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So you’re coming to Toronto! I hope you’re planning to come for a few extra days because there’s lots to do while you’re here! And there’s something for little kids, teens, parents, and grandparents. Come one, come all!

 

The time to travel from the Sheraton to the attraction is listed with each event. Toronto is a huge city with lots of traffic so we’re used to “close” attractions being an hour away. Take advantage of the TTC, our transit system, if you can.

 

If you have any questions about any Toronto attractions, please email me or message me on Linkedin. I’d be happy to help make sure you have a great time in my home town!

 

 

First, I will be personally leading four tours!

 

Coming to Esomar congress alone? Want to hang out with other Esomar delegates? Would rather not get lost? Then these tours are perfect for you! If you’re interested in attending any of these four tours, please enter your name and email address in the following google docs form.  If you have any trouble with it, let me know and I’ll add your name for you. I’ll connect with all the attendees close to the date to confirm details.

 

Walking Tour of Bakeries and Local Sights: This tour will run Saturday, September 17 leaving the conference center at 10:30am. We’ll walk about 6 km visiting at least 9 bakeries (including 3 of my favourites) and seeing lots of interesting sights. As long as we’re walking, any baked goods you buy have zero calories. It will take 3 to 4 hours depending on how much bakery buying you do and how fast folks walk. I’m even happy to spend the rest of the day showing folks around. If it’s poor weather, instead I will help people get to a museum of their choice. Sign up here.

What’s on the agenda?

• Chinese, Japanese, Jewish, Danish, French, & Vegan bakeries
• Chinatown
• Old and new city hall
• Provincial parliament buildings
• University of Toronto
• Art Gallery of Ontario
• Eaton Centre
• Shopping and local neighborhood streets

 

 

Paint Night: Show off your amazing or dismal painting talents! We’ll go to a studio where they will show us how to paint something. Canvas, brushes, paint, aprons are all provided, and you’ll go home with a finished canvas that easily fits in your suitcase. You’re welcome to bring food and drinks. This will run Saturday or Sunday evening from around 5pm to 9pm. More specific details will follow. PLEASE PRE-REGISTER for this. If not enough people sign up, this event will not run. ~$50.

 

 

Visit to Filming Location Casa Loma: Sunday, September 18 from 12 noon to about 5pm. If you’ve seen  X-Men, Chicago, The Tuxedo, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Crimson Peak, Twitches, or Titans, you’ve already seen Casa Loma! It’s a beautiful “castle” with secret passageways and an underground tunnel. It was built with extravagant conveniences that people had never experienced before – an elevator, telephones, indoor pool! Head up the creeky wooden stairs into the turret for a great view of the city! I’ll lead you there on our subway system and you’ll probably want around 3 hours at the venue. $40 entry. Sign up here.

 

Visit to Ripley’s Aquarium of Canada: Oh, beautiful big and large fishies! Come say hi to all of them at our aquarium. We’ll leave at 2:30pm, just after the Annual General Meeting on Wednesday. Tickets are are $44. We will walk there together. If you wish, you can visit the CN Tower (Please don’t say Canadian National Tower) next door when you’re done. Sign up here.

 

If you’re interested in attending any of these tours, please enter your name and email address in the following google docs form. I”ll connect with all the attendees close to the date to confirm details.

 

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Play

Toronto Islands / Centre Island

Enjoy playgrounds, gardens, lovely beaches for swimming, walking trails, small zoo, children’s amusement park, and an amazing view of the Toronto skyline. There are food options but you might still want to bring a packed lunch and snacks. Don’t worry if you forgot your swim suit – there’s a separate nude beach!

If you want one recommendation for how to play all day, this would be it.

Access to the island is free but you must buy a ferry ticket to get there.

20 minute walk or 15 minute transit to get to the ferry.

Family. Outdoors. Full day.

CN Tower

Take a couple of hours and head half a kilometer up the elevator. Walk on the glass floor, eat at the revolving restaurant, and peer out for 160 kilometers on a clear, sunny day! Thrill seekers might like walking outside on the roof!

20 minute walk.

Family. Indoors. Half day.

 

Rogers Centre baseball games

At the base of the CN Tower, enjoy a Blue Jays baseball game at the Skydome, the white dome in the picture (only outsiders call it the Rogers Centre)! We’ll be playing against Tampa Bay Rays, Baltimore Orioles, and New York Yankees from Sept 14 to Sept 28.

Tickets required.

20 minute walk.

Family. Indoors/outdoors. Full day.

