Plamen Russev

If you look just 10 years back...

you can easily see the rapid evolution of digital industry. Everything is smart - phones, watches, we even have home AI assistants so that our homes can be smart. At this point we cannot and we don’t want to imagine the world without the technological advantages. More or less, this is normal: for the century we live in, for our jobs, for our life nowadays. So 10 years in our century is a period in which A LOT can change. Just a few months ago Webit celebrated its 10-year anniversary. The festival grew rapidly to become one of Europe’s (and even world’s) largest forums for innovation, technology, entrepreneurship, policy and startups. /You can watch the trailer here: https://youtu.be/695bBvsv6vQ/ Webit.Festival gathers tech, digital and policy elite to re-invent and pave the digital future of Europe.

This year is no exception.

We would like to introduce you to some of our confirmed 2019 speakers. So in the next few weeks we will share some interesting information about the amazing line up that we are preparing for this year’s Festival.

Today we’d like you to meet 5 Innovation Gurus:

On the Innovate Stage you will see: Dr. Goertzel is one of the world’s foremost experts in Artificial General Intelligence. (It is a subfield of AI oriented toward creating thinking machines with general cognitive capability at the human level and beyond.) Ben also has decades of expertise applying AI to practical problems in areas ranging from natural language processing and data mining to robotics, video gaming, national security and bioinformatics. He has published 20 scientific books and 140+ scientific research papers. He is also the main architect and designer of the OpenCog system and associated design for human-level general intelligence. Dr. Viral Shah is CEO of Julia Computing, co-creator of the Julia programming language and winner of the 2019 James H. Wilkinson Prize for Numerical Software. He implemented a risk management system for derivatives trading on the National Stock Exchange in India. Viral co-authored Rebooting India with Nandan Nilekan. He is also co-founder of Infosys and founding chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India, which has delivered unique bio-metric identification to 1.2 billion Indians in the past decade. Rebooting India describes Nandan and Viral's experience implementing a large-scale technology project in government. Viral and his co-creators started Julia as a hobby but it is now their full time occupation at Julia Computing. Julia is the fastest dynamic programming language for numeric and scientific computing, including artificial intelligence and machine learning. Julia is free and open source and is used by more than 10,000 enterprises and 1,500 universities with over 2 million downloads, 1,900+ packages and 800+ open source contributors. Leila Janah is the Founder and CEO of Samasource and LXMI, two companies that go beyond charity to #givework to low-income people around the world using cutting-edge social enterprise models in technology and luxury skincare, respectively. She is the author of the book Give Work (Penguin/RandomHouse). Leila is a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, a former Director of CARE USA, a TechFellow, recipient of the inaugural Club de Madrid Young Leadership Award, and also the youngest person to win a Heinz Award in 2014. She is one of Fortune’s Most Promising Entrepreneurs. And she was the subject of cover stories in Entrepreneur, Fast Company, and Conscious Company Magazines. Oisin Hanrahan is a serial entrepreneur with deep knowledge of two-sided marketplaces and a keen interest in technology and politics. Oisin is currently the co-founder and CEO of Handy which he founded in 2012. Handy is changing the way that people book and provide home services. From home cleaning to TV mounting, smart home setup to furniture assembly, people turn to Handy for a seamless, fast and top-quality experience that provides them with access to the home services they need. Oisin also advises and invests in startups, particularly in New York City. Major media extensively featured Oisin’s work, including CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times.

And last but not least, a dear Webit friend -

Martin Wezowski, has been loving and living design and tech his whole career. As Chief Designer for SAP's Innovation Center Network & Chief Innovation Office he crafts future outlooks, strategies and products, defines and runs innovation frameworks to find out what’s next for SAP and the future of work. He frequently shares his passion for the future of technology and design (TEDx, SXSW, CES, Ada Lovelace, CeBIT, MOBx, Grace Hopper, SIME, MLOVE etc.). He builds on his international adventures stretching from Poland, Sweden, China to Germany and across companies like SAP, Sony and Huawei, working with consumer electronics, media services and business software.

---

Тake advantage of the special Early bird prices and book your ticket for Webit.Festival Europe 2019 for as low as 100 EUR!

