiling and in fog-filled bubble tents, problem-solved using virtual reality, and had 30-minute "brain dates" with other attendees or speakers on an outdoor Ferris wheel.
"We want this to be a bit overwhelming, so people get a jolt of energy," says C2 Curator Jean-François Bouchard.
Founding partner companies Sid Lee and Cirque du Soleil joined forces to create the global innovation summit that is C2, which debuted in 2012. Now with 75 business partners, including Toursime Montreal, C2 stands for creativity and commerce. The idea of fusing these two areas has created tremendous excitement around this unique business conference. During C2 2015, which was held last week, Successful Meetings sat down with Bouchard. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
This isn't your typical corporate event. How would you describe C2 to someone who's never been before?
The whole idea behind C2 is to immerse people in innovation. It's a business conference, only very different in the sense that it's not just about talks. It's about creating this pop-up village of experiences, from installations to exhibitions, workshops, master classes. It's a very participatory experience. I guess it's the evolution of the business conference.
What challenges have you faced in keeping C2 new and fresh each year?
Since we're a conference about innovation, people expect us to innovate every single year. To be honest, the day we wrap this up, we start thinking about the following year because that's what's expected from us. There's a couple of things that [people] expect from us, but they also expect a surprise every year. Finding this balance between meeting expectations and surprising people is a very fine line, but it's also what makes it exciting for us because we have to renew our things.
The fact that we have a broad spectrum of partners is really helpful because now our partners can come to us and they say: "What if I did this year?" or "What if we tried this?" So, we can tap into the community and get people to come and do stuff. A lot of companies are working on things that they want to showcase or experiment with.
To give an example, Ubisoft this year decided to do this virtual brainstorming thing. We were very excited about this, but they came up with this idea. That's what's exciting about having so many partners involved.
Tell us about feedback you have received from attendees about this year's C2.
The big bet that the C2 team made this year was to radically increase the number of participatory activities. The first year, we had maybe ten workshops. Now there's at least 100 going on, master classes, a lot of things where people have a key role to play. We now have the business meet-up system.
This year was about raising the bar a whole new level in terms of getting participants to be stakeholders, not just guests. I did mention that in my opening statement. This year we didn't want spectators. We didn't want guests. We wanted participants more than ever.
To be honest, I was not 100 percent sure that people would go along because we have a lot of C-level executives. C-level executives are not well-known for jumping head-first into such group activities, but they're really buying into it.
Next year, we can even do more, and there will be demand for it. It's pretty exciting.
Why now do you think there is a jump in interest among companies to integrate more creativity into business strategy?
There's something that's happening right now where it feels like all the changes that the business community has experienced in the past 20 years, mostly because of technology, it feels like we're getting to a tipping point, or a pivotal moment, where even the most traditional of businesses realize that reinvention and transformation is not a luxury. It's not even an option. You have to embrace it.
We're seeing this more and more in the business I run, which is partly why we're capable of making this happen. I run a company called Sid Lee and our strength is to help our clients embrace change and transform their businesses, and that's easier said than done because there's so many things that you have to do in order to transform the way you interact with your own clients that it's a complex journey.
More and more companies understand that it starts with the senior management and the leadership. The broader leadership of companies to really understand where things are going, how to embrace new ideas, how to transform them into an action plan. That's why we get even the most traditional companies, banks or traditional manufactures who come here, because they know they have to evolve.
It's almost like the world of technology and the world of start-ups, in the past 20 years, has reached the mainstream of the most conservative businesses as well.
That's really helping us because we use this as a foundation to build C2. Even our events business at Sid Lee, we're getting a lot of companies who come to us. They are asking us to help them to create experiences and events where they are going to be able to cater this message to their own staff.
We do a lot of work with Microsoft. We did integral events for them in Europe for their own staff, and it was about making sure that their workforce was aligned with their transformation agenda.
Do you have plans to expand C2 internationally?
The way we want to expand this is that we want to bring this to other parts of the world. We've created this year a series of events called "C2 Sparked." It's a small-scale event, about 150 people. It's a one day event, and it's in a much smaller venue, as you can imagine. It's basically a boiled down experience, a one-day experience.
We want to do events like this, and we're looking for partners in the U.S. and also in Asia to do a series. It's going to go on tour. So, that's the idea.
We want to go on tour and serve the world appetizers of what C2 is, and we've had a lot of success in Europe. It was sold out in Europe. It was a little tour. It was just four cities: We went to Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Milan, and Zurich. But, it was very successful. So now, next year we'd like to do 20, maybe, and have a tour in Europe and go to different cities with a U.S. partner to be determined.
The focus for next year is the U.S. and Asia. I think we'll also do events in Europe. That's almost a given. We just need the right partner in the U.S. to do this. We're looking for corporate partners mostly and potentially execution partners, as well, because you need to have regional sensibility. You need people who understand the market.
What are your hopes for the future of C2?
Talking about the future, we can go back to the inception of C2. The reason C2 was created was because we wanted Montreal to have a voice each year at the global level. We wanted to have a forum so that people would come and experience not just C2, but Montreal.
Of course, Montreal is having an amazing run as a hosting city. I think it was an exceptional year actually for business meetings in Montreal.
But, you know that world, sometimes you have good years, sometimes based on the bids that you won or did not win, you can have less of a good year. So, now we've had great run. What we want is for C2 to be tied with Montreal in terms of how we are perceived around the world.