Tag: innovation

Currently, the global infrastructure is expanding into Space. The truth is, this is something that has already started happening. The commercial activity in Space creates many opportunities for both investors and entrepreneurs. It is expected to exceed government activity by 2020. At the 2017 edition of Webit.Festival Europe the Chairman of Space Angels Network Joe Landon talked about the entrepreneurial revolution in Space. Space Angels is a company which searches the world for the best space startups. It aims to create opportunities for the investors while enabling them to make profit from the commercial space industry. No matter what the industry is, new technology is always considered crazy at first. The Space was once considered science fiction, now it is a science fact. To make the topic more tangible, Joe Landon shared a couple of examples of innovations in the Space industry with the audience at Webit. The Falcon-9 Rocket was launched, landed and re-launched by SpaceX. Such reusable rockets spread the costs over the multiple launches and present a revolution in the Space industry. The Blue Origin - the space company of Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, had a similar success with its New Shepard suborbital rocket. It was launched and landed five times in a year.

“Reusability in Space is very important.”, Landon said.

There are innovations concerning 3D printing in Space. The company Made-in Space created a zero gravity 3D printer which enables the astronauts to print the exact tool they need in Space which lowers the costs. 3D Systems is a company which created the first manufactured object from asteroid material. The European banking center created $227 million fund to invest in space mining projects. According to a research report on the opportunities in the commercial space economy by Goldman Sachs, the costs of asteroid mining are comparable to these in Earth mines.   There are many forces which when acting together make Space innovations possible. Joe Landon stressed on the importance of the development in technology which reduces the costs of sending things to the Space. He emphasized on the role of the revolution in satellite technology. Commercial communication satellites a couple of years back were very heavy and extremely expensive to make and launch. It was important for these satellites to last for 15 years and to be very reliable which required further financing. The satellites from today can be held in a person’s hand and are far cheaper to produce and launch than their multi-million spacecraft predecessor. It is possible to launch dozens of them at the same time. This technology has a great impact on the space economy. Huge opportunities for investors and entrepreneurs arise.

“In ten years satellites will cost 10,000 times less, they will have 1,000 times lower mass and the launch will cost 350 times less.”, Joe Landon said.

He dispelled the myth that space companies need extremely big investments in comparison to other tech companies. In fact, the seeds and Series-A investment in space startups is identical to the rest of the tech market. The truth is that space companies from the past needed a lot of funding to build the expensive infrastructure which the space companies of today use. This advantage enables them to develop low-cost, quick businesses. Another myth is that space companies take too long before making any actual profit. The numbers show that since 2009 $14 billion were accounted as exits in the Space industry.

“In the future we’d like to think there are millions of people living and working in the Space.”, Landon said.

We are not talking about sending only missions to the Space, but also forming communities. Astronauts will be joined by people with all kind of expertise such as teachers, lawyers and doctors. Today, very few people go to Space. According to Landon in one or two generations there will be people who have lived their entire life only in the Space. This completely different perspective when the Earth is observed from the Space can change the way we think about it. As the Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell said:

“You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it.”

You can watch his full lecture here:   If you want to keep up with the latest trends in the world of digital economy and technology, then Webit.Festival is the right place for you. Visit our website and book 2 in 1 of our Super Earlybird tickets for Webit.Festival Europe 2018. Feel the Webit vibe with some of the best photos from this year’s event! [easingslider id="4954"]

Nowadays, we have access to two things. First, a big amount of data about our personal information and second - access to AI which enables us to understand far better the insights that make us who we are. At the 2017 edition of Webit.Festival Europe the President and Global Brand Director of Havas Worldwide Jason Jercinovic, introduced the topic of ethics in the Artificial Intelligence because if this data is in the wrong hands, our privacy could be endangered.  An ethical imperative on how to use this data is necessary to be created. We should consider ethics from the perspective of both consumers and professionals to communicate in an informed way while considering the benefits and the risks which AI brings. Jason Jercinovic stressed on the development of the tools of today which compared to those of the past can recognize unstructured data. The truth is the world of social media and interconnected devices is one of unstructured data. And these tools enable us to understand the insights from that unstructured data at a scale and to work with them. [caption id="attachment_5137" align="aligncenter" width="640"] The President and Global Brand Director of Havas Worldwide Jason Jercinovic[/caption] The vast amount of data enables us to understand people’s behaviour in great detail. Furthermore, it allows us to create and deliver experiences which are extremely efficient since they are targeted to each individual based on personal preferences.