This is the message that Webit’s Executive Chairman and Goodwill Ambassador for Bulgaria's Digital Affairs - Plamen Russev sent to the world from Davos and shared upon his landing at Sofia Airport. He shared his impressions from the past week at the World Economic Forum in Davos. This year Dr. Russev hosted a special forum and reception - Webit.Davos 2019.

Apple's Chief Executive Officer among Webit.Davos 2019 guests

More than 300 guests from the world elite accepted Dr. Russev's personal invitation, including Apple's CEO Tim Cook, the President of Harvard University - Larry Beikou, presidents and CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, and many other government and NGOs representatives, as well as media, among which CNN, Forbes, and others. Such elite of global leaders are seldom brought together. The forum took place in the area with the highest level of security at the Davos Forum in Hilton Garden.

“There are dozens of events happening in Davos every minute, and the competition for the attention of the world leaders is extremely high. It was an exceptional honor for me that over 300 global leaders were with us and respected us with their presence. This is also a signal to others about Webit's influence and next year we expect even more interest.“ - said Webit’s Executive Chairman Plamen Russev.

The development of artificial intelligence, the future of work and blockchain technologies were among the main topics of the event. As a Goodwill Ambassador for the Digital Affairs of the Republic of Bulgaria, Dr. Russev introduced his high-profile guests to the exceptional opportunities Bulgaria provides as a hub for new technologies. Webit affirmed Sofia as a digital capital in the global media and continues to promote the city and Bulgaria as a place for innovation and opportunities for opening development centers and creation of new high tech jobs.

"Mercedes Benz creates its entire platform for autonomous cars based on artificial intelligence in Sofia. 1300 Bulgarians will write such a platform, again based on artificial intelligence, for another world giant - Bosch. After attending two consecutive editions of Webit.Festival, the creator of the world's most used database - MySQL, chose to invest in a local company that is working on his new, extraordinary project ... I can give dozens of other examples. Bulgaria is becoming a local technology superpower and that is completely in unison with the long-standing efforts of Webit and our partners to improve people's lives by developing entrepreneurship and increasing the influence of women in business and politics. For the last 11 years, Webit builds and affirms the image of our country through our global community of over 800 000 people, who receive Webit news and are part of our global family. " Dr. Russev continued.

"Although the tone of the discussions in Davos was a bit pessimistic, I am moderately optimistic about Bulgaria and the creative role of our country in the region. The main challenges are to work together and for the common good; education is a key factor and much has to be done in this area. Webit Foundation has already gathered over 3000 young people - the color of the nation and enlighten them about the future. We have many plans and a lot of work to do together in that direction!"

Plamen Russev has also hinted at another big update, which is to be officially announced soon. From his words, 26 European cities are currently bidding to host Webit.Festival 2020. Which are the cities, what are their proposals to Webit, and whether Sofia will remain on Webit’s world map, are questions yet to be answered.

The world is advancing in its digital transformation process

  Being innovative and decisive, persistently driving the change, will be basic traits for any organization planning to stay competitive and live up to the expectations of our technologically thriving world. The 2019 DXC Global Digital Enterprise Survey, written by The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and sponsored by DXC and Leading Edge Forum suggests that this will be “a year of decision-making and profound change”. This statement supports Diana Stefanova’s (Managing Director EMEA R&D VMware) views on digital transformation shared on the stage of Webit 2018: “Companies have to constantly innovate. If companies do not disrupt themselves, they will be disrupted by others.” Join Webit 2019 to hear more about current technological trends and how businesses cope with them

Surveying more than 600 executives on their strategies for digital transformation

EIU reveals that the majority of businesses (over 80%) plan to increase their 2019 investments in digital technology. As numbers suggest this is by far not a hazard as 70% of the respondents confirm that organization’s profitability has increased thanks to their digital strategy. Investments in cloud computing, mobile and applications are already considered entangled to modern business, so exploring emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, server less computing and others, could lead to greater agility and competitive advantage. On the matter, 75% of respondents state that a modern IT infrastructure positions their organization to produce stakeholder value. On the stage of Webit 2018 we also welcomed Mikael Conny Svensson - Vice-President Government Affairs & Public Policy, Mastercard Europe, who shared his vision for Europe in 2030-2050: “Innovation is absolutely necessary, not just to do business now, but to do it in the future too” Explore the report and find more interesting insights here By uniting data and analysis, an organization confidently adds value to its strategy and its further implementation, however, the adoption pace is still rather imperceptive. Only less than 30% of the organizations see their business units as “digitally enabled.” Thus, fundamental to a successful digital transformation is adequate cultural transformation. About 40% of respondents state that the process should be supported by significant initiatives related to organizational change, new recruitment and training programs, digital task forces activation, as well as strong understanding and commitment from core executives to keep and guide the “digi course”. As Igor Beuker, a professional speaker, serial entrepreneur and Angel Investor shared his thoughts on innovation at our 10th birthday: “Innovation is a culture, not a department!” Get the chance to hear about it,first hand experience at Webit.Festival Europe 2019, where attendance is 75% C-level. Evolving and moving forward to the digitization of the business has been proven to be a strategic benefit to any organization. So, if for any reason you still doubt the value of digitizing your company or industry, come to Sofia - the digital capital and get insights from the people implementing this transformation worldwide. Like what you read? Subscribe here and never miss Webit news and special promotions!

