The full agenda — with receipts

Closed-door board sessions are where a trade body's priorities get set: which policy fights, standards work and member programs get resourced. With no agenda published, the questions to watch for in later announcements are what the board says about funding, interoperability and reliability, and how it plans to shape the rest of the conference's themes. Relevant mainly to board members, but everyone else should look for the resulting positions.

Opening receptions are the cheapest place to make first contact with site hosts, utilities, OEMs and hardware vendors before the schedule fills up. Treat it as a targeting exercise: pick three to five counterparts with live projects or procurement decisions and book follow-up meetings before day two. Nothing is published beyond the title, so the value is the room, not the content.

This block is the core of the conference, where plenaries and breakouts show what the sector is actually prioritizing: uptime, utilization, grid interconnection, funding timelines and interoperability. The listing carries no detail, so check the full agenda for the sessions that match your role. Meals are a networking slot as much as a break, so plan which tables you sit at.

Test drives matter to charging professionals because real-world driving and charging behavior is what determines demand at your sites. Plug'n Drive is an Ontario-based nonprofit focused on EV adoption, so expect a consumer-experience view rather than a technical one. Worth the time for anyone who hasn't recently driven current models and wants to see charge-port types, charging speed and in-vehicle navigation to chargers from the driver's seat.

Short, timed rotations at sponsor tables compress weeks of vendor discovery into one session, but only if you go in with a list. Pre-booked meetings get priority, so book ahead and bring specific questions on pricing, delivery lead times, network and software compatibility, and service terms. Sponsors should ask who is actually holding purchasing budget, and attendees should ask which vendors can show deployed, reliable references.

The evening reception at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights is the unstructured counterpart to the day's formal sessions, and deals and partnerships often get started here. Use it to follow up on conversations from the B2B forum and meet utilities, municipalities and fleet operators who rarely attend vendor events. No program is published, so the value is who you meet.

Day three programming is where the second half of the agenda typically gets into implementation: funding, rollout experience and lessons from deployed networks. Nothing is listed beyond the title, so check the full schedule. Questions worth carrying into the sessions are what reliability and utilization data operators are willing to share, and where policy and grid constraints are still blocking projects.

A second test-drive window gives those who missed day two a chance to experience current EV models firsthand. For charging professionals, the useful part is seeing how drivers meet charging in practice: connector types, charge curves and the app and navigation experience. Presented by Plug'n Drive, an Ontario-based nonprofit working on EV adoption.

Site visits are the best way to see how charging infrastructure performs outside the slide deck: layout, power equipment, grid connection, maintenance access and driver experience. With no sites or hosts listed, the questions to ask on the tour are what was hardest to permit and connect, what the uptime and maintenance picture looks like, and what the host would do differently. Prioritize this if you are in design, construction or operations.