Our
speakers!

Sylvain Lafrance joined the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1978 as a journalist. In the fall of 2005, the CBC/Radio-Canada Board of Directors appointed him Executive Vice-President of CBC/Radio-Canada French Services, entrusting him with the integration of Radio-Canada’s radio, television and web services.

It was under his leadership that several major projects of the digital era were born, including TOU.TV and Bande-à-part.

He left Radio-Canada in October 2011 and became Adjunct Professor at HEC Montréal. He is also director of “Gestion”, a quarterly magazine covering major trends in the world of management.

Mr. Lafrance is a member of the Board of Directors of Attraction Media, a Fellow of the Public Policy Forum of Canada and chairs the board of directors of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec.

He is also a member of the Order of Canada, a Knight of the Order of La Pléiade (awarded by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Francophonie), a Knight of the French National Order of Arts and Letters and a Knight of the French National Legion of Honour.

Hugues Foltz has been Chief Strategy Officer at Vooban since 2018. A fast-growing artificial intelligence development firm in Quebec, Vooban is at the forefront of disruptive technologies, using, among other things, AI and machine learning to offer innovative solutions in all kinds of industries. Prior to that, he spent nearly two years as Vice President of Professional Services and Vice President of Innovation at the Optel Group.

Hugues Foltz is also the founder of ellicom, which he started in 2002 and ran for 14 years. From 2002 to 2016, he surrounded himself with key players in the training and technology industries with the goal of becoming the Canadian leader in e-learning.

Harold Dumur, CEO of OVA, received his bachelor's degree in industrial engineering from Université Laval in 2011 and was awarded the SNC-Lavalin Fellowship for Best Engineering Project upon graduation. He is a member in good standing of the Ordre des Ingénieurs du Québec. In 2012, he received his Six Sigma Green Belt Certification from McGill University.

In 2014, he founded the company OVA, which developed its own virtual reality platform, StellarX. He presented the StellarX platform at the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas and at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, in 2017 and 2018. In 2018, OVA was named among the top 3% of virtual reality startups by HTC Vive. OVA was also the winner of the OCTAS award in the Startup category for StellarX in May 2019.