HAPPY 2019, Everyone!

It starts BIG for Webit! 1. We have just announced 50 global leaders (out of over 400) as speakers for the upcoming Webit.Festival Europe 2019 | May 13-15, 2019. You may still apply to join as speaker or to book  exhibition space or become a sponsor of Europe's Innovation and Tech Festival. 2. If you still haven't booked your tickets and trip to Webit - hurry up! Some hotels are getting already fully booked and prices go up! 3. Unlike others, Webit always publishes the list of 10'000 attendees from 111 countries who join us and who make Webit one of the few events on this Planet with 73% C-level attendance including: - thousands of CxOs - a fine selection of 1500 of the top European startup/scaleup founders - 480+ Investors covered by over 500 media reporters.

Here is a list of 10 facts about Webit.Festival you should know before you join.

---

>>Watch the 2019 Webit Trailer<<

---

4. Stay tuned for Webit's new AI powered state-of -the-art networking app and brand new networking and exhibition zones at the Festival. Because we take each attendee's and exhibitor's experience and the ROI on your time and money at Webit.Festival very seriously. 5. Europe's largest startup challenge Founders Games is open for the best startups and scaleups of Europe! Apply today and get a free expo area at Webit.Festival + opportunity to pitch your company to thousands of investors, media and global business leaders. 6. We strive to keep Webit.Festival a unique experience - a touch to the future - while we make sure it is among the most effective events for business. 7. I look forward to meeting some of the Webit community members in 2 weeks in Davos at the invitations only Webit.DAVOS Reception, powered by Youplus - The worlds first video opinion search engine.

A few days before the upcoming holidays, we will keep this very brief. We kindly invite you to watch the premiere of the Webit.Festival Europe 2019 trailer - and join us on this virtual journey. Hope you have also marked your calendar: May 13-15, 2019 and you will join us at the 11th annual edition of Europe's Tech and Innovation Festival along with 10'000 other founders, business, academia and policy leaders from 111 countries. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZGC-0zEXSk[/embed] Please accept our Season's Greetings! May you have the joy of shared love and warmth in your family!  Let 2019 be successful and peaceful! Yours, Webit team

While everybody is searching for the best gift: There is ONE that stands out from all amazing others - a ticket to Webit.Festival Europe 2019 - a chance to experience the future!

Give yourself or someone you love this special present! To make it even more joyful - we give a special 30% discount for the first 100 people who book their tickets. First come - first serve 🎁!

---

>>Get your present with 30% discount now<<

---

What makes Webit.Festival Europe so special, that people from all over the world join it? With its 15+ parallel events and over 100 meetups, partners events, workshops and round tables, Webit gathers more than 10'000 of the worlds leaders and tech experts including heads of governments from 110 countries! Over 73% of all the attendees are C-level executives, founders, investors or top policy makers! Whoever you rub shoulders with is a decision maker with whom you may discuss business. The festival hosts over 300 exhibitors and sponsors. Webit is so BIG - we build a small city to host it. Check the picture gallery. The featured 200 startups as part of the Founders Games are selected from over 4000 applications! Unlike other events when you get lost in the "startup crowd" - at Webit you may go straight to business! Over 60% of all selected startups as part of the Founders Games receive funding up to 5 million up to 9 months after pitching at Webit. Ready to help shape the future? Get your Christmas ticket now  

In 2018 Webit.Festival Europe broke records with 10'000 attendees from 111 countries, establishing itself as one of Europe's most attended and impactful tech and innovation events.

