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Last year put the public trust in the established sources of information under a huge question mark. The explosion of fake news, combined with the increase of tools for citizen reporting and blogging, like live streaming for example, have created a difficult situation for the traditional media outlets and forced them to seek innovative solutions to reach their audiences. Many experts predict that virtual reality can deliver on its promise to bring new and immersive experiences to the masses. But before this happens, the hardware options will need to evolve first. A recent research by Business Insider showed that while everything else is shrinking, digital media consumption continues to grow. Video, music and digital “print” subscriptions are climbing fast while native digital advertising is still on the rise. The news outlet expects that the existential crisis of ad blocking will resolve itself, but soon the TV networks will feel the same pain, that is now tormenting the newspaper industry. This year Webit.Festival will address all the transformation processes that are shaping the digital future of the news industry worldwide. The event will be held on 25-26 April in Sofia Tech Park under the patronage of the President of Bulgaria Rumen Radev, the Mayor of Sofia Yordanka Fandakova and the European Commission. The 5000 attendees, coming from more than 90 countries will have the chance to see 300 top speakers, who will share their vision for the future during 12 parallel conferences, covering fields, such as Marketing & Innovation, Digital Economy Leadership, Smart Cities, Mobility, Digital Transformation, FinTech & Blockchain, Big Data & Cloud, Security & Privacy, Health & Wellbeing, IoE and Software Development. During the Digital Entertainment & Media Summit you get the chance to listen to the panel discussion between the Global Editorial Director of Wall Street Journal Custom Studios Fara Warner, the Global Entertainment Director of Telegraph Media Group Denise Parkinson, the Creative Director of T Brand Studio International (The New York Times) Graham McDonnell and the CEO of NovaTV Bulgaria Didier Stoessel. Together they will discuss the future of information sharing in today’s digital world and the most pressing problems for the digital media credibility. Throughout her 25-year career, Fara Warner has worked in every storytelling medium from traditional print newspapers to virtual reality. In the past decade, she has brought together technology and storytelling to create compelling and highly successful digital and print storytelling programs. Denise Parkinson has over 20 years experience in all aspects of Marketing and Distribution in the UK and International film distribution industry. Her most recent roles have included Director of International Marketing for Europe, Middle East and Africa for Disney, ABC and ESPN Television and Global Entertainment Director for Yahoo! - Yahoo! Recently Denise has taken a new role Leading the expansion of the Telegraph Media Group in the Entertainment category. As an experienced, award-winning creative with over thirteen years in the industry, Graham McDonnell is responsible for ensuring the creative execution of branded content for their international clients demonstrates the latest in engaging design and dev innovation for clients such as Moet Hennessy, Adidas and Rolex. Here you can see a full list of the confirmed speakers at Webit.Festival, while here you can get all the information you need about the tickets for the event.

Whether we like it or not, we are going to spend the rest of our lives in the future. This means that it will be a lot better for our common good to start building the one we want to live in. Right now we are witnessing an age in which the reality is moving ahead of science fiction and even Hollywood can’t catch up with the rapid changes in our daily lives. This year, Webit.Festival will address the transformation processes that are shaping the digital economy of the future in Europe and the world. The event will be held on 25-26 April in Sofia Tech Park under the patronage of the President of Bulgaria Rumen Radev, the Mayor of Sofia Yordanka Fandakova and the European Commission. The 5000 attendees, coming from more than 90 countries will have the chance to see 300 top speakers, who will share their vision for the future during 12 parallel conferences, covering fields, such as Marketing & Innovation, Digital Economy Leadership, Smart Cities, Mobility, Digital Transformation, FinTech & Blockchain, Big Data & Cloud, Security & Privacy, Health & Wellbeing, IoE and Software Development. During the Digital Transformation Summit you will get the chance to listen to the Chief Designer of SAP, Martin Wezowski, among many others. Before he started working for a big corporation, he studied construction engineering and modern media production technologies. He also had a career in music, which he left behind few years ago. In a recent interview, Wezowski explained that playing in a band and managing it as a business have him a 360-view of a product life cycle, from the initial idea to getting customers to return and eventually to building up a fan base.

“You need to understand every tiny detail and at the same time see the full strategic overview. It was very educational”, he said.