“With that information I can predict the future. I can influence how you think.”, Jercinovic said.

This technology is becoming more complex at a very fast pace. The reality is that companies are willing to use our personal information in order to target their products or services more precisely. Whether we accept this approach as ethical or not will not change the current situation. That is why, we need a code of conduct. At the end of his talk, Jason Jercinovic underlined once again the importance of making a difference between the benefits and the risks AI brings. It is no secret that this technology is used by companies to deliver high quality content and products to us, customers. AI is present in most parts of our live and it is here to make it better. To get a real idea of how AI is implemented in our daily life you can find more about eagleAi, an intelligence platform created by Havas Cognitive for ITV News. It aims to understand how consumers think and it was used during the USA elections. eagleAi processes a huge amount of posts, comments, tweets, news articles, debates and many more to determine what people are talking about and which issues they do find relevant. AiMEN is a cognitive social listening tool created by Havas Cognitive which with the help of AI discovers the posts of people who leave negative comments on the Internet and responds to them with quotes from the Bible. You can watch his full lecture here:   If you want to keep up with the latest trends in the world of digital economy and technology, then Webit.Festival is the right place for you. Visit our website and book 2 in 1 of our Super Earlybird tickets for Webit.Festival Europe 2018. Feel the Webit vibe with some of the best photos from this year’s event! [easingslider id="4954"]

We often think about innovation and science as a one whole thing. But in the age of connectivity and information sharing most of the science-based organizations remain disconnected from the Cloud computing and its amazing capabilities. Fortunately this is going to change fast because of the fast development of IoT solutions that are going to cut the research and development costs of companies and help them invest more into amazing science discoveries that will benefit all of us. During the IoE Summit of Webit.Festival Europe the Founder and CEO of Elemental Machines Sridhar Iyengar took us on a journey through the process of making science in the Digital Age and shared his vision about overcoming the obstacles that science-based companies face today. Sridhar also founded AgaMatrix, a blood glucose monitoring company that made the world’s first medical device connecting directly to the iPhone and shipped 15+ FDA-cleared medical products, 2B+ biosensors, 6M+ glucose meters, with partnerships with Apple, Sanofi, and Walgreens. He is a holder of over 30 US and international patents. His presentation showed our guests how the IoT technologies are accelerating science-based work and are helping for the development of new drugs and products that are crucial for our common future. Iyengar explained that for investing in science-based organizations is often perceived as too risky for venture capitalists and angel investors. The main reason is that such activity requires serious initial capital and is still full of unknowns.

“I’m from Boston and biotech companies here raise $40 million as their first round of investment. And most companies don’t raise that much money through the entire process of their existence. Yet if you are going to develop a drug it is going to cost you tens, or even hundreds of millions of dollars”, the expert explained.

People who work in technology fields understand Moore’s Law and the fact that the processing power of computers is growing exponentially. But what most of us don’t realize is that in biotech world it is quite the opposite. Eroom’s Law (Moore’s Law spelled backwards) says that as the years goes on the amount of money needed to produce new a single drug is growing. So for every $1 billion dollars that is invested into making a new drug, you get less and less ROI. One of the main obstacles before making science is the fact that every activity is done in the physical world. This creates hundreds of factors that influence and cause variations in the end result. According to Iyengar doing science is very similar to writing code. Working in a laboratory or a manufacturing facility requires following a procedure and a protocol. Code is nothing more than a set of procedures and steps that machine executes. When things co wrong in code, developers have tools, called debuggers. But in science there are no such tools and the debugging process is much harder.