If you are planning your 2019 marketing activities we would be happy to have a call and discuss our special early-bird offers for exhibition and sponsorship packages (valid by 23 Nov. 2018).

>>Become Exhibitor / Sponsor of Webit.Festival EU '19<<

This year Webit moved to double the size venue but still 3 weeks before the Festival it was sold out and many couldn't join.

>>Final week 2in1 ticket sale<<

While setting the scene for even bigger and more impactful 2019 edition, we share some recent news: In the news The Economist published Q&A on Webit and the state of the innovation ecosystem. Al Jazeera, Entrepreneur and many more covered similar stories. Forbes' article reflected on how "Webit has helped catalyze the rise of Sofia, Bulgaria as a credible location for technology talent and investment."

---

Recognition This month our Executive Chairman, Dr. Plamen Russev has been  appointed as Goodwill Ambassador for Digital Affairs of Republic of Bulgaria for his role in establishing the country on the global digital map. A month earlier he was awarded with another Honorary Ph.D by one of South America's largest Universities - UDABOL.

---

Super Earlybird tickets sale! Save from €350 to €1400  (depending on the ticket type you buy). Only by the end of this week you may book your Webit early-bird Pro ticket at as low as 50 EUR*! *The price of €100 for 2 tickets is valid by Nov 25, 2019 and is exclusive of VAT.

---

Career @ Webit Webit grows! We have 10 open positions for talents from all around the world regardless of your location. If a high impact job and interaction with leaders from all around the world makes you happy, we are looking for you!  Apply today!

---

Open call for new Webit host cities for 2019 - 2022. If you would like to host a Webit event in your city - please send us an  email to:partners@webitcongress.com and tell us what will make Webit a successful event there.  

Webit.Festival Europe is launching a new summit, topics of which have been discussed over the years. The mission of the Summit is to address climate change by uniting Technology Innovators, Academia, Governments in taking action towards a low-carbon world. Government representatives shall discuss their efforts and good practices in intense activity in climate policy and an indicator on the countries’ ambitions to reduce emissions and support climate protection. Innovation through legislation is a driving force for Webit.Foundation.

Despite the numerous statistics on climate change, we somehow remain blind folded and rarely take action to preserve the nature and follow expert’s advice.

By 2050, 2/3 of the global population will live in cities.

Аnd more than 70% of the global demand for infrastructure over the next 15 years is expected to be in urban areas. This predisposition will determine our economic future and climate security for the years ahead. How cities develop is important both for growth and for climate change. It is up to us to take action and make change today. According to a WEF survey, dirty air can prematurely kill 400,000 Europeans, not to mention the health costs and the new diseases like allergies in the recent years. The Climate|Tech Summit is Webit.Festival Europe's high-level gathering with a special focus on climate change, its consequences and how investors can change the status quo.

Webit.Foundation has dedicated its work to help solve global problems

It is our belief technology can greatly contribute. Thus, it is our mission to develop technology and digital ecosystems wherever we step foot in. The current state of technology is providing so many solutions that can be put into action. Our goal is to gather the enterprise leaders in the different industries together and plan how to transfer from the current Energy system to a new - clean tech world. Furthermore, we are investing in solutions to these world problems. Founder’s games’ 2018 winner, Bioo, developing a product in renewable energies, generating the greenest energy on Earth won €200 000.

---

Do you have a revolutionary idea to preserve the environment? >> Apply to Founders games here. <<

     

Pablos Holman (a World-renowned Hacker, Inventor, Technology Futurist) joined Webit.Festival Europe this year. He works at the Intellectual Ventures Laboratory (IVL) where a wide variety of futuristic invention projects are under way.

---

There were not many humans for like thousands and thousands of years until about 200 000 years ago when we hit the hockey stick growing curve.

We went from millions to billions almost overnight

It's that curve that defines everything we are experiencing today. How do you keep 7B people alive without additional planet? What happened?

We solved hard technical problems that kept humans from thriving

How do you feed these people? How do you eradicate the diseases that are killing them off? How do you give them jobs? How do you give them homes? Every single time we invented new technology and brought it to the world to solve those problems. It wasn't government policy, it wasn't religion.. it was new technology.

"Our job is to figure out how are we going to invent on that scale. Because if there is one thing all these extra humans are good for - it's making more problems!"

