03 September 10 the news wire for office professionals
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The second half of a man's life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half.Fyodor Dostoevsky

Bertrand Cesvet Tapped As Business Keynote For IIDEX/NeoCon Canada

6.30.09 | Toronto, Canada | As one of the key strategists behind Cirque du Soleil’s marketing machine, Bertrand Cesvet knows a thing or two about breaking barriers and merging creative disciplines. Cesvet is chairman and senior partner at Sid Lee, a creative services company with more than 300 employees and collaborators, known as “artisans,” spread across Montreal, Amsterdam and Paris. Cesvet is the IIDEX/NeoCon Canada 2009 Business Keynote, speaking on Thursday, September 24 at 10 AM.

In 1997, Cesvet became employee number 11 at a then-fledgling graphic design shop in Montreal, called Diesel Marketing. With his two business partners, Jean-François Bouchard and Philippe Meunier, he set out to turn it into one of the most original marketing companies in the world. According to Cesvet, their work with Cirque du Soleil was inspirational, “they became our mentors and [founder and CEO] Guy Laliberté was very inspirational for us. He stressed the importance of recruiting talented and creative people and selling a product - he was a master at that - and we started believing everything was possible for us as well.”

Today, the company is called Sid Lee (an anagram of Diesel).  It is renown as a cultural and commercial incubator with expertise in advertising, graphic design, interactive communication, interior design, retail architecture, industrial design and experiential design.

Cesvet is also a co-author of the groundbreaking 2008 book, Conversational Capital: How to Create Stuff People Love to Talk About, with Tony Babinski and Eric Alper. Based in Paris, he heads Sid Lee’s two European offices but splits his professional life between North America and Europe. He holds a BA in economics and an MBA from McGill University.

In his keynote, Cesvet will demonstrate commercial creativity in action, presenting Sid Lee’s work for Adidas Originals which spans multiple consumer touch points, from store design to mass and interactive communications.

The 2009 IIDEX/NeoCon Canada Exposition and Conference and Green Building Festival
This year the Green Building Festival (GBF) has co-located its conference and exposition with IIDEX/NeoCon Canada Exposition. The two shows have forged a strategic partnership to advance the educational opportunities on sustainable design and architecture, offer an expanded range of exhibitors focused on sustainability, and develop site tours to create one of the largest green building and design events in Canada.

The Green Building Festival will present their conference on September 23 and 24, and hold a co-located exposition with IIDEX on the 24 and 25. As well IIDEX/NeoCon Canada is celebrating 25 years of design firsts; whether it’s products, people, ideas, speakers or events, IIDEX/NeoCon Canada has consistently led the way in bringing design to the forefront of the Canadian design and business sectors.

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