Debbie Chan, Co-Chair
National Business and Technology Conference (NBTC)

The National Business and Technology Conference (NBTC) is a dynamic convention, which is hosted annually in the city of Toronto. Celebrating its eighth year, NBTC is a non-profit student-run initiative that aims to bridge the gap between the seemingly distinct, yet highly intertwined fields, of business and technology.

With the mission of bridging the gap between business and technology, NBTC 2008 recognizes the importance of both areas and aims to show how one applies to the other. The conference connects high profile speakers from some of today’s most innovative companies with the future leaders of tomorrow.

Co-chair of NBTC 2008 is Debbie Chan, a third year Industrial Engineering student in the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering at the University of Toronto. The Engineering Newsletter interviewed her in Feb. 2008 by email. Please note that the questions have been removed from the interview for ease of reading.

Interview with Debbie Chan

I am currently a third year Industrial Engineering student and this is actually my second year on the NBTC Executive Team. Last year, I was a member of the Corporate Relations Team and this year, I Co-Chair the conference with Qiananli Li of UTSC.
 
I became interested in the conference last year because it is the only student conference with the mission to merge the fields of business and technology. It caters to a wide variety of interests, from consulting and entrepreneurship to professional development and networking. I knew that this conference would give me the most exposure to concepts that simply cannot be taught in the classroom.

This year, I am most excited about our new schedule and the Entrepreneurial Competition. We have extended this conference (traditionally it has been held Friday night and all-day Saturday) to begin on Friday afternoon, which gives delegates the opportunity to learn as much as possible. The extension will also provide students with more time to network with students from other universities as well as our distinguished guests.
 
This will be the second year that NBTC hosts the Entrepreneurial Competition. Modeled after Dragons' Den, this competition gives student entrepreneurs the opportunity to pitch their business ideas to real venture capitalists. This year we are very excited to have Chris Nguyen, CEO of JobLoft, Xerxes F. Wania, CEO of Sidense Corp., Jackie Lee, former Manager of the Infusion Angels Innovation Centre, Peter Evans, Founder and Advisor to the MaRS Venture Group and Teresa Snelgrove, Co-Founder of Timothy's World Coffee, serving as our panel of judges.

We have a large following of U of T Engineering students who regularly attend the conference. I would love to see more students from other universities since this year's initiative is to contact as many other institutions as possible, in addition to faculty and staff from U of T. I am already very pleased to note that we have our first international delegate who will join us from the UK.  
 
I believe that the main benefit for delegates is the opportunity to see how industry leaders have reached their potential and learn how they can do this themselves. Students will have the opportunity to network with some extremely successful people who managed to combine both business and technology in their careers. Many Engineering students are trying to figure out their future career path, and there is no better way to do this than to talk with people who have already done it.

Working on this conference has been a major staple in my undergraduate experience. I knew that taking on the Co-Chair position this year would be not only trying, but also very time-consuming; however, these past two years have given me the chance to meet some of the most motivated and driven people at U of T Engineering and Commerce, as well as other universities. It has been a great experience to meet other students who are here to learn and improve themselves and not just get that piece of paper at the end of four years.

For more information on the National Business and Technology Conference, please visit www.nbtc.ca.

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