Bergevin and Watier take centre ice at Evenko conference
APEX 2016 taps into knowledge of the best in the business
Brent Steer came up for the idea of APEX 2016 sitting in a classroom a few years back while studying toward an MBA at HEC, one of Montreal’s top business schools.
“I was in class and I realized that essentially a teacher is on stage,” said Steer, who works for Montreal Canadiens-owned concert promoter evenko and is the producer of APEX 2016.
“I just thought to myself, why does this stage have to be this classroom?” continued Steer. “Why can’t it be the Bell Centre? Why do we have to suffer through these PowerPoint presentations when we can do it here with all of the awesomeness that is the Bell Centre, with the Jumbotron, the lights, the sound. And why can’t this professor be the person that wrote the textbook? Why can’t they be some of the best in the world, whether it’s leadership with Wayne Gretzky, having (U.S. President) Barack Obama’s head speech writer, having Scotty Bowman.
“One of my favourite panels is Scotty Bowman, the winningest coach in NHL history, and (Quebec filmmaker) Jean-Marc Vallée. Having them together on a stage … it’ll probably never happen again. They’re talking teamwork. At the end of the day, they’re both managing teams whether it’s a team of hockey players or a team of actors. There are some parallels that can
be drawn to business. That’s really the idea. We’re trying to give people a holistic 360-degree perspective.”
Details of APEX 2016 were unveiled at a press conference Monday morning at the 9-4-10 restaurant at the Bell Centre. The one-day business conference is to be held at the Habs rink Feb. 24 with a list of speakers that includes Bowman, Vallée, Obama speech writer Jon Favreau, hockey agent Pat Brisson, Canadiens general manager Marc Bergevin, TVA news anchor Pierre Bruneau, Quebec entrepreneur Lise Watier, TV host Jean-Luc Mongrain and actress Guylaine Tremblay.
Bergevin will be taking part in a panel on the topic of negotiation.
“First off, I won’t be giving away all of my secrets at APEX,” Bergevin said. “I’ll be keeping some of them to myself."
Bergevin acknowledged that he sees negotiation as a relationship. “Trying to get a deal done, it’s both sides working toward the same goal,” he said. “It’s not me against the agent. People might think that. But it doesn’t have to be hard. It’s respectful because we have the same goal at the end of the day.”
It takes two parties to make it happen, Bergevin explained. “If the agent wants to get his player signed and the team is not willing, then the deal’s not going to happen. The common ground is they both have to want to get a deal done. I have my philosophy about the reason why deals get done either in hockey, baseball or business. Timing has a lot to do with it.”