Tag: technology

In line with the most interesting news from the day, we'll share with you the stories that matter in the business and technology. Webit.Festival speaker Francois Chopard and his venture fund called Starburst Ventures has raised a $200 million debut fund to invest in early stage aerospace startups over the next three years. The fund is an extension of the Starburst Accelerator, which was founded in 2012 to help aviation and aerospace tech startups raise seed funding, and score their first big deal with a corporate customer, typically representing $1 million or more in revenue. Read more about it here. Meanwhile, one of the few remaining alternative mobile OS platforms, Jolla’s Sailfish OS, made a deal with the Russian government. Today the Finnish company which develops and maintains the core code, with the aim of licensing it to others, announced Sailfish has achieved domestic certification in Russia for government and corporate use. More about the alternative of Android, here. One in five people have suffered from depression, one in two will suffer some other mental disturbance in their lifetimes. If you haven’t been through a mental health issue, you will likely know someone who has. After encountering it in amongst those closest to her, former international model Silja Litvin decided to do something about it, launching a special app. Learn more about it here. A new joint venture between major carmakers will attempt to make it easier to get around Europe using electric cars, thanks to a network of chargers with up to 350 kW charging capacity, which could drastically reduce overall charging times compared to what’s available today. The team-up includes BMW, Daimler, Ford and Volkswagen, and plans for roll-out of the fast-charging stations call for installations to start in 2017. Read about it here. Mobileye and Delphi announced a partnership to build an affordable self-driving car platform it could sell to automakers starting in 2019 earlier this year, and now Intel is joining the two automative suppliers to provide the chips used in their autonomous system.

Have a look at some of the interesting news from today, regarding the tech and business world. First of all, we should point out the 100 million euro raised by Devialet,  the French developer of high-end speakers and the IP behind the sound systems that make them go boom.  The investment comes from Foxconn, Jay-Z, Rubin's Playground and even more investors. See more about it here. And let's talk about wireless VR, sounds like a fantasy, right? Well, the researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) may have a solution in MoVr, a wireless virtual reality system. Instead of using Wi-Fi or Bluetooth to transmit data, the research team’s MoVR system uses high-frequency millimeter wave radio to stream data from a computer to a headset wirelessly at dramatically faster speeds than traditional technology. Learn more about it here. Meanwhile,  one of the hedge fund industry's hottest new funds is betting on Disney. Samantha Greenberg's Margate Capital Management is investing in Walt Disney Company – even as many peers are shedding the stock. If you want to see more about the interesting investment, click here. Proficio, a cybersecurity startup specializing in managed detection and response (MDR) services, has raised $12 million in a round led by Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors. More about it here. About Webit.Festival 2017: Webit.Festival is the European edition of the Webit Series of events, which will take place in Sofia, Bulgaria, from the 25th to the 27th of April, 2017. The festival consists of several parallel conferences and events, workshops, roundtables and exhibitions. The event is under the patronage of the Mayor of Sofia Mrs Yordanka Fandakova and the European Commission. The agenda includes Tech Summit, Marketing and Innovation Summit, Developers Summit and Smart Cities Summit. Separate area of the festival will be dedicated to startups from Bulgaria and other countries in the world. The agenda for the founders includes conference, meetings with investors, academy for startups and special stage for them to pitch their companies in front of a jury of investors, journalists and leaders of Fortune 500 companies. Webit.Festival is the most influential event on the tech and digital industry in the region. To buy your tickets for Webit.Festival 2017, click here. To apply for speaking, click here. To apply for partnership, click here. To apply for exhibiting, click here. To apply for our Founders Games, click here. To see the video gallery from Webit.Festival 2016, click here. To learn more about the events that are part of the festival, click here. To see pictures from our previous events, click here. For all this information and even more, visit our website www.webit.bg. Contact: Aniela Russeva

aniela@webitcongress.com

   

Meet the founder Nadine Levitt and her Wurrly, helping you turn your phone into a professional recording studio. 300 000 users with 1.5 million recording sessions did it already.