“It is pretty much like baking a cake. You follow recipe, you bake it and supposedly you should get the cake out. If each of us took home the same recipe for chocolate cake and we came back tomorrow, we will probably have dozens of slightly different kinds of cakes, even that we followed the same procedure. In cooking it is okay, but when you are making a drug, it is no”, he said.

In software our operating system may be iOS, Windows, Linux or else. But in science-based industry the operating system is the physical world. Because every time doing experiment, every time you test something on a mouse, every time you do a sequence of a genome, the physical world changes. And if you are trying to do the same things in two different days, you have to make sure that all the conditions are the same. This is the most important thing about science - that everything is based on physical properties. When something goes wrong with your final product there are millions things that could have caused why it could went wrong. And finding that is actually really hard and takes a lot of time and resources. [caption id="attachment_5044" align="aligncenter" width="640"] The Founder & CEO of Elemental Machines Sridhar Iyengar[/caption] Right now pharmaceutical companies invest millions of dollars in research and development, but very little of this scientific world is actually connected to the Cloud. We already have smart homes and devices, and now is the time to develop smart laboratories and factories that are able to share their results and reap the power of cloud computing. Maybe the best example of that is the San Francisco company Emerald Cloud Lab (ECL), which Iyengar described as “the Amazon for science”. It has developed a fully robotized laboratory. If you have a science experiment you just have to go to their website and code the process and machines will execute it. The first cloud connected laboratory in the entire world gets the human error out of the equation and guarantees the same results in every execution of the process. In the long-term offering experimentation as service may revolutionize the science-based businesses by cutting their costs and removing the need to develop their own research in development facilities. Another example of great innovation is the Bay Area company VIUM, which have a digital mouse lab and removes the actual mice from the drug test process. It collect terabytes of data on mice with dozens of sensors.

“They know how much they sleep, how much they walk around, which direction is their nose pointed, how often they feed. And every single thing is captured, so that when something goes wrong you have a huge database where you can go through and debug what may have happened”, Iyengar said.

Тhese are two examples of how IoT, connected devices and cloud computing are being applied to drug discovery and science and research, but there are many more to come. You may watch Sridhar Iyengar’s full lecture here: If you want to keep up with the latest trend in the world of digital economy and technology, then Webit.Festival is the right place for you. Visit our website and book 2 of our Super Earlybird tickets for Webit.Festival Europe 2018 for just €100. Feel the Webit vibe with some of the best photos from this year’s event! [easingslider id="4954"]

In the next few decades we are going to witness an exponential change in the world of technology that is going to dramatically change every aspect of the way we live. But while many people are very concerned about the new technological trends coming, very few have noted one factor that they bring to the marketplace. According to the Founder and Executive Director of Kellogg Innovation Network (KIN) Robert C. Wolcott each one of these trends push sensing, analytics and access to shared resources in more and more places in the economy and closer to us. That means that they push the production and provision of products and services ever closer to the moment at which they might be demanded. The Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship was among the 300 top level speakers at this years Webit.Festival Europe. During his on stage presentation he shared some of his views about how technology will transform every industry in the 21st century. In his work in KIN he looks for two things - strategy and implications of technology and change for large corporation. Wolcott is working hard to figure out where the world might be going and how to get there, while as an angel investor he is thinking about the future with respect to startups and emerging companies. He pointed out Amazon as an example of company with vision about its future connection with the customers. For the past two years the retail giant is trying out something called anticipatory shipping. This means that they are watching your online behavior and send products to the distribution centers near you before you have even ordered the product. [caption id="attachment_4993" align="aligncenter" width="640"] The Founder and Executive Director of Kellogg Innovation Network (KIN)[/caption] Wolcott is sure that with the development of 3D printing will bring a real long-term revolution in the global supply chain of manufacturing. Things will start from the peripheries, because the biggest threats and opportunities never come in the middle of a market. The big players in different fields already know everything about their markets, but the disruptions often comes in small ways and emerge over time.