At Webit, Martin Wezowski will explain to the audience why what it means to be an innovator and designer is merging. It is transforming faster than before, from classic styling of the superficial to system design of everything, including social and political systems, deeply rooted in a space of challenges and promises between cutting edge tech and humanism. In an increasingly exponential and converging digital change, we design a relationship, a behavior, that the product will follow. This change is our most important design brief and the stakes are high, it is just too important to be left only to designers. Martin Wezowski believe that everything can and should be given a purpose through innovation and design, including the innovation systems themselves.

With Webit.Festival Europe just a month away, we are building our dream volunteers team of outgoing, responsible and active people! We would like to invite you to become a part of our team and experience the unique atmosphere of the leading European digital and technology event on April 25-26 in Sofia Tech Park. Webit.Festival hosts 5000+ top level selected attendees and more than 300 speakers from over 90 countries. Among them are the people shaping the future of technology and innovation and fostering the digital transformation of the business and the society from enterprise, policy, academia and startups domains. Becoming a volunteer will give you a chance to meet in person the people who are changing the world with their disruptive products and services. See and hear the game-changers live and tap into their invaluable experience and insight! This will also give you the exclusive opportunity to get a free Visitor ticket for the event and save more than €200. We will select the top 200 candidates. Each volunteer will have to help us run the event on site for a half day each of the two days on the event, or for one full day. You will have the chance to enjoy the rest of the quality time at the festival as a visitor. The areas you can contribute for are: - The Webit.Festival tracks organization - Delegates reception - VIP guests services - Exhibitors and startup halls assistants - Media corner assistants - Photography assistants In order to apply, you simply have to fill this form. After we receive your application, you will receive a word from our team with the hope that you will become a part of it. And don’t forget the Night Urban Summit, where you can apply to become a host to one of the over 30 meetups on different topics during the event. They will take place in a respected restaurants and bars in the center of Sofia. To apply to be a host of a meetup, click here.

Last year was full of AI technology advancements, but in 2017 experts and big players in this innovative field expect even more. Probably the biggest success was the historic victory of AlphaGo over one of the best Go players in history Lee Sedol. This was the factual presentation to the world of the positives, that the process called deep reinforcement learning can bring.

“Reinforcement learning takes inspiration from the ways that animals learn how certain behaviors tend to result in a positive or negative outcome. Using this approach, a computer can, say, figure out how to navigate a maze by trial and error and then associate the positive outcome—exiting the maze—with the actions that led up to it. This lets a machine learn without instruction or even explicit examples”, explained the senior editor at MIT Technology Review Will Knight.

In 2017, we are likely to see attempts to apply reinforcement learning to problems such as automated driving and industrial robotics. If the outcome is positive, this could completely change transport and manufacturing. At this year’s Webit.Festival Europe you can listen to some of the top experts in the world of artificial intelligence and machine learning. During the AI Summit they will share their expectations about the development of this amazing field of science and technology. The Partner at IBM Ventures Christoph Auer-Welsbach will speak about Deep Tech and AI and will share the best practices for high-growth startups on going from tested idea to scalable company. He will advise the audience how to apply artificial intelligence techniques in products and business. ARX’s Founder and CEO Mark Val will explain how augmented reality and artificial intelligence are transforming remote collaboration and are creating a profound sense of presence and interaction between remote teams. In his speech he will share how transition is currently happening and the impact of it. The Director of Strategic and International Development at Wolfram Research Conrad Wolfram will give his recipe for fixing current education through artificial intelligence. He is recognized as a world authority on fixing maths education, including advocating a fundamental shift to focus on computer-based computational thinking rather than hand calculation. IBM’s Vice President for Cloud and Mobile Technology Jonas Jacobi will tell us what we can learn from AI, Cloud Computing and IoE and will help us realize the power of the combination of these new technologies. The CEO and Founder of Augmented Pixels Vitaliy Goncharuk will talk about the development of augmented reality and the connection between it and the progress in the field of artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, the Chief Software Architect of Google’s Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab Vasil Denchev will explain the primary mission of artificial intelligence - to build good models of the world around us and automatically make accurate predictions for various task of practical importance. Here you can see a full list of the confirmed speakers at Webit.Festival, while here you can get all the information you need about the tickets for the event.