Nadine Levitt, who will be speaking during Webit.Festival 2017, is a professional opera singer and if the name doesn’t ring any bells in your mind, you should know that she performed on one stage with people like Steven Tyler, David Foster, Christina Perri and Roger Daltry. So, she decided to create Wurrly, trying to erase some of the barriers for entry in the professional music world. Wurrly is an app, which transforms your phone into a recording studio – easy to use and delivering HQ records of performances on it. That’s an easy way to record good performances without paying huge sums for studio time. All you have to do is download Wurrly. “Location and economic differences should not be a barrier to entry for self-expression,” says Nadine about her try to disrupt the sector.

So here is the answer : because more than 80 % of all jobs and professions will be totally transformed within next 5-10 years. And we have to be ready so to take the advantage. It's not bad – it's just challenging and since yo read this and attend Webit – you will be among the prepared once.

And if you are still not impressed, Wurrly had already collaborated with the 'Lip Sync Battle’show, hosted by LL Cool J and airing on Spike TV. As we all know, celebrities appear on the show lip-syncing worldwide hits for the amusement of the audience. This is the place, where Channing Tatum is channeling Beyoncé, Joseph Gordon-Levitt can be seen performing as Janet Jackson, Anne Hathaway as Miley Cyrus and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson searching for his inner Taylor Swift personality. The app is based exactly on Wurrly’s engine and will help fans of the show record themselves and this way become part of the fun, challenging each other to a lip-sync duel. For just one year, Wurrly has tracked more than 1.5 million recording sessions and over 300,000 users. So, Nadine can really tell us more about her way of changing ways music is made, we are really impatient to hear more on the topic. About Webit.Festival 2017: Webit.Festival is the European edition of the Webit Series of events, which will take place in Sofia, Bulgaria, from the 25th to the 27th of April, 2017. The festival consists of several parallel conferences and events, workshops, roundtables and exhibitions. The event is under the patronage of the Mayor of Sofia Mrs Yordanka Fandakova and the European Commission. The agenda includes Tech Summit, Marketing and Innovation Summit, Developers Summit and Smart Cities Summit. Separate area of the festival will be dedicated to startups from Bulgaria and other countries in the world. The agenda for the founders includes conference, meetings with investors, academy for startups and special stage for them to pitch their companies in front of a jury of investors, journalists and leaders of Fortune 500 companies. Webit.Festival is the most influential event on the tech and digital industry in the region. To buy your tickets for Webit.Festival 2017, click here. To apply for speaking, click here. To apply for partnership, click here. To apply for exhibiting, click here. To apply for our Founders Games, click here. To see the video gallery from Webit.Festival 2016, click here. To learn more about the events that are part of the festival, click here. To see pictures from our previous events, click here. For all this information and even more, visit our website www.webit.bg. Contact: Aniela Russeva

aniela@webitcongress.com

BASSCOM, the industry association of leading Bulgarian software development companies, presented today its annual report on the IT industry in the country. Among the guests during the press conference was Mrs Aniela Russeva, Senior Vice President of the Webit Global Series.

Georgi Zahariev, member of the Managing Board of BASSCOM, pointed out that the annual turnover of the members of the association is now over 1 billion US Dollars. Another interesting fact is the growth of the software industry in Bulgaria – 16.9% for 2015, 5 times more the growth of the country’s GDP. The members of BASSCOM also reported 278 milion leva of paid taxes during the last year. Outsourcing companies have a growth of 21% during 2015 – 217 million leva – an all-time record for the country. The people, working in the industry, are 19 000 and that makes it one of the most effective in the country. BASSCOM provided information that the salaries in the industry are 4 times bigger than the average in Bulgaria.