Intellectual Ventures Lab invented a system for reversing some of the effects of global warming.

It isn't a solution to Global Warming, but plan A is to stop emitting greenhouse gases - we are not doing that…This plan is: Maybe we could put a little bit of particulate in the stratosphere, little white dust that reflects like 1% of the sunlight. before it gets to earth's atmosphere, before it heats up greenhouse gasses. It's like a sunblock for the earth. It could bring Earth's temperature down by 1 or 2 degrees. Just enough to restore arctic ice caps to pre-industrial levels. There are things we can do to buy time.

They also invented antenna technology which is using meta-materials - a new area in science - materials that don't exist in nature but which we can manufacture to give us cool new superpowers. This antenna has no moving parts but it can electronically steer a beam. So it can aim a beam at a satellite.

"We have these things in the roofs of cars - driving all the way across America - coast to coast, streaming 4k video of the satellite both directions, uncompressed."

Every new satellite we put up these days has more wireless communication capacity than the entire satellite network had 5 years ago.

"At the intellectual ventures Lab we bought one of every tool in the world and we hired one of every kind of scientist and we put them all in the same team and we started trying to invent for the biggest problems that we can find. We don't make any products, we just invent new technologies."

When you are inventing you are pretty much wrong all the time

"I'm working on a 10-year horizon, I have to guess what problems are going to exist ten years from now, what's gonna be technically possible and what the right solution is going to be. I am wrong almost all the time. We try to come up with around 500 inventions a year and hope one of them pays for all the failures. That's a lot worse odds than a VC - they put 100M USD and into a dozen startups and hope one of them pays for all the failures. I take 100M USD and put it into 1000 inventions and hope one of them pays out for all the failures."

We need to do this kind of work and we need to do it in a large scale. If you are lone scientist in a garage you only get a couple of inventions a year.

If you have a soup can full of depleted uranium, there's as much energy there as 12M USD of Gas

But, you know, it's radioactive, and dangerous and makes a lot of nuclear waste which we just stockpile into the horizon and we like saving it for our grand kids cause we don't know what to do with it.

"We invented a new type of nuclear reactor that is powered by nuclear waste."

What a lot of people don't realize is today's reactors were invented before we were born. They have problems and we can do better than this. IVL design their reactors on a giant supercomputer they can model every neutron and understand what's going to happen before they build it and can make modern safe reactors.

"We solve Energy, we solve a lot of other problems for free."

We call companies like Uber, Facebook, Airbnb and Alibaba tech companies, but they are not tech companies.

What technology has Uber invented? Or Facebook?

These are the logical extensions to what you get when you invent internet, mobile phones, wireless data. But something important is happening. These are very successful products and very successful businesses. When you look at the economic value in the world when we were kids it was in energy companies, oil companies, biggest companies in the world. Now? It is in Tech companies. Think about how your clothes are made. They grow cotton in one country, ship it to another country to be beaten down, bleached out. Ship it to another country to be spun into yarn, ship somewhere else to be made into fabrics, just before the shipping to somewhere else to be cut and sewn into t-shirt and then back to Europe, where you wear it 3 times, throw it to the bottom of your closet and that is 4 euros. Think we can do better? This industry has been avoiding technology and innovation for about a 100 years.

We pretend you are a unique and special snowflake but you are really a small, medium or large snowflake.

We make t-shirts for the winning team and the losing team. Sell half of them and send the other half to South Africa and write it off as a charitable donation. We are guessing what's going to sell, what colors what designs, what sizes. Think about how we made software in the 80s. We made software on an 18 month development cycle the same way we make shoes and cars and sunglasses. But we don't anymore. Here's how it it today: I dream something up, I roll out of bed, I code and I launch it by lunchtime. All afternoon people are emailing me pissed off "doesn't work on android phone". I fix some bugs and go to dinner, fix some bugs, go to bed. We don't need to guess a year in advance what the market wants.

"If we can make self driving cars and make surgical robots, how long you think it will be before a self running sewing machine exists?"

When it does, the entire industry will be re architected in a way that they can't see coming. Two trillion dollar industry, every human being is a customer. This is a road map for disruption.

---

Missed the 2018 edition of Webit.Festival Europe? Don’t miss the 2019! Get your super early bird 2in1 tickets – 2 for the price of 1 here!