Tag: future

Martin Wezowski talks about “WTF – What’s the future” @Webit.Festival 2018

"The future is very important, because we will kind of spend the rest of our lives there. So we better make it really good. :)"

Martin Wezowski is the Chief Designer & Futurist at SAP. He joined Webit to put some perspective on “what is work and what is human in a superhuman future”.
Martin, being a fan of the Beatles, started with playing a tune that resembles the style of the iconic band. But later he revealed that the song was created by AI that mimics the Beatles.

"It listens to everything that The Beatles have ever done and makes new songs. It does it so successfully that it has over 2M views on Youtube. That should really raise deep and profound questions."

The main question is WTF - What’s the future?

One example of that is the healthcare.

"It takes 7-10 years to make a doctor, which gives us a severe shortage of doctors."

With the soon-future-AI, medical help will be in infinite amount everywhere, all the time for everyone. That should also change our minds about what is human work. Nowadays AI can diagnose heart diseases or lung diseases more accurately than humans. Funny enough, humans and AI combined are almost 100% correct. In the 90s we decoded the human genome. It took billions of dollars. Now there is a DNA sequencer for 1000$. What does this mean for research? What does it mean for animal testing?

The NOW has never been so temporary as it is today.

Maybe we should start imagining the futures that we want and start creating them, rather than react to what we where we are today because thus we are too late. That might be a little scary because we see jobs disappearing. A hundred years ago almost everybody worked at farming, fishing, forestry. Now it's only about 2%. What did they do? What would they think if you'd tell them: "Most of you will not be in agriculture." What would hey imagine that they will do, accounting? Web development? We are in the same situation today. And it doesn't matter because we will imagine new jobs as they emerge. We can't plan for it. And the real question is this:

What to teach kids to become relevant in 30 years from now?

How can we adapt to the change? What new values do we need? The stability of planning is a little bit of fake. The opposite to stability is not instability, it's emergence. It's risk, it's rock'n'roll. To transform, to challenge and take risks. Innovation is sort of rock'n'roll in business and we need more of that.

One thing we rely on is the thinking of the 3 horizons.

  1. Continuous innovation - Ready to consume: Traditional KPIs (key performance indicators) of predictable outcomes and repeatable results and scalable efficiency.
  2. Adjacent innovation - Ready to Co-innovate: Forecasting your intelligence and resources to the near future, the next, the adjacent innovation where you co-innovate with your partners and/or customers.
  3. Transformative Innovation - Ready to Inspire: Thinking away from what you can do today and the tools you have. Your vision and thought leadership leads to ideas that you must articulate very clearly so you can have a decent discussion on executive and board level about these ideas.
 

Help the world run better and improve people's lives.

These two things go to the two sides of the spectrum with 4 dimensions:
  1. The self running company
For example: Counting logotypes in commercials for example is not a human work anymore. Machines do that now. And it changes the whole business model for the industry. Now they pay for what they get.
  1. Self organizing Business Ecosystems
They are built on the philosophy that the current power is a like money - the more you hold, the more powerful you are. The more relevant you make yourself in the distribution of that power - the more powerful you will be.
  1. Augmented humans
The Super Human - that we all carry inside. By removing the constraints of the human bias and knowledge we can be beyond that and be super human or human at last. That answers the question: What is the smartest app? Well that's the one that makes YOU smarter.
  1. Purpose Led New Market & Business Models
Why are you relevant 10 years from now? It doesn't have to be to save the planet, you have dreams and focus and markets, you would like to create. Something that excites you to the moon. Articulate that very well - why are you relevant 10 years from now - because if you don't, you might not be.

“Everything from the beginning is an open end and it's up yo us to actually sit down and actually use this methods and look across all the 3 horizons, articulate futures that are desirable where we can play a significant positive role. That's our purpose. And if we do that I actually think we can design futures that we all want to live in. And we should remember to have some fun as well. :)”


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!  

Rob Wolcott on “Innovating your life” at Webit.Festival Europe 2018

Robert C. Wolcott is a long time friend of Webit.Festival. He is a Clinical professor of Innovation & Entrepreneurship at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University and Managing Partner at Clareo.

The human experience will change more in the next century than it has in the last ten millennia: Where is the discussion to accompany that change?


Mr. Wolcott returned to Sofia once again for the 10th anniversary edition of the Festival and wowed the audience with his keynote with special topic "Innovating your life". He started with a quote from the one and only Steve Jobs:

"Innovation distinguishes the leaders from the followers."


