Tag: Webit
Empowering women in Business and Politics to create a future of...
If there is one thing that is slowing down or evolution as social species for the last centuries, it is the lack of inclusion and equal opportunities for every person on this planet, no matter of its race, gender or nationality.
Inequality is something that the future generations will most certainly view as a major stain in our history. And it is also something that we need to eradicate, in order to use our full human potential and reach the limits of our capabilities.
Just take the example of the first image of a Black Hole’s event horizon. This amazing accomplishment for humanity would not be possible without the efforts of Katie Bouman - a 29-yeas old postdoctoral fellow at Harvard, who helped develop the code to find the black hole in the haystack of data collected from Event Horizon Telescope.
Imagine how many amazing discoveries we could have if we are able to grant equal opportunities for education and work for every woman on this planet. In fact, many experts believe, that the process of including women on the labor market will be the main driver of economic growth in the years to come.
During the last decade, Webit Foundation has made its efforts to foster this process and not just talk about empowering women in business and politics, but doing so! For the upcoming Webit.Festival Europe, we gave 1000 tickets to women in technological industries.
Of course, this became a catalyst for some backlash towards us. Our Executive Chairman Plamen Russev even received an email, in which he is called a sexist for not providing the same amount of tickets for the event to men in different industries.
Regardless of such views, we are more than confident that or efforts for promoting the role of Women in Tech are a step in the right direction. That is the reason why for the second year in a row Webit.Festival is doing its best to improve the ratio of women to men speakers globally.
According to the annual Global Gender Gap Report of WEF, it will take 108 years to achieve overall gender parity and 202 years to achieve full equality in the workplace. As we can’t just accept such dark predictions for our future, Webit became the platform for discussing the changing role of women in business in politics in a times of dramatic changes, caused by tech advancements in areas, such as AI, Blockchain, Automation and Robotics.
Eurostat’s data analytics show that Bulgaria takes the second place in EU with 49% women managers. We think that this makes Sofia, the Digital Capital, a perfect place for such discussion that would shape the future corporate and government actions towards a future that treat every person as equal.
Come to Webit.Festival Europe and learn about the major steps that world’s policy makers and corporate leaders will need to take to equal opportunities for everyone.
During Innovate! & Plenary Session you will get the chance to listen to top enterprise, science and policy leaders, such as the Serial Entrepreneur Mark Cuban, the Airbus Defense and Space CEO Dirk Hoke, the Senior Parther at McKinsey & Co Paul Willmott, The VP of Amazon Web Services Sandy Carter and VP of Amazon Paul Misener, the EU Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society Mariya Gabriel, the Deputy Director-General of World Trade Organization Yonov Frederick Agah and many others.
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.
How to invest in people and build the foundations of future...
In times of drastic social and economic changes, like the ones we live in, knowledge about the future can be a crucial factor for building it the right way. As Malcolm X once said - Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today!
The massive potential of technological advancements in the fields of Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality, Quantum Computing, Automation and Robotics should make us think how we need to educate our kids and develop their skill sets for the demand of the future.
The AI and Automation will surely make many manual, repetitive jobs obsolete. But as any tech advancements in the past, the ones that are before us will certainly create many occupations that we can hardly even dream of.
According to the Founder of Alibaba Group, Jack Ma, if we keep the 200 years old knowledge-based approach our children will never be able to compete with machines. Instead, kids should be taught soft skills like independent thinking and team work.
Of course, changing the education system will require a lot of money. In 2017, the edtech (education technology) investments in the US surpassed a record high of $9.5 billion. Forecasts show that the AI in education market is set to go past $6 billion by 2024.
The topic of education, among many others, will be discussed during the Innovate! & Plenary Session of this year’s Webit.Festival Europe - the largest event for innovations and entrepreneurship in this part of the world.
Many experts, such as the Director of the London School of Economics, Minouche Shafik, believe that changing our education system will be an essential part of the process of fixing the fractures in our societies and avoiding a tilt towards populism.
She thinks that more and more people realize that the system of today will not work in their benefit, so they are looking to vote for anti-system players, such as Donald Trump for example. Of course, this does not mean that the populists will rule Europe and the world, but it is a strong sing for the establishment to start the process of changing itself to meet the demand of tomorrow.
In a relatively near future technology will allow us to learn anything almost instantly. Our brains will be boosted with special implants that will help us memorize information - an advancement that will improve our lives dramatically.