BASSCOM is a long term partner of the Global Webit Series of events and they both as communities support the growth of the market and industry and help the establishment of Bulgaria as a hub for the region of CEE, which already was proven by the title given to Sofia as The Digital Capital of the New Markets by Forbes after last edition of Webit in Sofia. BASSCOM also stated that in all industries there is already a need of IT specialists since all businesses are now transforming or started to adapt to the digital economy. Thus BASSCOM also announced a launch of special pilot of educational programme for IT specialists that will start not in the Universities but in the secondary school. First results will be visible on the market in the near future, when more young people will be ready to be part of the continuing growth of the industry in the country. We expect more companies to relocate their operations for the CEE region in Bulgaria as we have all the ingredients needed.

About Webit.Festival 2017: Webit.Festival is the European edition of the Webit Series of events, which will take place in Sofia, Bulgaria, from the 25th to the 27th of April, 2017. The festival consists of several parallel conferences and events, workshops, roundtables and exhibitions. The event is under the patronage of the Mayor of Sofia Mrs Yordanka Fandakova and the European Commission. The agenda includes Tech Summit, Marketing and Innovation Summit, Developers Summit and Smart Cities Summit. Separate area of the festival will be dedicated to startups from Bulgaria and other countries in the world. The agenda for the founders includes conference, meetings with investors, academy for startups and special stage for them to pitch their companies in front of a jury of investors, journalists and leaders of Fortune 500 companies. Webit.Festival is the most influential event on the tech and digital industry in the region. To buy your tickets for Webit.Festival 2017, click here. To apply for speaking, click here. To apply for partnership, click here. To apply for exhibiting, click here. To apply for our Founders Games, click here. To see the video gallery from Webit.Festival 2016, click here.

No, it’s JetPack man. He will fly over Webit Festival 5000+ attendees! And not not by plane! He will just fly! Watch out because David Mayman, the creator of “The World’s First True Jetpack” and CEO of JetPack Aviation is coming to Webit.Festival’2017! And who knows - maybe will do a storm by landing on scene by his untraditional vehicle. Have you ever wanted to fly? Maybe as a child you’ve wanted to fly with a pair of wings, to see all the beauty that birds see from above and to feel the ultimate freedom of the sky? Then real adults life comes and you learn you can only fly by plane, or eventually parachute or something else of the kind. But David Mayman, one of our great speakers, didn’t settle and worked hard to make flying possible nowadays. “I've always dreamt of creating and flying a jetpack - to me this is the ultimate expression of flight - no wings, minimal airframe and very compact.”, he says. If you have recently heard of that vertically flying man in New York, London, and Monaco but you still don’t believe it, you can trust us, he’s real. “It really is like having a motorcycle or a bicycle in the air.” by his own words. Not only he proves flying is possible, but what’s more, he thinks he can teach you, even if you have never piloted a plane before. David is a professional pilot with a curious career path combining aviation, internet technologies and commerce but he have always found real passion in aircraft. He devoted 25 years of discovering the ultimate freedom feeling by creating “The World’s First True Jetpack” - light enough to be carried by a man and small enough to fit in a car. David have completed more than 400 test and a couple of real flights, armed only with his Jetpack on back. The most recent model ot JetPack, JB-9, could reach 10,000 feet (3,050 metres) and a highest speed of 102 km/h with duration of the flight for about 10 minutes, says JetPack Aviation. The company wants to raise £300,000 in order to invest in further research and development for its JB-10 JetPack and VTOL aircraft. And if today JetPack flying symbolises distant future, Mr Mayman says will work hard to create a commercial use JetPack so that one day JetPack could be a usual way of hanging around used by next generations. About Webit.Festival 2017: Webit.Festival is the European edition of the Webit Series of events, which will take place in Sofia, Bulgaria, from the 25th to the 27th of April, 2017. The festival consists of several parallel conferences and events, workshops, roundtables and exhibitions. The event is under the patronage of the Mayor of Sofia Mrs Yordanka Fandakova and the European Commission. The agenda includes Tech Summit, Marketing and Innovation Summit, Developers Summit and Smart Cities Summit. Separate area of the festival will be dedicated to startups from Bulgaria and other countries in the world. The agenda for the founders includes conference, meetings with investors, academy for startups and special stage for them to pitch their companies in front of a jury of investors, journalists and leaders of Fortune 500 companies. Webit.Festival is the most influential event on the tech and digital industry in the region. To buy your tickets for Webit.Festival 2017, click here. To apply for speaking, click here. To apply for partnership, click here. To apply for exhibiting, click here. To apply for our Founders Games, click here. To see the video gallery from Webit.Festival 2016, click here. To learn more about the events that are part of the festival, click here. To see pictures from our previous events, click here. For all this information and even more, visit our website www.webit.bg. Contact: Aniela Russeva