If your aspiration is to be a leader, to make mark, to create a legacy in some way than it's going to require doing something different. If you don't you're doing the same thing that everybody else already did. And how would that distinguish you? In Robert's opinion over the next 100 years the human experience will change more than it has in the past 10 000! We will be able to solve challenges that have been intractable for centuries but we will also create threads, some of which humanity has never seen before. But unfortunately our public dialog just isn't up to the task. On the one hand we hear ''The robots will steal our jobs and then kill us all in some kind of impending robot apocalypse". But on the other some people are espousing a coming technology infused nirvana. Clearly the truth is somewhere in the vast between and it's our responsibility to explore it for ourselves. The professor broke down the immense and complicated process of "innovating our life" in 5 simple steps:

1. Always keep the mission in mind. What are you doing and how are you doing it?

When we stay focused on our dreams and give them new names like GOALS of MISSIONS they automatically become more realistic and more achievable.

2. Ask better questions. We only see the things which we are looking for.

We start asking questions, we start looking for new things, for new clues. Clues that will help us get to the next step, but some of them will inevitably mislead us and we will make mistakes. Then comes the next lesson.

3. Seek wisdom in mistakes. The very first reaction when something goes wrong is that we are trying to hide it.

The problem is when something doesn't go the way you expect it perhaps there's a problem with the way you see the world. Back in the late 19th century two researchers named Michelson and Morley did one of the most famous failed experiment in history. They were attempting to prove the existence of the "luminiferous aether". It was the dominant hypothesis of physics in the 19th century to explain the following phenomenon.

Sound cannot travel through a vacuum because there's nothing for sound to travel through. Light however, can travel through a vacuum thus there must be something in the vacuum we cannot see.


The scientists did their experiment and when it failed, they couldn't figure out why. They changed the method, tried again, then other scientists tried again but it kept failing and nobody could figure out why. Then came Einstein who said: "Perhaps there's no problem with the experiment, perhaps there's a problem with the way we see the Universe." So when something doesn't go the way you expect it, you should step back and do an after action review: Why that did not work? What can we learn from it?

4. Create option paths. Yes, options come at a cost, but create some.

"As we each create our own paths, we together create the future." - says Mr. Wolcott - and he also adds the question to the public - "On which paths are you … and why?"

5. Above all seek meaning. Human beings grow through challenges.

The question for each of us is, as lifespans increase up to even beyond a 100 years, as we encounter the remainder of 21st century, we will all be faced with the question: how should we use this time?"
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!

… a picture tells a thousand stories! Webit.Festival Europe 2018 was...

 

10'000 people from 111 countries visited the Webit City


Don't miss the 2019 edition. Book your ticket now


       

Webit.Festival Europe 2018 in numbers:

- 10'000+ ATTENDEES (7200 Webit.Festival participants and 3000 Webit.X visitors) - 231 EXHIBITORS - 422 SPEAKERS - 110 HOURS of conference agenda & amazing content - 75% C-level (executive) ATTENDANCE - 111 VISITING COUNTRIES - 150 of THE BEST EUROPEAN STARTUPS AND SCALEUPS - 1000+ POLICY MAKERS The European Tech, Digital Economy and Policy event for 2018 was a huge success! The Innovate! Summit and the Plenary Session, chaired by the European Commissioner for Digital Agenda and Society Mariya Gabriel, hosted some of the worlds digital, tech and policy leaders gathered to re:Invent Europe's Future.        

The Webit City has welcomed 10'000 global leaders and they all requested a residency :)

Here are just 5 quotes out of over 1000 interviews with the Webit City residents: "Unparalleled global business and policy networking at its highest level!" "The most amazing business event with a festival experience" "We basically do business here" "This is the only event where top EU policy makers and global business leaders exchange thoughts and share valuable discussions" “We got more investors visiting our expo booth compared to any other event we have been to”                            

 

200+ exhibitors at over 20'000 sq.m Webit City expo & business networking area

From global tech, health, fintech, cybersecurity, mobility, blockchain, entertainment, AI, cloud leaders to smart jet fighters - they all were at Webit.Festival Europe 2018 represented by their global or EMEA HQs. Also hosted national pavilions.                                    