“For instance today 20% of plastic auto replacement parts cost more to ship than they do to manufacture. Do you think at some point in the next decade people will start to produce auto plastic replacement parts through 3D printing closer and closer to the moment at which it is demanded in time and space”, he asked.

The expert noted that last year there were 250 000 taxi and limo drivers in the US. But some time in the next 20 years all these jobs will be completely eliminated. This is a big concern both for governments and corporations, because we need an opportunity for everyone to evolve to transition to this new world. Today we have a global supply chain optimized for scale manufacturing at a distance. This means that the larger the manufacturing facility is, the lower the cost. In the next 30 or 40 years this equation will completely change and this will transform our economy fundamentally. During an interview with Mr. Wolcott at the Frankfurt auto show last year, the CEO of Peugeot-Citroen Carlos Tavarez said that just 5 years ago no one seriously paid attention to the idea of self-driving cars. Today every major player in the industry is trying to figure out how to catch up with disruptors like Tesla. He predicted that if the trend continues with this speed after 20 years we will not argue whether we should let autonomous cars on the road, but if we should let human drivers. And we can easily tell who is going to be the winner of this argument. [caption id="attachment_4991" align="aligncenter" width="640"] The Founder and Executive Director of Kellogg Innovation Network (KIN) presenting one of our Webit Awards.[/caption] The technology is going to change even the metrics we use to measure the impact on the market. The normal family today usually needs at least two cars, but it may only need one vehicle in the future. For the entire history of the global automotive industry we have used unit sales as the one metric to show how successful a company is. All of the capital allocation, inventory management, marketing decisions and sales channels are focused around this metric. According to the professor if we don’t recognize that soon it will not work in the same way as today, the tyranny of metrics will bring us down. Because we will continue to make decision based on performance metric that used to work and at some point of the future won’t work anymore. The solution is creating a portfolio of metrics to measure how things are going so that companies know how they are doing in advance of things changing.

“There is a light at the end of the tunnel. If our vehicles in the future are driving around a lot more we will have what is called higher asset utilization. Which means we will need more replacement parts and services. And guess what automakers make a lot more money on then selling a car - replacement parts and service”, he said.

Wolcott thinks that enterprises should start asking themselves what are the client needs they can prototype today that gets them in the game for the future. They should also try to identify technologies and business models that are happening on the periphery and might add tons of value, because the peripheral vision might turn out to be the biggest source of competitive advantage. He predicts that over the next 20 to 40 years across all industries everything will be shifting to push the production and provision of products and services ever closer to the moment at which they are demanded. So the questions we should be asking ourselves are what value are we providing, can we produce and provide our products and services at the moment they are demanded and if not will we still be relevant in the next 20 years. You may watch his full lecture here: If you want to keep up with the latest trend in the world of digital economy and technology, then Webit.Festival is the right place for you. Visit our website and book 2 of our Super Earlybird tickets for Webit.Festival Europe 2018 for just €100. Feel the Webit vibe with some of the best photos from this year’s event! [easingslider id="4954"]

The ability of offering long-term innovation to the customers is the main factor, that is dividing the companies of the 20th century from the ones that are emerging with the development of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Right now we are living in a world that is changing so fast, that even the biggest players of the corporate world are having a hard time catching up with the trends. But there are some that follow, and some that are setting the tone, both for customers and enterprises. Certainly one of the best examples in this regard is Amazon - the fourth highest valued company in the world that has notorious obsession with its customers. At this year’s Webit.Festival Europe we had the chance to listen to the company’s Vice President for Global Innovation Policy and Communication Paul Misener. The famous expert spoke about the 3 leading innovation principles in Amazon - the Customer obsession, Long-term thinking and Passion for Invention. He gave the Bulgarian-American scientist John Atanasoff as an example of 20th century inventor, who managed to create the world’s first digital electronic computer. On the contrary he pointed out a 24 pages long research paper, published by CERN couple of years ago, that had over 5000 co-authors.

“Somewhere in the past century we have gone from the lone innovator all the way to 5000 working on a particular innovation”, Misener said.