Just imagine a time when you don’t need to spend 16 years in different forms of educational institutions, so that you can get a degree. Such implants will help us personalize the education we get and learn the most suitable information for our skills. With the implants of tomorrow, we will basically have a search engine in our heads and we will be able to get all information that is online on demand, instead of knowing it.
Come to Webit.Festival Europe and learn about the major steps that world’s policy makers and corporate leaders will need to take to create the infrastructure of tomorrow and protect us from the threats that will come with it.
During Innovate! & Plenary Session you will get the chance to listen to top enterprise, science and policy leaders, such as the Serial Entrepreneur Mark Cuban, the Airbus Defense and Space CEO Dirk Hoke, the Senior Parther at McKinsey & Co Paul Willmott, The VP of Amazon Web Services Sandy Carter and VP of Amazon Paul Misener, the EU Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society Mariya Gabriel, the Deputy Director-General of World Trade Organization Yonov Frederick Agah and many others.
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.
Understanding Gigabit society and the priorities ot Infrastructure 4.0
The developed economies of the world are rapidly transforming into Gigabit societies of ultra-fast connections, while our lives are increasingly influenced by phenomenons such as AI, VR, IOT and robotics.
The processes we were discussing during Webit.Festival years ago are the reality of today. We have already passed the 4 billion mark of internet users globally, while more than 80% of the population of Europe is using the web on a daily basis.
This exponential digital transformation of our everyday life require some major system changes that will shape the Infrastructure 4.0 and will enable people and businesses to reap the benefits of all the new opportunities that are presented to them. According to Gartner, the EU tech spending for software products will increase by 7.23% on a yearly basis for the next half decade, while the spending for IT services will reach $38.6 billion in 2022.
This, among many other topics, will be discussed during the Innovate! & Plenary Session of this year’s Webit.Festival Europe - the largest event for innovations and entrepreneurship in this part of the world.
Experts believe that 5G networks will be rolled out for consumers and enterprise leaders from 2020, when the compatible telecom equipment and devices are available. The new 5G network will use radio spectrum four times as efficiently as the old 4G.
This will be a huge factor that will help us meet the growing demand for mobile data. The larger demand comes from the rise of IOT devices and the fact that far more things than just our smartphones are and will be connected to the internet.
“The question of how we can speed up infrastructure delivery and improve asset utilization has never been more important. By 2025, 60% of the world’s population will live in cities. Instead of traffic-congested cities with unhealthy levels of pollution, we need to create environments that are good for people and businesses”, says the CTO and Managing Board Member of Siemens Roland Bursch in his recent article.
While the development of 5G networks is crucial to our future infrastructure, it could also pose a huge security risk for our information resources. Recently the US authorities expressed their concerns that Huawei 5G networks might be used by the Chinese government for espionage - both on military and corporate level.
The Trump administration sees this as part of a new arms race, where the winner would gain an economic, intelligence and military edge for a better part of the century. The fact that many US allies refused to ban the Chinese company from 5G networks caused a huge diplomatic rift inside NATO countries that will unfold in the next two years.
Come to Webit.Festival Europe and learn about the major steps that European policy makers and corporate leaders will need to take to create a secure job market for us and for the generations to come.
During Innovate! & Plenary Session you will get the chance to listen to top enterprise, science and policy leaders, such as the Serial Entrepreneur Mark Cuban, the Airbus Defense and Space CEO Dirk Hoke, the Senior Parther at McKinsey & Co Paul Willmott, The VP of Amazon Web Services Sandy Carter and VP of Amazon Paul Misener, the EU Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society Mariya Gabriel, the Deputy Director-General of World Trade Organization Yonov Frederick Agah and many others.
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.
What steps we need to take to secure the future of...
We are all living in a time of exponential change both in our societies and economics. The new industrial revolution and the rise of robots and automation will change dramatically the way we live, communicate and entertain ourselves. But probably the most crucial change will come in our workplace, where we will need a completely new set of skills to stay competitive.
According to the annual Future of Jobs Report, issued by the WEF, by 2020, more than a third of the desired core skill sets of most occupations will be consist of skills that are not yet considered crucial to the job today.
Soon we will all need to make a serious effort to develop our soft skills, such as persuasion, emotional intelligence and the ability to teach others. Experts think that there will be a higher demand for such abilities, than the narrow technical skills.