12 independent summits and over 50 meetups

421 speakers have created over 110 hours  of conference agenda & amazing content within 12 independent summits.                                               Founders Games winner of 200'000 EUR cheque is BIOO from Portugal.                   Cities 4.0 Summit, Digital Entertainment and Media Summit, Money Summit and Blockchain Summit

 

                               

Webit Night Urban Summit


                  The Global Webit Awards Ceremony and The Chairman' Dinner by Dr. Russev
                  The World Famous Webit Party, powered by Playboy, Fashion TV and Dorcel
                Webit.X - gathering and inspiring 3000 young future leaders

Missed the 2018 edition? Don’t miss the 2019! Book your ticket now at super earlybird rate


 

Chief Security Officer of Cisco – Edna Conway joins Webit this...

Edna Conway currently serves as Cisco’s Chief Security Officer, Global Value Chain, creating clear strategies to deliver secure operating models for the digital economy. She has built new organizations delivering cyber security, compliance, risk management, sustainability and value chain transformation. She drives a comprehensive security architecture across Cisco’s third-party ecosystem.

Digitization is driving each of us across all industries to make dramatic changes to how we approach customers, products, services, and the always-on, real-time information rich marketplace. This digital economy is gender agnostic. And, it is highly dependent on a connected global ecosystem. The message is clear—no one person, enterprise, industry, government or region can stand alone any longer.

Here you can see a full list of the confirmed speakers at Webit.Festival Europe 2018, while here you can get all the information you need about the tickets for the event. Managing supply chain risk requires a comprehensive approach over the complete product or process life cycle, and Cisco is looking at the potential impact of new technologies such as blockchain and the “internet of things” as part of its solution.

“We define the value chain as the end-to-end life cycle for any solution. In order to build trust, you need to understand the risks you are taking, and those risks need to be measured in the language of business.” says Conway

Prior to Cisco, Conway was a partner in an international private legal practice and served as Assistant Attorney General for the State of New Hampshire.

My path to security was built on a foundation of protecting intellectual property; enhanced by a legal background and rich engineering and operational leadership roles afforded to me by Cisco. Each of these opportunities, including leaving a successful legal practice to join Cisco, required faith. Faith in my own ability to learn an entirely new discipline and trust that my colleagues would support me in that effort.

She is recognized domestically (US Presidential Commissions) and globally (NATO) as the developer of architectures delivering value chain security, sustainability and resiliency. Her insight is featured in a range of publications, analyst reports, and case studies, including Forbes, Fortune, Bloomberg, CIO Magazine and the Wall Street Journal. Conway is constantly using her expertise to leverage new tools in an ever-expanding digital arsenal. She has turned her attention to the security potential in blockchain. With the ability to track data through networks, blockchain becomes a highly effective digital ledger, or “passport for the data” according to her.

“A chain of custody of your data and your actions across the full spectrum of a life cycle adds a degree of integrity we’ve never had the ability to do easily before”

Recognition of her industry leadership includes membership in the Fortune Most Powerful Women community, and awards including: a Fed 100 Award, Stevie “Maverick of the Year Award,” a Connected World Magazine “Machine to Machine and IOT Trailblazer” Award, an SC Media Reboot Leadership Award, a New Hampshire Tech Professional of the Year 2018 Award, and CSO of the Year Award at RSA.

We’ve updated our Privacy Statement

There is so much buzz around the new EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

At Webit we are firmly committed to privacy and data protection and we are happy to confirm that we, too, have taken all necessary steps to ensure [full] compliance with the GDPR. All necessary controls and features are in place so you can continue to use our service with confidence.

Feel free to check out our updated Privacy Statement to understand more about the types of information we may collect, how we use it, and why we request it.

Webit is all about community and empowering your success through connecting you with potential partners, investors and clients from all around the world.

SPECIAL 50% DISCOUNT

We also want to take this opportunity to let you know that Webit is welcoming this new era of data privacy by providing all our subscribers a special "DATA present” 50% off from all tickets for Webit.Fetsival Europe 2018 starting this Friday, 25 May till 29 May.

We release a total of 250 tickets for this special "DATA Present".

Register here

and join Webit.Festival Europe with a special discount of 50% on all tickets with code: GDPR

 

We collect personal data when you register with us via our website or when participating in our events, exchange personal contacts, etc. We will use your personal information to provide and further improve our services, to ensure the security of our website and information systems, as well as for fraud prevention. We do not share it with other companies or organizations. We send to our customers, partners, participants in our events, subscribers and community our information bulletin about the upcoming events, promotions and free tickets, latest developments, new technologies, meetups, parties, products and services, etc.