According to him one of the reasons for Amazon’s success is the ability to foster innovation with “Two-pizza teams”. The concept is that any new innovation or problem that needs to be solved should be solved using a group of individuals that can be fed comfortably with two large pizzas. It means that there is a number of people between 4 and 12 who can effectively work together as an innovation team. With larger teams it turns out that there are difficulties with communication between team members. With smaller it turns out that you are not getting enough talent in the mix. The idea here is clear, you want enough individuals to make a difference but at the same time you don’t want too many, because the communication between them becomes impossible. Paul Misener said that within the context of innovation Amazon uses the Working backwards doctrine. When the company has a plan to have a new product or service, the team sets time to see it on the market and starts looking backwards to the present day to figure out what it needs to do to get to that point. The second guiding principle is the ability to Engage in long-term thinking. This process ignores the short-term hurdles, but it also speaks to a willingness to be misunderstood by others who may not share the long-term vision. As examples for that Mr. Misener showed the audience several Amazon project that have failed the expectations and were shut down. But there are more than one successful initiative, like the idea to let third-party sellers to market their products on the company’s website and introducing customer reviews to the products.

“When we first introduced this our investors and partners said that this is crazy, because we are trying to sell things and in the same time we are allowing customers to come to our territory and criticize the things we are selling. We have lost a lot of short-term sales because of this, but we have built a long-term trust in our company”, he said.

The third leading principle in Amazon is the Passion for invention and the notion of experimenting and being willing to fail in the process. The ability to take risks is a crucial part of innovation, because if you know what the outcome of your experiment is going to be, than it is not experimenting. An actual experiment has to be able to fail. And to innovate and introduce new things to the customers, you have to be willing to try them out. Soon you will be able to see Paul Misener’s full presentation on our YouTube channel. If you want to keep up with the latest trend in the world of digital economy and technology, then Webit.Festival is the right place for you. Visit our website and book 2 of our Super Earlybird tickets for Webit.Festival Europe 2018 for just €100.

The concept of Digital Single Market that covers digital marketing, e-commerce and telecommunication sectors in Europe was officially presented by the European Commission in May 2015 and was pre-announced on the stage of Webit’s CEEDS in April 2015. The Vice President of the Commission Andrus Ansip explained that the realization of the project could contribute €415 billion per year to the common EU economy and create hundreds of thousands of new jobs. More than two years after its announcement the Digital Single Market is still looks more like a great idea than а reality. And according to the famous marketing strategist and trendwatcher for Fortune 500 companies Igor Beuker this could be the greatest chance that Europe have, if it wants to catch up with the competition of economic juggernauts like USA and China. On the stage of Webit.Festival Europe he shared his Math Man view on why intelligence is the ability to adapt to change. This skill is increasingly important in the corporate world, struggling with the process of digital transformation. During his keynote speech at the Opening ceremony he showed the audience the latest trends in the digital economy and presented his thoughts on the current systems, that were developed for the 20th century. He explained that Digital Darwinism is the phenomenon in which trends, technologies, consumers and society evolve faster than established brands can adapt. It’s a fate that also threatens governments, institutions, and all other corporate organizations. Today, tomorrow and in the unforeseeable future.

“For almost 25 years I am witnessing that advertising may win quarters, innovation wins decades. I don’t need to know much about technology, I’ve just got an open and limitless mind. I’ve learned that i.e. our financial, political and educational systems were built for the 20th century. It’s about time we seriously upgrade these systems, so we can finally deal with the challenges and opportunities of this 21st century”, said Mr. Beuker.

According to Beuker, the traditional corporate world is ruled by “Mad Men”, who keep spending billions of dollars on advertising, backward-looking market research and consultancy services, but fail to innovate. That’s why Mad Men are losing the war from the Math Men. The exponential growing disruptors, who all have a trend-driven, opportunity-seizing innovation culture. He gave examples of Blockbuster, Kodak, Nokia and many other heritage brands, who neglected trends forever, but kept spending billions of dollars on advertising, IBM consultants, old school R&D, and backward-looking market research. Still they lost. The lifespan for Fortune 500s is declining at a pace we’ve never seen before in history. A serious wake-up call. On the other side we see exponential growing companies like Amazon, Tesla, Facebook, Google, Airbnb who are spending billions of dollars per year on trend-driven innovation, not on advertising.