This, among many other topics, will be discussed during the Innovate! & Plenary Session of this year’s Webit.Festival Europe - the largest event for innovations and entrepreneurship in this part of the world.
Students today think that getting a four-year university degree is the only way to become part of a global company such as Google, Apple or Amazon. But business leaders like the CEO of Siemens USA Barbara Humpton and her colleague in Apple Tim Cook are already questioning this old-fashioned career path.
Recently Cook pointed out that the US employment at Apple includes a lot of people who did not have degrees. And the main reason for that is the fact that most of the colleges do not teach the skills business leaders need, such as coding for example.
According to a LinkedIn report, prominent companies do not require that employees have college degrees. The data analysis of the social network identified, tha positions like electronic technicians, mechanical designers and marketing representatives are offered to people with no education but having the required skill set.
The main drivers of this exponential changes in our work requirements are four processes: high-speed mobile internet, Artificial Intelligence, adoption of Big Data analytics and Cloud Technology.
If we want to prevent a catastrophic processes in the society like mass unemployment, business and educational leaders will have to take an active role and help the workers today with re-skilling and up-skilling.
While this process will unfold on a global scale, it will also be a major challenge for the new European Commission that will be appointed after the elections for Members of the European Parliament at the end of May. The new governing body will need to develop a continent-wide strategy for developing its human resource, in order for the continent to stay competitive with new global powers, such as China, who have a more centralized authority.
Come to Webit.Festival Europe and learn about the major steps that European policy makers and corporate leaders will need to take to create a secure job market for us and for the generations to come.
During Innovate! & Plenary Session you will get the chance to listen to top enterprise, science and policy leaders, such as the Serial Entrepreneur Mark Cuban, the Airbus Defense and Space CEO Dirk Hoke, the Senior Parther at McKinsey & Co Paul Willmott, The VP of Amazon Web Services Sandy Carter and VP of Amazon Paul Misener, the EU Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society Mariya Gabriel, the Deputy Director-General of World Trade Organization Yonov Frederick Agah and many others.
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.
Join the world’s biggest Startup Challenge – Founders Games
We believe that only by supporting the development of the entrepreneurial ecosystem and empowering the women in business and politics - we may improve the state of well-being globally.
Thus for the past 10 years Webit.Foundation is providing millions of Euros in grants to startups and innovators.
... and investors don't have to hide their badges to protect themselves from the wannabee millionaires' meaningless pitches :) ... but the opposite - the investors visit Webit's startups expo with top selected startups as they don't want to miss even a single opportunity to meet with the best European founders at Webit and invest!
We select and present 1500 of the best European startups out of over 4000 applications!
When was the last time you have pitched in front of such audience of investors, global business leaders and media from 111 countries?
... and investors don't have to hide their badges to protect themselves from the wannabee millionaires' meaningless pitches :) ... but the opposite - the investors visit Webit's startups expo with top selected startups as they don't want to miss even a single opportunity to meet with the best European founders at Webit and invest!
Investor/Enterprise leader?
Should you want to join the Webit's Founders Games sponsors and partners and have first access to the most innovative European companies in areas such as AI, Mobility, Health, Energy, Blockchain, Automation, Fintech... to name a few - contact Aniela Ruseva by fill in this form and the Webit team shall contact you shortly.
Davos: Bulgaria affirms itself as a regional technological superpower
This is the message that Webit’s Executive Chairman and Goodwill Ambassador for Bulgaria's Digital Affairs - Plamen Russev sent to the world from Davos and shared upon his landing at Sofia Airport.
He shared his impressions from the past week at the World Economic Forum in Davos. This year Dr. Russev hosted a special forum and reception - Webit.Davos 2019.
Apple's Chief Executive Officer among Webit.Davos 2019 guests
More than 300 guests from the world elite accepted Dr. Russev's personal invitation, including Apple's CEO Tim Cook, the President of Harvard University - Larry Beikou, presidents and CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, and many other government and NGOs representatives, as well as media, among which CNN, Forbes, and others. Such elite of global leaders are seldom brought together. The forum took place in the area with the highest level of security at the Davos Forum in Hilton Garden.
