Innovation Supper Club holds Estonia-themed Dinner at Tartu College

Juku Gold

On the evening of Tuesday, March 10, The Innovation Supper Club of Toronto hosted an intimate Estonian-themed dinner event, focused on Estonia’s digital society and how the government, start-ups and corporate businesses have embraced all things digital.

Estonia’s digital story was shared by Peter Poolsaar, an experienced tech consultant and entrepreneur-in-residence at RLabs. Peter also played a lead role in organising the first-ever Estonian-Canadian tech conference Latitude44, held in Toronto in November 2019.

Peter spoke to Estonia’s remarkable turnaround from impoverished post-Soviet state in the early 1990s to a modern tech-hub and recognised global leader in various innovative areas, from e-governance, to start-up culture, to education, to cybersecurity. Particular focus was on Estonia’s culture of transparency around its innovation and digitalisation, including the national data exchange layer X-Road, which underpins Estonians’ everyday digital services and has now expanded in some areas to Finland – for example, with respect to digital healthcare and medical prescriptions. Security risks associated with increased digitalisation were also raised, as well as core concerns about trust, privacy and integrity of citizens’ data. Audience members asked pointed and informed questions, including on how Estonia’s many innovations, and digital society writ large, might be replicable in Canada.

(Full story available via link below)

Peter Poolsaar and Iain Montgomery

Piret Noorhani, Kia Puhm and Juku Gold