“Amazon spends $13 billion per year on innovation, Walmart and Target each spend $2 billion per year on innovation. Incumbent brands are all addicted to advertising, and miserably fail at innovation. The reason is not technology, because we all have access to the same technologies. The problem with Mad Men is their DNA, mentality and mindset. They’d rather wait 4 more years on relevant business cases. While Math Men are the business case”, Beuker stated.

The expert thinks that the main problem with the big brands is their “buy not make mentality” - they are trying to acquire innovators, instead of innovating themselves. Beuker is sure that if the corporations don’t start to effectively innovate, they may no longer exist in 5 to 7 years. The biggest advantage is the fury of the founders of the new digital giants, like Amazon, Tesla and Alibaba. Math Man like Jack Ma has a purpose in life. In 20 years, he wants to grow Alibaba from 500 million to 2 billion customers worldwide, make 10 million retailers profitable and create 100 million news jobs. The Math Men generation entrepreneurs will have a much bigger impact on our global economy than politicians, who have no clue about the digital economy or how to deal with robotization and jobs.

“Digital single Europe is so important because we need startups and unicorns. They will provide new jobs, will create growth, will increase Europe’s GDP and will support our digital markets. We don’t have Facebook, Google, Airbnb and others, but we would like to have them. Politics and the EU need to facilitate businesses much better. Banning Uber is an ignorant way to block innovation”, said Beuker.

Soon you will be able to see his full presentation on our YouTube channel. If you want to keep up with the latest trend in the world of digital economy and technology, then Webit.Festival is the right place for you. Visit our website and book 2 of our Super Earlybird tickets for Webit.Festival Europe 2018 for just €100.

Today, healthcare is inefficient, bureaucratic and expensive. It is a multi-trillion industry, that will be among the most transformed sectors over the next 10 years. Thousands of startups, along with giants, such as Google, IBM, Apple, Samsung and many others are entering the race to revolutionize the way we treat human diseases today. This will lead to much more sound, effective and cheap health care. To understand upcoming changes in the best possible way, we asked Prof. Shafi Ahmed a few questions about the future of Healthcare. He is among the most recognized visionaries in the world of medicine and one of the top-level speakers at Health & Wellbeing Summit - part of this year’s Webit.Festival Europe.

What do we need to change in our medical education system to answer the needs of tomorrow?

Medical teaching is still very traditional yet technology is advancing exponentially. We need to look at modern methods of teaching the digital doctors of tomorrow. With my company Medical Realities we are utilising augmented and virtual reality to add a different dimension in immersive learning. I have also introduced a new programme called Barts X for our medical students which teaches our students on innovation and entrepreneurship which is essential in creating future leaders.

You are known as a visionary. How do you imagine the medicine after ten years?

We are currently undergoing the 4th industrial revolution with the fusion of technologies like AR, VR, Robotics, AI, Big Data and the use of wearable technology which will radically change the doctor patient relationship and how we practise medicine. This is the most exciting time to be involved in medicine. When a patient asks for advice the first point of contact will be artificial intelligence rather than a doctor. The doctor’s role will undoubtedly change. A number of specialties like radiology and dermatology will be largely replaced by sophisticated AI. We will consult remotely using AR and VR and monitor our patients using a mixture of wearables, injectables and ingestible sensors. The cost of genomic profiling will be cheap and will allow us to deliver precision and personalised medicine.

What are the biggest medical threats to humanity?

The biggest threats are going to be new infectious diseases like the Ebola virus which can cause devastation quickly. The inequality of the provision of basic surgery globally will affect the well-being of 5 billion people.

How will technology improve our health and increase our life expectancy?