Webit will hand out its annual Awards during a glamorous black tie ceremony. Evening dresses and bow ties of nominees, guests and members of the jury are only one part of the experience during the official dinner. Even more important is the feeling that all the nominees and attendees are part of the people, who are creating the future right now! The evening ceremony will be held on 25 April in Sofia Tech Park. It is part of the agenda of Webit.Festival Europe - the top digital technology and innovation event in Europe. Here you may see the full agenda of the event, and here you may book your ticket. The Webit AWARDS recognize and promote quality business models, social projects and policy initiatives in the new digital and tech markets. The awards are divided into several distinct areas. Winners will be announced for Bulgaria and Central and Eastern Europe - the region, which is the main focus of the event. Enterprise Awards recognize the most innovative ways of using digital technology in Healthcare, Education, Transport, Tourism, Cyber Security, Enterprise Software, Marketing and Advertising, Cloud Service and Hosting, Increasing Accessibility and Inclusion and Connected Consumer Electronic Devices. Digital Apps categories cover the best mobile solutions for Entertainment, Customer Service, Banking, Insurance and Finance Management, Games, News, Healthy Living and Eating and Sport News. Webit’s Policy Awards will show the best smart city solutions for Mobility, Energy, Green Tech, Smart Administration, Innovation Through Legislation and Citizen Interaction. The most successful woman in the tech sector, the most innovative secondary school and a person with outstanding contribution to the digital industry in Bulgaria will receive Special Awards. Our Jury is composed of dozens of the top world experts in the fields of the awards, as well as local representatives of industry associations, scientists and directors of public institutions. Among them are the Consultant Surgeon & Co-Founder of Virtual Medics & Medical Realities Prof. Shafi Ahmed, the Chief Creative Officer of DigitasLBi Chris Clarke, the CEO of Amyx+ Scott Amyx, the VP for Cloud and Mobile Technology Strategy at IBM Jonas Jacobi and Google’s Developer Advocate Don Dodge. Here you may nominate your favourite for any of Webit AWARDS categories, and here you may book a seat or table for the official ceremony.

Ever since the emergence of the homo sapiens species on this planet, human nature is directly related to constant processes of transformation and development. But in the modern society we live in, these changes are happening at a much faster pace than most of us can understand. This year, Webit.Festival Europe will address precisely these comprehensive processes of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which in the coming years will change almost every aspect of our lives fundamentally. And there is hardly anyone, who understands today’s Digital world better than the renowned communicator and expert in Marketing and Media Igor Beuker. He will be among the keynote speakers during the Opening ceremony of the event, which will take place on 25-26 April in Sofia Tech Park. In the space of 25 years, Igor Beuker was kicked out of professional football and went from a college dropout to a radical marketing visionary and modern-day serial entrepreneur. He has become one of the prominent speakers in the international business speaking circuit. And he hasn't slowed down since. Today he is an energetic professional communicator, renowned keynote speaker & host, award-winning marketing strategist for Nike, Amazon, L’Oréal and Unilever, new breed trendwatcher for several Fortune 500 companies, serial entrepreneur with multiple exits, and angel investor. Global enterprise leaders and media have labeled him one of the most inspiring, innovative and influential speakers and entrepreneurs. In the recent years he appeared on countless television and radio shows as an expert voice on emerging trends in marketing, media and innovation. During his keynote speech at Webit.Festival, Igor will explain to the audience why he thinks that intelligence is the ability to adapt to change. Igor will look at the trends through his Math Man lens and will share his thoughts on the world’s current systems, that were developed for the 20th century. He will also present his views on the path Europe has to take to lead the digital economy and build collaborative ecosystems, instead of “egosystems”. Watch Igor’s appearance on at CEEDS’15 by Webit:

