Of the Field

CTO Craft Con: Toronto 2027

C

TO Craft Con returns to Toronto in 2027 for two days of practical leadership conversations. Senior technology and engineering leaders from across Canada and North America will gather to explore topics ranging from AI adoption and organisational design to scaling teams, platform strategy, and leadership under pressure. The conference is built exclusively for…

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34Voices
6Underwriters
2Exhibitors
18On the bill · sessions
38Companies · in total
§I

The Voices

Programmed at CTO, in alphabetical order.
Alex Lukashevich
Chief AI Officer · Forte Group
Allison McMillan
Fractional VP of Engineering · Tavlin Consulting
Andrea Corey
VP Engineering · Homebase
Andrew Potapov
Director Software Engineering · Leap Tools
Anirban Chatterjee
Sr. Director Product Marketing · Sonar
Anna Goltsman
CTO · eDynamic Learning
Anne Steptoe
SVP Engineering · Propel Holdings
Anu Dodda
CTO · PureFacts
Bohdan Zabawskyj
Founder · TrueNorthCTO
Bryan McEire
CTO · BoxHub
Christine Miao
Founder & Researcher · Technical Accounting
David Fung
Founder & Executive Coach · Coachful Coaching
Dr. Catherine Hicks
Founder & Chief Scientist · Catharsis Consulting
Dwayne Forde
Co-Founder & CTO · Mantle
Farzona Pulatova
VP Engineering · Earnest
Fern Johnson
VP Infrastructure & Operations · ex-PepsiCo
Jennifer Schachter
Senior Software Engineering Manager · Capital One Canada
John Kleber
CTO · Buck
Juan Musleh
Venture CTO · Koru
Kathryn Hume
VP, AI Engineering · Vector Institute
Kirk Gray
VP Engineering · McGraw-Hill Education
Kurtis Funai
CTO · Fullscript

— and 12 more, by name unsung —

§II

Underwritten By

The houses behind the program. Tiers as disclosed.
Augment Code
Bitrise
Forte Group
Quotient
Sonar
Spacelift
§III

The Programme

Selected from 18 sessions on the bill.
  • 08:30-09:25

    Women in Tech Breakfast

    A staple at CTO Craft Con events, this is a space for women in technology leadership to come together, share experiences, and build meaningful connections with others who get it.

  • 09:35-10:05

    Keynote – Communicating Effectively with Non-Technical Leaders

    One of the hardest and least appreciated challenges for a CTO is communicating with, negotiating with, and building trust with non-engineering leaders. There are three independent …

  • 09:40-10:10

    Keynote – Owners Not Renters: How We Build an Intelligent Future That Belongs to Everyone

    Your AI stack is built on infrastructure you don’t control. Models, platforms, data pipelines: all rented from companies whose interests don’t always align with yours. Drawing on M…

  • 10:05-10:30

    Presentation – The Startup Way: Innovating Within a Corporate Environment

    Large organisations kill good ideas slowly. Approval cycles, risk aversion, and competing priorities turn promising initiatives into long-delayed projects or quiet cancellations. T…

  • 10:10-10:35

    Presentation – Leading with EI: The Human Edge in an AI-Driven World

    The leaders who thrive in this era won’t do it by keeping pace with the technology alone. The capabilities AI cannot replicate, emotional intelligence, self-awareness, the ability …

  • 11:10-11:35

    Presentation – Shipping Faster, Trusting Less: Closing the AI Confidence Gap

    Every engineering org using AI coding tools has hit the same tension. Velocity is up. PRs ship faster than ever. But confidence in what’s reaching production hasn’t kept up. The kn…

  • 11:15-11:40

    Presentation with Hywel Carver

    Hywel has led a wide range of dev teams for the past decade (including two VC-backed start-ups), and is a published curriculum author. He wrote his first program in C aged 9, and i…

  • 11:35-12:20

    Panel – The Hard Calls: Leadership, Missteps, and What You Don’t Say Out Loud

    Being a CTO means making decisions with incomplete information, under pressure, about people. Most of those decisions don’t have a clean answer. Bringing together technology leader…

  • 11:40-12:30

    Panel – Who Owns Security Now?

    AI writes more of your code every week. Your attack surface is growing faster than your security team. And somewhere between the developer, the CTO, and the CISO, nobody is quite s…

Intermission
Part the Second · For the Buyer

What does it mean when 38 companies show up — and 3 bet on three roles at once?

38 companies. three are betting more than once.

The numbers below are derived from the speakers, sponsors, and exhibitors on this page — cross-referenced into one ledger. They are the only thing here that 10times.com cannot tell you.

01Fig. 01 — Composition of the House
3All threespeak · spons · exh
3Sponsoringsponsor only
2Exhibitingexhibitor only
30Speakingspeaker only

The Triple-Threat

Bitrise·Forte Group·Sonar

02Fig. 02 — The Voices, by Seniority

85% of the speakers carry senior titles — C-suite, Founder, VP, or Director-level.

  • C-suite1338%
  • Founder / Owner412%
  • VP-level926%
  • Director / Head of39%
  • Manager / Lead26%
  • Engineer · IC13%
  • Other roles26%

Of 34 on the bill · classified by free-text title

03Fig. 03 — The Heaviest in the Room
  1. 01BitriseSp1V
  2. 02Forte GroupSp1V
  3. 03SonarSp1V
  4. 04Augment CodeSp
  5. 05QuotientSp
  6. 06SpaceliftSp
  7. 07CoderEx
  8. 08Imaginary CloudEx
  9. 09BoxHub1V
  10. 10Buck1V
  11. 11Capital One Canada1V
  12. 12Catharsis Consulting1V
  13. 13CircleCI1V
  14. 14Coachful Coaching1V
04Fig. 04 — By Tier
unspecified6
100% of 6
05Fig. 05 — The Missing · who's at peer events but not here

These companies sponsored two or more peer events recently, but aren't on this program. For an organizer, that's a list of warm prospects.

06Fig. 06 — Adjacent Convocations · by shared underwriters

In the same series

Prior and forthcoming editions

Sister convocations

Same brand, other regions