 

Ripleys Aquarium

Admire sea creatures from around the world at the base of the CN Tower next door. Great for a rainy day!

Tickets required.

20 minute walk.

Family. Indoors. Half day.

 

Toronto Zoo

Spend the entire day visiting animals from around the world in an vast woodland park. Bring a lunch or eat there.

Tickets required.

45 minute drive or 100 minute public transit.

Family. Outdoors. Full day.

 

Canada’s Wonderland

Adults and teens will enjoy a full day of death defying rides, rollercoasters, and shows.

Tickets required.

45 minute drive or 90 minute public transit.

Family. Outdoors. Full day.

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Museums

Royal Ontario Museum

We only refer to this museum by saying the acronym as a single syllable word – ROM. If your kids love dinosaurs and mummies, this is the place to go! The building is loved or hated depending on whether you like the combination of historic and modern architecture.

This is my top museum recommendation.

Tickets required.

25 minute walk or 10 minute subway ride.

Family. Indoors. Full day.

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Art Gallery of Ontario

We only refer to this gallery by saying the three letters of the acronym – A – G – O. No one will know what you mean if you say the acronym like this word: “We went shopping two days ago.” Paintings, illustrations, sculptures, modern art, Canadian art. Enjoy!

Tickets required.

15 minute walk or subway ride

Adults. Indoors. Full day.

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Bata Shoe Museum

Yes, for real. This is a world class museum that specializes in historic and modern shoes from around the world.

Tickets required. Free every Sunday!

35 minute walk or 15 minute subway ride.

Adults. Indoors. Half day.

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Hockey Hall of Fame

If you’re a fan of hockey at all, this attraction is a required pilgrimage. All hockey, all the time!

Tickets required.

15 minute walk.

Family. Indoors. Half day.

 

Fort York

Visit the remains of a historical fort! Check the website to see if there are any special activities planned.

Free!

35 minute walk or 30 minute subway ride.

Family. Outdoors. Half day.

 

Black Creek Pioneer Village

See how pilgrams lived in Canada in the 1800s.

Tickets required.

40 minute drive or 1 hour transit ride.

Family. Outdoors. Full day.

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Shop

Distillery District

This historic pedestrian area of Toronto is regularly used in TV shows and movies is full of little shops, restaurants, and art galleries. There’s often live entertainment in the streets.

Out of all the shopping, this is what I’d recommend.

35 minute walk or 25 minute transit ride.

Adults. Outdoors. Full day.

 

Kensington market

A beloved area with a mix of unusual shopping, food markets, and restaurants. It’s right next to Chinatown so stop there before or afterwards to enjoy fantastic, authentic restaurants and shopping.

25 minute walk or transit ride.

Adults. Indoors.Outdoors. Half day.

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St. Lawrence market

A meat and vegetable market upstairs and outside with flea market style shopping downstairs. Enjoy quaint shopping in the neighboring streets, or head over to the Distillery District for the evening.

20 minute walk or 15 minute transit ride.

Adults. Indoors. Half day.

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Eaton Center

Shoppers will easily spend an entire day here! You’ll find all the major brands plus plenty to eat and drinks.

5 minute walk.

Shoppers. Indoors. Full day.

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Queen Street West

From Yonge Street until you get tired of walking, this street is full of quaint shops and eateries. Enjoy the stroll!

Easy walk from the congress hotel.

Shoppers. Outdoors. Full day.

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Nature

High Park

Bring a lunch and spend a whole day meandering through nature trails and gardens, and enjoying ducks and wildlife. You’re not supposed to feed the ducks but you could bring unshelled peanuts to entice the chipmunks. Kids will enjoy a fantastic playground and a tiny zoo.

Free.

45 minute transit ride.

Family. Outdoors. Full day.

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Tommy Thompson park

Walk or bike this peaceful park constructed from landfill. It’s now a protected breeding zone for birds with lots of wildflowers and ponds full of ducks. Bring food and water as there are no services. There are a couple of porta potties so use them if you see them. When you get to the end and if it’s a hot day, take a swim in your clothes. That’s how it’s done! Serious walkers and nature lovers only. You’ve been warned.

This is my top park recommendation.

Free.

75 minute walk or 45 minute transit ride.

Adults. Outdoors. Half/full day.