World digitization process is causing massive changes in the payments industry in the recent years. And it’s not only Blockchain and its cryptocurrencies that are transforming the FinTech world, but a number of new startups that are finding new ways for moving money across the globe. Enterprises have already realized that the key to success in the digital economy is the constant evolution, that can keep them competitive and relevant to customers. A recent New Money survey showed that experts in this industry predict the end of cash money by 2020. More and more organizations stop accepting cash payments, while the number of customers managing their money digitally is rising rapidly. At this year’s Webit.Festival Europe you can listen to some of the top experts in the world of finance and payments. During the FinTech & Blockchain Summit they will share their expectations about the development of money and finance worldwide and the role of technology in it. The Global Head of FinTech at ING Group Benoit Legrand will speak about the process of digital transformation in general and the way his company is tackling the challenge of embedding innovation at its core for the last 20 years. Novus Ordo Capital’s CEO Liliana Reasor will share her thoughts on the disruptive technology in the finance market, which accounts for $1.59 trillion in the US and the EU. She will explain how the FinTech ventures, driven by the digitization of the world, are forming the finance industry of the future. Reasor is a thought leader in the FinTech and the finance industry and is active in several UK FinTech accelerators. She brings more than 18 years of experience in investment banking, lending, trading, investments, and FinTech from tier-one global financial institutions such as JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank, Banc of America Securities, Morgan Stanley, and Moody’s Analytics in the US and the UK. Due to her contribution to the FinTech & finance industry, she was selected as one of the Top 100 Global FinTech Women Influencers and Leaders in 2015. TransferWise’s CEO and Co-Founder Kristo Kaarmann will share his thoughts on the time of change we live in and how technology will change the way we store money, move them between people and businesses and invest them. The Executive VP for Global Product Strategy at Wirecard Christian Von Hammel-Bonten will talk about the future of payments from the point of view of a global leader in online payment technology for all sales channels. Since 2011, von Hammel-Bonten has been responsible for building up Wirecard’s Mobile Payment division. In his function, he managed the launch of various mobile payment solutions and technologies and worked with telecommunication providers and banks. The CEO of Eurogiro Michel Stuijt and the CEO and Co-Founder of Rewire Or Benoz will take part in a panel discussion about the future of payments. Stuijt is a veteran with over 25 years of experience in the financial service industry, the corporate banking business and the ICT sector. Benoz founded his company in 2015 and now Rewire offers a low cost banking solutions for internationals abroad and works with more than 10 000 clients in Israel alone. Here you can see a full list of the confirmed speakers at Webit.Festival, while here you can get all the information you need about the tickets for the event.

Cancer is among the leading causes of morbidity and mortality with approximately 9 million annual deaths. About 70% of this lethal cases occur in low and middle income countries, while 25% of them are causing infections like hepatitis and human papilloma. Last year Microsoft has vowed to solve the worldwide cancer problem within a decade. The tech giant plans to use ground-breaking computer science to break the code of tumor cells and reprogram them back into a healthy state. But Microsoft’s army of biologists, software experts and engineers might have a tough competition for achieving this important goal because of several treatment breakthroughs in recent weeks. On March 10 the European Cancer Organisation (ECCO) announced that approximately a quarter of women with HER2 positive breast cancer, who were treated with a combination of the targeted drugs lapatinib and trastuzumab before surgery and chemotherapy, saw their tumors shrink significantly or even disappear.

"This has ground-breaking potential because it allows us to identify a group of patients who, within 11 days, have had their tumours disappear with anti-HER2 therapy alone and who potentially may not require subsequent chemotherapy. This offers the opportunity to tailor treatment for each individual woman”, said Professor Nigel Bundred at the European Breast Cancer Conference just few days ago.

Meanwhile, a new study by experts at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute suggests that new biological therapies can help fight breast cancers caused by rare, inherited genetic errors, like the one famous actress Angelina Jolie have. A newly discovered combination of targeted drugs could be effective in one in five breast cancer cases. One of the therapies is already used in the United Kingdom to treat advanced ovarian cancer cases, but it is still not approved as a breast cancer drug. The british scientists have found that a significant proportion of the genetic make-up of breast cancers have close similarities in their mutational signatures. This led them to the conclusion that they might be treatable with biological therapies. This along with other methods like regular exercising, eating a good diet, avoiding cigarettes, limiting alcohol usage and maintaining a healthy weight can lower women’s lifetime risks of breast cancer. To keep up with the hottest trends in the world of digital health Webit.Festival is the right place for you. During the Health & Wellbeing Summit, you can listen to top level speakers such as the Consultant surgeon & Co-founder of Virtual Medics and Medical Realities prof. Shafi Ahmed, the Deputy Chief Health Officer at IBM Lisa Latts and the Founder and CEO of Biovotion Dr. Andreas Caduff. Here you can see a full list of the confirmed speakers at Webit.Festival, while here you can get all the information you need about the tickets for the event.