   

It is all about experience and successful business networking!

With only one month till the 10th edition of Webit.Festival Europe 2018 (25-27 June '18) we are excited to share that we have added a new special lounge for your successful business networking at the Festival! As you know, we had to move to a new venue because Webit.Festival 2018 doubled in size.

With all the space we need now - we decided that it is time go wild!

All the 6000 attendees from global enterprises, through SMEs to scaleups/startups, academia leaders and policy makers come to Webit for 4 main reasons:- to see the future (check the speakers and Europe's top 200 startups) - to establish their place in the future (policy makers and business leaders discuss digital policy initiatives) - to connect with the right people (see who attends) - and to make successful business with them and expand their networks So we take business networking at Webit very seriously!

Thus today we present to you the new Webit Fountain Networking Lounge!

Yesterday we have commissioned a company to build a brand new Dancing Webit Fountain and a water mirror around which you shall have one more unique lounge for your successful networking. The magic is that after Webit this fountain shall be no more! A fountain built for only 3 days and only for your eyes! >GET YOUR WEBIT TICKET TODAY (prices go up this week)< The New Fountain Lounge adds to the number of other special lounges you may join and have your 1:1 or group business meetings while at Webit, including: - the AI Lounge - the Cybertech Lounge - the Cities 4.0 Lounge - the Blockchain Lounge - Innovate! Lounge - the Ladies Lounge - the Platinum Lounge Looking forward to welcome you @ Europe's tech, innovation and digital policy event for 2018!

Investments in FinTech

Though the moderator of the panel was still sitting on his plane, being late for leading the discussion, the Advisor at 8VC Jon Soberg, the founder and co-CEO of H-Farm Maurizio Rosi & the Investment Director at iTech Capital Alexey Telnov managed to deliver their experience and insights in the discussion about Investments in FinTech at Webit.Festival 2017. Stay tuned with the latest innovations by booking a ticket to Webit.festival Europe 2018 Technology is changing everything, in all sectors, businesses and business models and has an impact on society in the daily lives of millions of people. Technology is effective once it’s combined with the next generation.

FinTech is data

Money is data too, they represent the value. As we’ve already entered a “data age”, there’s much more consciousness about the data. From online payments through digital wallets and asset management, this is a pretty vast area of settling a company and acquiring a market segment of. As for FinTech where the area has been controlled by the big banks and large organizations until recently, now we see more and more startups creating new products and truly having an impact. Even though it’s getting more crowded in the last few years, this market still provides probably the biggest opportunity that’s out there in terms of a market.

One of the advantages of investing in FinTech is that one always knows where the money come from

By default, FinTech companies are dealing with money so that makes an investor’s job easier in order to track the flows. This area is fairly straightforward when it comes to a particular business model and the way the business works. The market for financial services is more than enough large so nobody has to ask questions about the size of the market or how companies in the sector will make money. The question is whether they can execute and succeed. The buzz in FInTech naturally raises the question of security: security solutions and their integration in FinTech products and services. Companies are putting more and more information on the cloud so security is a sensitive issue in all areas and needs to be paid proper attention to. Companies operating in this domain need to deal with regulations, licences and still find a way to keep their customers data secure.  

Webit.Festival Europe 2018 presents: Chris ‘Kubby’ Kubbernus

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.

We need to go back to good, credible and authentic storytelling that brings value to the consumer

The notion of change is essential in the 21st century. We are developing way faster than we thought we would in 2008, for example. We now consider diseases treatable, in comparison with just 10 years back; companies have to adapt to change, but this would be impossible without certain people - people who envision the future, who encompass change and apply it. Chris Kubbernus, or Kubby, as his friends call him, named #1 Business Guru on Snapchat by Forbes, will be among the speakers at Webit.Innovate! Summit at the next Webit.Festival Europe 2018 on 26th - 27th June 2018. The one thing Chris wishes people to remember out of his talk would be that things change. According to him, companies today are not using technologies to their fullest potential - not seeing what’s happening in the marketplace and cannot react adequately.

“ If you say to an organization: 'I think you should use Snapchat, or get on Instagram', they’d roll their eyes and say: 'Why would we do that?’ What they don’t realize is that these things quickly become mainstream, and that’s where they’re losing. They’re actually ignoring what’s going on in the marketplace, thinking that it’s just a trend and therefore not doing anything about it. Change happens and organizations have to recognize that and act on it before it gets too expensive.”