Collision 2021 was a four-day, North American tech conference that drew more than 38 000 attendees. I was fortunate to be one of those attendees this year thanks to a ticket kindly donated by ESOMAR. This year, the Collision Conference hosted more than 600 speakers from all walks of life. Just a few of those people included:

 

• Celebrities: Cindy Crawford, Meaningful Beauty; Maria Sharapova, Therbody; Ashton Kutcher, Sound Ventures; Ryan Reynolds, Mint Mobile
• CEOs and CMOs from global companies: Geoffrey Hinton, University of Toronto; Ukonwa Ojo, Amazon; Fiona Carter, Goldman Sachs; Martin Wildberger, Royal Bank of Canada
• Local and global community leaders: Jagmeet Singh, Leader of Canadian New Democrat Party; John Tory, Mayor of Toronto; Katie Porter, Representative at US House of Representatives; Lori Lightfoot, Mayor of Chicago
• And 13-year-old whiz kids whose expertise and speaking skills rivaled the most experienced speakers in attendance!

 

With hundreds of sessions running simultaneously (and literally colliding with each other!), it was easy to create a personalized stream of content, particularly since no matter the time, a great talk was always just beginning. The stream I created for myself focused on artificial intelligence, robotics, and innovation. Here are the key themes I took away.

 

 

Technology Leaders Must Prove Their Trust

People love their devices. We trust them to help us discover and buy products, make and take phone calls and text messages from our loved ones, and remind us about confidential meetings and doctor’s appointments. We trust our devices will work as expected when we need them to work. However, there is a trust problem and it doesn’t lie with the technology itself. It lies in the fact that we don’t trust the people behind our devices, neither the people building the devices nor our government leaders, to create and hold appropriate boundaries around privacy and security.

 

Companies build trust by having clear values and a clear mission grounded in being authentic, empathetic, transparent, and relatable. We learn to trust companies that shape our experiences in ways that are personalized but at the same time not creepy. We also learn who trust by witnessing which companies hold themselves fully and immediately accountable when they make mistakes. Companies that abuse these expectations will quickly find themselves speaking to a declining audience. A great way to think about trust is that every interaction a company has with a consumer is either a deposit or a withdrawal. You do good or you do bad. There is no neutral.

 

 

Robot, Cobots, and the Inevitable

Did you realize you already have robots in your home? If we follow the strict definition that any automatically operated machine that replaces people is a robot, then your electric toothbrush, your toaster, and your vacuum cleaner (even if it’s NOT a Roomba) are robots. We’re slowly getting used to the idea that robots don’t have to take a human shape to be called robots.

 

A newer take on robots is the idea of cobots. Unlike a lot of robots that run behind the scenes, collaborative robots are designed to interact directly with or next to people. While you may be nervous that robots or cobots will take your job, there are many good reasons to be excited about working with them. Not only do they easily take on jobs that are dull, dirty, and dangerous, they augment our skills and abilities and help us do our work better and with more agility. Robots make us physically stronger and mentally more agile. If we let them, they help us make truly better decisions.

 

As in the case of robots and cobots, if something is inevitable, get enthusiastic about it.

 

 

The Language of AI

One of the main complaints about artificial intelligence comes when it’s used as a substitute for people. For instance, researchers are actively working on building AI tools intended to serve as personal companions for people who are elderly or disabled, and counsellors for people who’ve experienced trauma. Isn’t that impersonal? Isn’t that disrespectful? Well, let’s consider it from a different angle.

 

Think about people who’ve experienced a life of trauma, a life wrecked by abuse, trafficking, trauma, or addiction. A life where people have repeatedly let them down and shown that they can’t be trusted. Those who’ve experienced trauma may find it particularly hard to trust new people and may be far more comfortable beginning their healing process by working with AI.

 

Think about people who have experienced a brain injury or deal with communication disabilities. Or people who aren’t using their native language. Or people who feel more comfortable communicating via email or text. We constantly hear that people should be treated in the way they want and prefer to be treated. That we need to increase accessibility. This could easily be AI.

 

Regardless of the initial need, we need to ensure that these AI communication tools demonstrate empathy and show respect. AI can’t replace human judgement but it can and should reflect good judgement.

 

 

What Does It Mean For Researchers

The research industry talks about trust all the time. We need research participants to trust us enough to share their most personal opinions, their most private click-paths, and their most unusual purchase behaviours. We need research tools that can effectively automate dull and error-prone research tasks leaving us with more time to do our jobs even better and make better decisions.

 

And we really need to focus on language. So much of our work revolves around language – writing questionnaires with respectful wording that everyone can understand, moderating focus groups that accommodate every participant, making the research space accessible to all.

 

I may not have attended a single market research talk but I did indeed come away with new perspectives that will make me rethink how I have conducted research in the past, and what I will do in the future.