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Film Italia and the Italian Trade Commission's annual TIFF party took on a  chameleon theme set at the MaRS Discovery Centre.

The lower-key festival event, held at the MaRS Discovery District, attracted more than 400 people and took on a chameleon theme and slogan: "Try on the colours of Italian cinema."

“We try every year to shock people and to be a novelty,” said Italian trade commissioner Paolo Ponti of the party, which he planned in collaboration with Graham. Ponti said MaRS was chosen as a venue this year because of its melding of old and new and its representation of innovation. (The centre is known for leadership in science and business research.)

The Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council (TRIEC) is pleased to announce today's appointment of Gordon M. Nixon, president and chief executive officer of RBC, as Chair, and Zabeen Hirji, chief human resources officer of RBC, as Co-Chair of TRIEC.

As top executives at one of the largest financial institutions in North America, Gord Nixon and Zabeen Hirji are key ambassadors to articulate how Canadian companies can benefit from the international experience and networks, language skills and cultural knowledge that skilled immigrants bring with them to Canada."

Nixon has for years been a champion for promoting diversity in Canadian communities and of leveraging skilled immigrant talent as a driver of Canadian innovation and prosperity. Nixon is chairman of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and chairman of MaRS Discovery District. In 2007, Nixon was invested into the Order of Ontario and was named Canada's Outstanding CEO of the year.

Toronto’s MaRS Discovery District has combined the creative genius of science and technology with the drive of entrepreneurs and capital to create a marriage that will see more Canadian ideas commercialized in this country and for those efforts it has won the Canadian Urban Institute’s 2009 Creative City Award to be granted to MaRS on June 5 at the Urban Leadership Awards in Toronto.

“MaRS has found a creative way for science and business to collaborate rather than compete and to help Canada become a knowledge-based economy. This award recognizes them as a leader in stimulating the creative capacity of the city and advancing entrepreneurship, not only in science and technology but also in social ventures. 

Located in the Discovery District of Toronto, where billions of dollars of creative capital are created every year, the MaRS Centre first opened in 2005 in two new towers that bookend a heritage building that once housed the Toronto General Hospital. The three buildings, that total 700,000 sq. ft, house labs, companies of all sizes, business advisors and investors. Its professional services include hands-on advisory services, entrepreneurial programming and both structured and electronic networking. A second building phase of the MaRS Centre will add 750,000 sq ft and is planned to open in the next few years. “The underlining reason for creating MaRS is to capture the value of Canadian discoveries and to better commercialize these innovations at home in Canada,” said MaRS CEO Ilse Treurnicht. “Hub cities like Toronto are key drivers in shaping Canada’s innovation economy. MaRS works to strengthen the pull of that hub, acting as an accelerator and building the best ideas into companies that can compete on the world stage but are anchored here,” said Treurnicht.

I attended the Wisdom Exchange today at the Mars Discovery District in Toronto, an annual gathering of leading growth firms sponsored by the Ontario government. Ontario’s ministry of small business recognizes that a tiny minority of SMEs, the export-oriented gazelles, account for a disproportionate share of job creation, and it does a great job of encouraging, motivating and supporting the CEOs of such companies through educational opportunities such as the Wisdom Exchange.

Jayson Myers, the respected economist who now heads up Canada's largest industry association, Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters.

Myers offered a fair bit of bad news to the group – he warned that the recession “will be deeper and last longer than consensus forecasts,” and that total Canadian merchandise exports have actually been falling for six years.

Soon, they have created a sprawling physical web that symbolizes the electronic one we surf every day and they begin transmitting short messages back and forth between each other.

The room has become a live, theatrical Twitter environment.

This Internet demonstration is a scene from Dedicated to the Revolutions, a science experiment of sorts that Zimmer's company Small Wooden Shoe is presenting at Buddies in Bad Times theatre starting tonight.