Meeting people is easy at Toronto Tech Week

House music is blasting from the sound system as I file into a darkened room.

Despite the club-like atmosphere, it’s 8:30 a.m. on Monday and I’m deep in the belly of Othership in Yorkville, the buzzy wellness spa favoured by the city’s tech community for a cold plunge-and-sauna session to kickstart Toronto Tech Week.

My group of “journeyers” gathers around eight deep tubs. On the subway-tiled wall is a sliding scale sign with just one setting: COLDEST, which is a brisk 4 C. On the go-ahead from our guide—a woman more hyped for cold plunges than I’ve ever been for anything—I submerge myself in the water, grimacing through the biting cold for 30 seconds. The guide boogies around the room and casually hops into a tub as if it isn’t frigid enough to sting. We get a brief reprieve to dance our limbs back to life and exchange high-fives, then jump back in. 

I am BetaKit’s Chief Fun Correspondent: tasked with cold plunging, running, biohacking, and partying my way through Toronto Tech Week.

This is my main quest.

The event gets tech week attendees “inside their bodies and doing a hard thing,” Presh Dineshkumar, a co-founder of The Wellness Company and one of the event organizers, tells me. “So they’ll remember Tech Week for doing hard things.” 

The non-profit and volunteer-run Toronto Tech Week emerged for its inaugural year after Collision’s European parent company, Web Summit, announced it would decamp for Vancouver in 2025. The new homegrown event was spun up to host 10,000 people at roughly 300 events across the city, with a by-the-community, for-the-community ethos.

While the rest of the BetaKit team was running and covering the conference, I was designated the Chief Fun Correspondent, tasked with spending the week cold plunging, rallying, running, biohacking, and partying my way through a gauntlet of events—all for a chance to meet new people and understand what they hope to get out of Toronto Tech Week.

Many of the people I meet this week will tell me that their Toronto Tech Week was defined by attending flagship events like BetaKit Town Hall or Homecoming, and then one ‘side quest’ experience. Not me, though: this is my main quest.

At Othership, about 60 people alternate between the cold plunge room and the wood-panelled sauna set at a blistering temperature the devil himself would find a little warm. By our last plunge and closing dance party, I admit I’m feeling alert and refreshed, and the extreme conditions do inspire some (trauma) bonding with fellow plungers. Dineshkumar’s prediction that the experience would foster conversations and set the tone for the week is fulfilled. 

Fun and games (and ghosts)

On the sidelines of a spirited pickleball game at Rendezviews on Tuesday, Zamir Janmohamed, founder and chief experience officer of team retreats startup Wondrinn, praises the conference’s social events. 

“We’re in an overstimulated world,” he says, adding that “beautiful things happen” when people have fun, play games, and do more than focus on work. He says he plans to spend the week checking on how people in tech are doing and feeling.

“I think healthier humans equals better friends, better parents, better colleagues, better founders.”

I’m not sure if it’ll make me a better human, but pickleball is a mandatory part of this assignment (editor’s note: this is true), so I hit the court. The ref lets us know the game is on, and seconds later the other team’s serve comes sailing toward me. I reach out, and my racket makes a satisfying smack! and sends the ball flying off-court, scoring a point for our opponents. This quickly becomes my signature pickleball move. 

“Who’s winning?” my teammate asks later. The ref wordlessly points across the court. 

Despite the extreme heat, about 30 people turn out for the event, held to launch a new social group for product professionals. Co-organizer Chetan Bhatia says tech industry events primarily focus on founders and investors: “We need to have more events around product people and the struggles that they have.” 

A spooky history tour at the University of Toronto’s Massey College on Wednesday evening hosts a broader range of ages and occupations. We tromp around the downtown campus in the sweltering humidity while local historian Adam Bunch regales us with ghost stories. Did you know Robertson Davies—Massey College’s founding master and one of my favourite authors—believed Canadians needed ghost stories “like you need vitamins” to counterbalance our overly rational national character?

Organizer Sam Rook, a portfolio manager with Q Wealth Partners, exhorted the group of roughly 35 people to use the walk to make at least one new social connection, pointing to comments at the Homecoming event on Tuesday by Wealthsimple’s Michael Katchen and Cohere’s Aidan Gomez about the importance of building in Canada. Building a rich social network here is part of that, he says.

The mellow vibes and mental stimulation suit my mood, but I never see any ghosts on the walking tour. I am told they don’t come out in the summer.

Mindfulness as a Service

On Thursday afternoon, it’s time for biohacking. I’m going in highly skeptical: it seems overwhelmingly the preoccupation of men with too much time and money and some raging midlife crises (editor’s note: no comment). Turns out this session is less ‘swapping blood with your teenage son’ and more about mindfulness techniques and mushroom tea.

“Biohacking is what we do all the time. It’s so in tune with who we are. The purpose of the event was getting people back into their bodies and not making it so stressful,” says Reema Khithani, founder of the Hira Collective, a platform that connects people with holistic wellness practitioners. 

She says she’s hoping Toronto Tech Week will help more industry people find her platform, but notes when she first listed the event under a different name, it only sold a handful of tickets. When she changed the name to biohacking, it quickly sold out.

Daverine Jumu, a wellness counsellor who describes her work as an intuitive shamanic and emotional guiding, asks us to sit in silence, observing our thoughts and letting them move on rather than chasing them “down a rabbit hole,” and later takes us through a deep breathing exercise meant to bring our seven “energy centres” back into alignment when we’re feeling stressed. She says these strategies are crucial for tech leaders making important decisions and navigating tough circumstances. It does feel very peaceful, although I can’t quiet one racing thought: how does anyone have enough lung capacity for this much deep breathing?

Mandy Wong, an implementation and training specialist at legaltech firm Pagefreezer, says she’s been to four events throughout the week, to learn and to make more connections in the city after moving here from Vancouver last year. “This year I’ve just been going to a lot of these events,” she said. “I work remotely, so I’m not always around people, even though I talk to them over the computer. It’s different to meet people in person.” 

Storm the beaches

I am deep in the east end of Toronto at Woodbine Beach in the early evening. I’m at a party for tech, crypto, and real estate professionals where there are about four men to every woman. Organizer Thenuk De Silva, a real estate agent and startup founder twice over, tells me he sifted through 900 applications to approve 500 attendees, based on the vibes of their LinkedIn (I’m clearly a charity invite). He expected 250 people would turn out.

But the day’s earlier rain dampens any hope of a true beach party vibe, and a smaller contingent mostly congregates in a covered picnic area. Those I speak to range from the casual attendees, popping in for one or two events around their work schedules, to the hyper-networkers with company decks and a polished sales pitch at the ready for potential investors.

I try another attendee’s side-project app, which, with a prompt describing your current mood and your choice of three “inspirational quotes,” recommends movies to watch. Based on the prompt that I’ve been at a tech conference all day and am tired, and my selection of a quote that “to do the best work you should do what you love,” it suggests Dead Poets Society, The Pursuit of Happyness, or La La Land. Not bad!

I take a moment to prompt myself. What a week. I’ve been inducted into the cult of wellness, successfully avoided heat stroke and sunburn, and made a bunch of new LinkedIn connections. Have I learned anything? 

I observe my thoughts and move on, refusing to go down any rabbit holes. I focus on the grilled burger I am eating on a beach at my final event of Toronto Tech Week.

That burger! It is the light at the end of the tunnel, the grace note on a long day. It is so good. I’m grateful.

BetaKit is the official media partner of Toronto Tech Week. All images courtesy Kelsey Rolfe for BetaKit.