aniela@webitcongress.com

Bitcoin has gone the way of every new technology – big players shame it at first, ridicule it, but soon new business, markets and even whole industries emerge in order to commercialize it. Now, according to many of the biggest names, like Bill Gates, Eric Smith and Al Gore have taken a stand for it. However, when we speak about Bitcoin we have to answer a question: what problems does it solve, and why is it so good? Researchers have tried for decades to find a way to make all the machines on a given network to agree on the state of something, but it wasn’t until 2009 when Bitcoin was introduced, that a practical solution was found. The concept of the blockchain was created. The blockchain is a public journal of every transaction made with Bitcoin, ever since it was found.

"This blockchain is shared between all the machines, so if someone tries to cheat and create fake Bitcoins, everyone on the network can actually see that they have no legitimate history. Using this technology, everyone can send pieces of digital property to one another, without the need of a centralized structure or an expensive middle man," said at CEE Digital Summit Lasse Birk Olesen - Chief Product Officer of Coinify.

Among the many problems that Bitcoin solves is reducing transaction fees and pretty much eliminating fraud. According to Golden Sax, card payment transactions cost around 125 billion euro to business every year. In addition to that another 80 billion euro is lost due to card fraud. The reason we have these huge numbers is that payment cards were invented in 1950s and never really changed much in terms of security. This technology was never designed for the Internet. On the other hand we have Bitcoin, which is designed specifically to exist in the era of Internet. There are more and more businesses that accept Bitcoin payments. One of the biggest advantages is the smaller cost of Bitcoin transactions – every transaction costs you 2 euro cents, no matter if you are sending 100 euros or 1 million euros. Bitcoin payments are also easier than card payments – instead of looking for your card and entering tons of numbers when trying to buy something, you just click a button, enter your password and you’re done. By accepting Bitcoin payments you can also get paid from any country in the world, because Bitcoin is global. For example, sending money from Uganda will mean losing around 9% of the money in every transaction. According to researches, 50% of the people don’t have a bank account, meaning they can’t do digital transactions and that their money is in danger. However, Bitcoin will enable these people to send and receive money internationally, and even apply for loans from other countries. Another great use of Bitcoin is crowdfunding. If you use a platform like Kickstarter, you pay around 8% of the raised money to the website, but in return you get a secure platform that guarantees the investors to get their money back if the project is not fully funded. However, you can do the same with Bitcoin, using self-enforcing contracts. A contract can be programmed to do a certain action under certain conditions. For example, if you get a given amount of money for a given time the money would be transferred, otherwise it would be given back to the investors. This is better than using Kickstarter, because it eliminates the middle man and it has much lesser fees. There aren’t many countries that regulate Bitcoin, but some of the ones that do are USA, Germany and Sweden. One factor that eases regulation is the fact that Bitcoin is far from anonymous. In the blockchain every transaction is linked to an account and a name, meaning that every transaction can be easily tracked back to the sender. Coinify has helped on several occasion for the arrests of criminals, using the blockchain. Even though Bitcoin is still volatile, this is a normal trend for any new currency or product and is one that will go away with time. We have seen the volatility of the currency go down and we can be sure it will settle down even further in the coming years. Wanna learn more about the bitcoin and the future of that currency, watch the archive of CEEDS'15 HERE.