Schedule Details

Registration (Lotus) - Come pick up your badge and a copy of the schedule.

2027 Pre-registration (Lotus) - ***Subject to change based on availability. *** Reserve our lowest ticket price for 2027 by buying before you leave.

Gaming (Terrace) - We have a library of board games to play within our cozy Gaming room. We aim to be open at all hours!

Sensory Room (Peel) - This room is for those that need a minute away from the activity or people for a little while. We will strive to keep the lights down and the conversation minimum here.

Opening Ceremonies - A warm welcome for all our attendees!

Featured Guest Meet-n-Greet - Come and chat with our Featured Guests, Stacey Smith? and Alasdair Post-Quinn.

Friday Night Dance - Shake it out and live it up on the first night to the tunes of our DJs.

Icebreaker Hextraction - Want to meet a few new people and play a 3D-printed board game at the same time? This panel is for you!

Artemis Cosmos - Artemis Cosmos is a cooperative real-time game. You are the bridge crew of a starship. 

Will you navigate us from the helm? Take point on the weapons? Show us the way from the sensors? Hail our arrival and taunt raiders? Be the Engineer setting systems to maximum? Or command it all from the chair! No experience required, everything provided, ready to teach new players.

Running a Hacker / Maker Space - Ever wonder what it's like herding cats... we mean, running a hacker or maker space? Come ask your questions of the current and former leaders of such spaces.

Hosts: Jeanine Adkisson, Director, Queer Computer Club; Scott Sullivan, Past President, Hacklab Toronto

LoRa Mesh Networking Intro for Fun and (no) Profit - A quick overview of meshtastic and/or meshcore for communication, tracking and infrastructure.

Urban Jungle one-shot, Historical Role-Playing - A one-shot session of the Sanguine Games TTRPG "Urban Jungle" using pre-generated characters. Have you ever thought "Boardwalk Empire would have been better if the cast was all anthropomorphic animals"?  If so, this RPG one-shot is for you!

Double-knitting Techniques from the basic to the bizarre - Watch Alasdair Post-Quinn demonstrate a plethora of techniques he's developed in double-knitting, a style of reversible knitting. Get your burning double-knitting questions answered, and fondle some samples of the plush double-layered fabric.

Cyanotype - Historic blueprinting process - Cyanotype, aka Blueprinting, is one of the earliest known photographic printing processes. Discovered in the 1840s by John Herschell, this photo-sensitive dye was once ubiquitous as a method of reproducing building plans and schematics. Anna Atkins, a family friend of Herschell's received recognition for her contributions to science - unusual for women at the time - when she travelled around the British coast producing botanical contact-prints. Join us in celebrating her legacy and exploring the creative applications of this non-toxic & easy to use photographic chemistry.

Double-Bed, Flatbed Knitting Machines - Watch me knit socks! Ask me questions! Ask me where you can buy one! Let's build a new community of makers in Toronto!

Travel 101 - I'll answer your questions about travel, and air travel in particular, and share what I've learned in my decades in the travel industry, including how to travel with as little stress as possible

Soldering 101 - Come learn to solder! A meshcore/meshtastic kit will be available for purchase, with other blinkie kits as available on the day.

Doctor Who and the Epidemics of Death! - Given how ripe a topic pandemics are, why hasn’t a world-threatening pandemic been used more in Doctor Who? Even Davros’s monologue about releasing a virus in “Genesis of the Daleks” was hypothetical. How much more terrifying would that story have been if he had actually released the plague that wiped out all life? A pandemic is such an obvious plotline for drama, especially post-COVID — and yet the Chibnall era entirely ignored COVID-19, despite being made in the middle of it. The nearest we get to it is a mention of “the rules” and a brief flashback in “Joy to the World.” It’s truly bizarre to have all the ingredients for a rich story and yet avoid using them. There's one major exception, "Doctor Who and the Silurians", which delves into what an actual pandemic might look like, as well as the role of actual science in combating it. This talk will delve into Doctor Who's relationship with pandemics over the years and why they're difficult to show onscreen.

The Evolution of Reversible Knitting - Knitting is not, by default, reversible -- but it can be! Starting from the very basics, Alasdair Post-Quinn will take you up the evolutionary ladder of reversible knitting to the pinnacle of current two-layer knitting innovation, where his ongoing work in double-knitting continues to push the craft further.

Soldering Drop-in - Didn't get enough time to solder in the 101 class? Have another project to work on? We've got you covered!

What can zombies teach us about the next pandemic? - You're outnumbered, in fear of your life, surrounded by flesh-eating zombies. What do you do? Call the mathematicians, of course! There are many lessons that zombies can teach us about how to tackle real-world problems. Faced with unfamiliar biology — in this case, the dead coming back to life — there's a problem. You can't use existing models, because they don't apply. But time is of the essence: the zombie hordes are invading! Or, perhaps more likely, there's a new pandemic, and it's spreading quickly. The same process that leads us from the biology to the equations and back again can be applied to a new, unfamiliar disease. Or to an existing, but neglected disease. The power of mathematical modelling provides insights that we can't grasp otherwise, allows us to model hypothetical outbreaks before they occur and lets us consider a variety of potential outcomes without lengthy experiments or expensive trials. Those things are important, of course, but mathematics can light the way forward.

Lightning Talks - Session One - You have 8 minutes to talk and field questions about *insert topic here*. Come be passionate about your favourite topic!

Queer Meet & Greet + Color Your Own Paint Cat Sticker - Come hang out, make some friends, and color your own sticker.

Saturday Night Dance - Get more dancing in on the second night of our event, thanks to our wonderful DJs.

Filk Jam - Bring an instrument, bring your voice, bring your friends, and let's make music!

Lightning Talks - Session Two - You have 8 minutes to talk and field questions about *insert topic here*. Come present your favourite topic!

Solutioning vs Managing - Careers, businesses, and personal projects all have different roles that require different skills. Are we considering the big picture when we look for people to manage things, or are we ignoring the difference between what "doing a good job" means in different contexts? This is an active discussion with some main assumptions where we can dig into the nuance involved, and share our own experiences.

Artemis Cosmos - Artemis Cosmos is a cooperative real-time game. You are the bridge crew of a starship. 

Will you navigate us from the helm? Take point on the weapons? Show us the way from the sensors? Hail our arrival and taunt raiders? Be the Engineer setting systems to maximum? Or command it all from the chair! No experience required, everything provided, ready to teach new players.

Furry Fandom History Q&A with Trapa Civet - A furry fandom Q&A session for those who have questions about the history of the furry fandom from a west coast perspective.

Women in STEAM Meetup - Come chat with other women in Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics! Also open to non-binary persons interested in centering the women's perspective.

The Weird But Powerful Graphics of The Atari 2600 - The Atari 2600 has extremely limited graphics capabilities. There’s no video RAM, no frame buffer, and no real screen resolution. It requires a programmer to “race the beam” and count processor cycles. Yet somehow, it works, and even has advantages over other, more powerful machines. This presentation will look under the hood to see how Atari 2600 graphics work, what makes them different from its competitors, and how clever programmers were able to exploit these unique properties to make video game legends.

Closing Ceremonies - It's time to go home. We hope to see you again next year!