Speakers
Steven Woods, Site Director, Google Waterloo Canada
Steven Woods joined Google in 2008 as a site director for Google's product development efforts in Canada - located in Waterloo, Ontario. Steven moved back to Canada after a decade in Silicon Valley to take on this role for its entrepreneurial opportunities to innovate and deliver products to consumers worldwide on Google scale. He oversees efforts on products from mobile applications with large strategic importance and consumer reach—such as today's GMail, Calendar & Contacts and tomorrow's social communciation innovations in mobile to mobile search; and on advertising products with huge value impact to advertisers and revenue impact for Google such as Conversion Optimizer, which helps advertisers manage their campaigns much more simply and towards specific trackable conversion goals.
Before joining Google, Steven founded and led NeoEdge Networks, the leading advertising network for casual games powering many high-traffic portals including Yahoo and MSN. Prior to NeoEdge, Steven was a vice-president for America Online / Time Warner - joining AOL/TWX through the acquisition of his company Quack.com - a consumer service for interactive voice services where he was was founding chief technology and products officer. Quack's technology powered AOL's entry into interactive voice applications from AOL Voicemail to AOL By Phone and MovieFone. Both NeoEdge and Quack.com were US0-based entities with joint engineering and product organizations in Mountain View, CA and Ontario. Steven has extensive experience in large-scale software development, including past appointments with the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), and Canada's Department of National Defence. He has received numerous engineering and academic awards and has authored many patents, books, and technical publications related to previous projects. Steven holds Ph.D and Master's degrees in computer science from the University of Waterloo.
Peter Hall, Vice-President and Chief Economist, Export Development Canada
Peter Hall joined Export Development Canada (EDC) in November 2004. He has 20 years of experience in domestic and international economic analysis and forecasting. Mr. Hall is responsible for overseeing economic and political risk analysis at EDC and the company’s information centre. In addition to advising senior management at EDC, Mr. Hall is a featured speaker at conferences across the country, and is a member of an international roundtable on the economies of the Asia-Pacific region.
Prior to joining EDC, Mr. Hall directed the economic forecasting activities of the Conference Board of Canada. In this role, Mr. Hall prepared and published the Conference Board’s national and provincial forecasts, and represented the Board at national and international outlook conferences. In an earlier role, Mr. Hall directed the Conference Board’s international economic outlook service. He also served on the economic forecasting staff of a major Canadian utility.
Mr. Hall is currently president of the Ottawa Economics Association, a 300-member local association of professional economists, and is a board member of the Canadian Association for Business Economics. Mr. Hall has degrees in economics from Carleton University and the University of Toronto.
EDC is Canada’s export credit agency, offering innovative commercial solutions to help Canadian exporters and investors expand their international business. EDC’s knowledge and partnerships are used by nearly 7,000 Canadian companies and their global customers in up to 200 markets worldwide each year. EDC is financially self-sustaining, is a recognized leader in financial reporting and economic analysis, and has been named one of Canada’s Top 100 Employers for seven consecutive years.