There is much interest in looking at ageing as a disease which will be modified with either medicine or a gene altering process allowing us to live longer.

What is the biggest technological breakthrough in medicine in recent years?

The unravelling of the complete human genome and reducing the cost of profiling to $1000. The discovery of the CRISPR - Cas9 gene editing which is currently the simplest, most versatile and precise method of genetic manipulation. 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.

The automotive industry is changing rapidly under the pressure of challenges on multiple fronts. The shift towards electric transport is making the engineering accomplishments of the past obsolete, while building electric cars requires less workers. In this new business environment, automakers, freight forwarders, transport companies and national and local governments must find the most effective ways to build the mobility of the future. This year, Webit.Festival will gather in Sofia Tech Park more than 300 speakers from every corner of the world. Within two days (25th and 26th of April) they will share invaluable experience from the largest enterprises in the digital industry and will explain to more than 5000 attendees from 90+ countries the key factors that will shape our future. During the Mobility Summit you will get the chance to listen to learn about the crucial factors, that are shaping the future of our transport systems. At the beginning of the conference you will get the chance to see the “New Mobility, New Paradigms” fireside chat between the Managing Partner at New Mobility Consulting Alexander Renz and the Senior Manager of innogy Innovation Hub at innogy SE Carsten Stoecker. Right after that, the Founder and CEO of StartBurst Francois Chopard will share his expectations about the development of space industry in the next decade. StarBurst Accelerator provides seed funding from the business angels and venture capitals firms dedicated to aerospace defense and security as well as access to the largest aerospace group stakeholders to get your first 1 million dollars contract. Then the audience will get the chance to see the fireside chat between the Digital Director for EMEA region at Oracle Luisella Giani and the Co-founder and CEO of Blacklane Jens Wohltorf. At the end of the Summit, ladies will take over the stage for a panel discussion about mobility innovation and business models. The talk will be between the Investment Principal of BMW i Ventures Sohaila Ouffata, the Managing Director of Smart Transportation and Energy at Startupbootcamp Tanja Kufner and the Director for Urban Development at Siemens Julie Alexander. 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.

Over the last few decades, the Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) have become the modern economy’s greatest driver of innovation, productivity and growth. This industry managed to transform every element of business and society and to enable productivity and innovation in every sector of the economy. But to realize the full potential of this amazing opportunity, we first have to transform our education systems, so that they can create people with the right skill set to reap the benefits of the digital economy. This year, Webit.Festival will gather in Sofia Tech Park more than 300 speakers from every corner of the world. Within two days (25th and 26th of April) they will share invaluable experience from the largest enterprises in the digital industry and will explain to more than 5000 attendees from 90+ countries the key factors that will shape our future. During the IoE Summit you will get the chance to listen to the Director of Strategic and International Development at Wolfram Research Conrad Wolfram, among many others. The physicist, mathematician, and technologist, is uniquely operating at the intersection of computation, data and knowledge. Wolfram technology and consulting solutions drives innovation in data analytics, software development and modelling from startups to Fortune 500 companies, in industries as diverse as medicine, finance and telecoms. They include Mathematica software, the Wolfram|Alpha knowledge engine (powering knowledge answers for Apple's Siri), Enterprise Private Cloud and the Wolfram Language. Conrad is also recognised as a world authority on fixing maths education, including advocating a fundamental shift to focus on computer-based computational thinking rather than hand calculation. He founded computerbasedmath.org (CBM) to drive implementation of the change — now a worldwide force in re-engineering the curriculum with early projects in Estonia, Ireland, Sweden and Africa.Conrad attended Eton College and holds degrees in natural sciences and maths from University of Cambridge. On Webit’s stage, he will explain how the importance of quantitative understanding for jobs, society and management has exploded over the last few decades. He will also talk about the importance of understanding the changing role of computers and automation of knowledge is crucial. Conrad Wolfram will address these questions, explaining the fundamental shift needed in education, and describing the major project he's founded to build a dramatically new, problem-centric computational thinking curriculum. 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.