A New Doctrine for intelligence specialization of CEE region empowering the future of Europe

  The future of Europe is at stake, and the reasons extend far beyond obvious challenges such as the migration crisis and the political turbulence that led to Brexit. For the last 12 years, the European Union’s share of global GDP has fallen from nearly 32% to only about 23%. Although it is difficult to imagine the continent again becoming the center of global manufacturing, the EU still has the tools to reverse this trend. We can take advantage of the Fourth Industrial Revolution - a wave of digital-era change - and push the region to a period of sustained growth, through a combination of long-term policies, innovation and cooperation between governments and businesses. Central and Eastern Europe has the potential to play a very substantial role in the continent’s future. For the last five years, the region registered an impressive growth in Information Communication Technology (ICT) as a share of its GDP (in Bulgaria, for instance, it rose from 1.3% in 2012 to 3.3% in 2016). Instead of competing within the region’s smaller markets, we can create targeted intelligent specialization, drawing on existing areas of expertise as well as creating new new ones. This way one country’s industry will be able to expand into the broader European market, without having to compete within the region. Just a quick look at the Central and Eastern Europe’s investment market will show you that Poland has a very well developed start-up ecosystem in a number of sectors, but with substantial value concentrated in marketing automation. Тhere is already one unicorn (Allegro) and two more (SALESmanago and Growbots) on the way. Meanwhile, the video gaming industry boasts CD Projekt. These are two of the most promising verticals with established know-how and success in today’s Poland. Meanwhile, Czech Republic and Romania have become real pillars of European cyber security, with startups such as Avast Software, Bitdefender and TypingDNA, while my home country Bulgaria already has its own ICT success in the software development company Telerik, that was acquired by Progress Software for $262.5 million in 2014. In Slovakia, the advanced engineering company AeroMobil is developing the world’s first flying car and is expecting to start taking orders this year. Fostering further these areas of strength, supporting them with focused education and talents from within the region would make a huge difference for the region and further for the future of Europe. With a more in-depth study I am convinced that we can easily make a list of several specifications for each country and create strategies for regional development. The fourth industrial revolution and its new technologies are going to be the guiding light on our path to a better future. But industrial and economic innovation can’t be achieved without the needed legislation and government support. Just as Luxembourg has become the first country in the world with laws regulating the mining for resources in space, and Estonia was the first country that introduced electronic citizenship, we have to think about the right legislation to support the digital development of CEE. One possible example comes from Albania, where startups have the opportunity to launch with zero taxes until a certain amount of revenue has been established. We also need clear specialization from early the early school years to prepare our children for the needs of the future labour market. Nowadays very few people benefit from their knowledge of physics and chemistry. And teaching our children to code (as it is becoming mainstream currently) is the same as training them to drive a cab – it is a skill that will not help them find a job after the automation reaches its full potential. We need to rebuild our education systems so as to inspire critical thinking, creativity and teamwork, because this will be the skill that the future industry will demand the most. Achieving economic transformation of this magnitude will require not only legislative initiatives, but also state support in the form of subsidies and reduction of the administrative burden on the new businesses. The advanced technology startups in Europe are on the rise and now more than ever we need to support and invest in them, because this will be an investment in our common future. It can happen through new platforms for public-private partnership and targeted acceleration with government’s support. In many aspects the industry of Central and Eastern Europe is still stuck in the Soviet age. In recent years governments in the region talk more and more about the re-industrialisation of their countries. But instead of pouring money into new manufacturing capacity, states should support their brightest minds with more efficient programs for seed and next-round investments. About the author: Dr. Plamen Russev is serial entrepreneur, investors and philanthropist. He is the Executive Chairman of Webit.Foundation and the Global Webit Series - among the largest tech and digital events for EMEA, MENA, APAC and India. More info: www.russev.com