Chris is originally from Canada, but he likes to say that he was “imported in Denmark” by his wife. The difference in the two continents is obvious, in terms of marketing, but what exactly Chris finds drastically different is:

Americans and Canadians are more trusting in their advertising. If you make a claim, they might take that as face value, whereas I think with Europeans, you have to have a more soft approach.

Living in Northern Europe, Scandinavians, he continues have a different approach to advertisement. People there are more likely to doubt the quality of the product whereas the Americans would trust the ad and will expect the same results.

In social media, I find that Europeans are more conservative. They are less likely to share and like something or to engage with content. I think it takes a lot to move them to action, where in North America, in particular, it seems to be easier. People are more relaxed towards sharing on social media and voicing their opinions.

Chris was a speaker at the first Snapchat conference - we saw the rise of Snapchat, we all know those Snapchat glasses, don’t we. We are now also seeing the fall of Snapchat as a platform, it doesn't attract so much audience, in fact, its users are youngsters. It just somehow feels Snapchat will not last much longer, although, Chris says,  you have to wonder why the biggest social networks in the world are mimicking what Snapchat did.

“ I think, in a way, Snapchat is being replaced by Instagram. Instagram is doing a very good job of copying and making their own new features. But Snapchat is a playground, still much more than Instagram. And Facebook sees that they are losing the younger generation, so I think that if Snapchat can continue being the anti-Facebook, they will stay relevant. They just need to retain that identity. “

Besides Facebook, another huge platform is so very widely used - Instagram. The main differences in the two platforms, Chris explains like this:

On Facebook, content is consumed slower and with more thought. People are less likely to like on Facebook, whereas on Instagram, there’s less exposure and more anonymity. Instagram is a little hedonistic in some ways, while Facebook is your core of friends and family, where you have to be more ‘considerate'.

Unlike some other social platforms, like Snapchat, for example, Facebook will be present in our lives for many more years. It is a place where you can document your entire life and in terms of ‘replacing’, Instagram will not replace Facebook as a social media platform. At the end of the day, “both platforms are playgrounds for displaying different parts of our personalities”. My social media predictions for 2018 is a continuation and examination of influencer-marketing and how much we let social media influence us, says Kubby. The psychological effect of social media will continue to determine the way we communicate and perceive information and the trend of what is real and what is fake will determine the consumer’s behaviour.

“ Right now, digital marketing is losing consumers because of disinterest and mistrust in fake influencer-marketing. We need to go back to good, credible and authentic storytelling that brings value to the consumer. “

New Paradigms in Mobility

When we think for a minute about mobility and transportation, it is a thing so ordinary and habitual to our lives that we don’t even realize how essential it is. If we think about what our lives would have been without access to mobility and transportation, to say we’ll have quite a challenging day wouldn’t be enough to portray what a day without these facilities would look like. Even more, to the present-day, so accommodated to technology generation. The Managing Partner at New Mobility Consulting Alexander Renz presented his vision on the future of mobility at Webit.Festival 2017 in Sofia. One of the trends in mobility is connected vehicles. Vehicles become connected, these connected vehicles become part of the Internet of Things, which implies quite a lot of  security risks, but also opportunities to deliver new services to the vehicle and customers. Another trend is autonomy, the role of AI self-driving cars, drones, and who knows where it’ll end. A future of cars driving around looking for passengers to pick up or to deliver goods from town to town is not unimaginable at all. Thanks to Elon Musk we’re on the way to accomplish zero emission mobility, enabled by electric cars and infrastructure. It doesn’t only concern about creating the vehicle but a complete system with energy generation, electric charging infrastructure and the vehicles adapted to the new system. The major problems in cities - parking, deliveries, ticketing, faster and better transportation and infrastructure are all on the table of resolving. The key thing is, that this is no longer a world where technology plays a role in making things better but it’s a complete technology driven transformation of a critical sector.

This transformation of mobility will impact a lot of different industries.

The model of owning a car has been already challenged since the birth of Uber, Lyft and other examples of the sharing economy. Once we're ready and sit in our self driving vehicles, the monetization model of the future would be very different from today - the use of Internet services, the  type of content we'll consume in in our added spare time while we don't have to drive. Mobility and transportation is an industry being heavily disrupted and has yet to be disrupted, still.    

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