“There are dozens of events happening in Davos every minute, and the competition for the attention of the world leaders is extremely high. It was an exceptional honor for me that over 300 global leaders were with us and respected us with their presence. This is also a signal to others about Webit's influence and next year we expect even more interest.“ - said Webit’s Executive Chairman Plamen Russev.
The development of artificial intelligence, the future of work and blockchain technologies were among the main topics of the event. As a Goodwill Ambassador for the Digital Affairs of the Republic of Bulgaria, Dr. Russev introduced his high-profile guests to the exceptional opportunities Bulgaria provides as a hub for new technologies. Webit affirmed Sofia as a digital capital in the global media and continues to promote the city and Bulgaria as a place for innovation and opportunities for opening development centers and creation of new high tech jobs."Mercedes Benz creates its entire platform for autonomous cars based on artificial intelligence in Sofia. 1300 Bulgarians will write such a platform, again based on artificial intelligence, for another world giant - Bosch. After attending two consecutive editions of Webit.Festival, the creator of the world's most used database - MySQL, chose to invest in a local company that is working on his new, extraordinary project ... I can give dozens of other examples. Bulgaria is becoming a local technology superpower and that is completely in unison with the long-standing efforts of Webit and our partners to improve people's lives by developing entrepreneurship and increasing the influence of women in business and politics. For the last 11 years, Webit builds and affirms the image of our country through our global community of over 800 000 people, who receive Webit news and are part of our global family. " Dr. Russev continued.
Plamen Russev has also hinted at another big update, which is to be officially announced soon. From his words, 26 European cities are currently bidding to host Webit.Festival 2020. Which are the cities, what are their proposals to Webit, and whether Sofia will remain on Webit’s world map, are questions yet to be answered."Although the tone of the discussions in Davos was a bit pessimistic, I am moderately optimistic about Bulgaria and the creative role of our country in the region. The main challenges are to work together and for the common good; education is a key factor and much has to be done in this area. Webit Foundation has already gathered over 3000 young people - the color of the nation and enlighten them about the future. We have many plans and a lot of work to do together in that direction!"
Webit.Festival Europe 2019 Official Trailer!
A few days before the upcoming holidays, we will keep this very brief.
We kindly invite you to watch the premiere of the Webit.Festival Europe 2019 trailer - and join us on this virtual journey.
Hope you have also marked your calendar: May 13-15, 2019 and you will join us at the 11th annual edition of Europe's Tech and Innovation Festival along with 10'000 other founders, business, academia and policy leaders from 111 countries.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZGC-0zEXSk[/embed]
Please accept our Season's Greetings!
May you have the joy of shared love and warmth in your family! Let 2019 be successful and peaceful!
Yours,
Webit team
Webit.Festival Europe is launching a new summit: Climate|Tech
Webit.Festival Europe is launching a new summit, topics of which have been discussed over the years. The mission of the Summit is to address climate change by uniting Technology Innovators, Academia, Governments in taking action towards a low-carbon world.
Government representatives shall discuss their efforts and good practices in intense activity in climate policy and an indicator on the countries’ ambitions to reduce emissions and support climate protection. Innovation through legislation is a driving force for Webit.Foundation.
Despite the numerous statistics on climate change, we somehow remain blind folded and rarely take action to preserve the nature and follow expert’s advice.
By 2050, 2/3 of the global population will live in cities.
Аnd more than 70% of the global demand for infrastructure over the next 15 years is expected to be in urban areas. This predisposition will determine our economic future and climate security for the years ahead. How cities develop is important both for growth and for climate change. It is up to us to take action and make change today. According to a WEF survey, dirty air can prematurely kill 400,000 Europeans, not to mention the health costs and the new diseases like allergies in the recent years. The Climate|Tech Summit is Webit.Festival Europe's high-level gathering with a special focus on climate change, its consequences and how investors can change the status quo.Webit.Foundation has dedicated its work to help solve global problems
It is our belief technology can greatly contribute. Thus, it is our mission to develop technology and digital ecosystems wherever we step foot in. The current state of technology is providing so many solutions that can be put into action. Our goal is to gather the enterprise leaders in the different industries together and plan how to transfer from the current Energy system to a new - clean tech world. Furthermore, we are investing in solutions to these world problems. Founder’s games’ 2018 winner, Bioo, developing a product in renewable energies, generating the greenest energy on Earth won €200 000.Do you have a revolutionary idea to preserve the environment? >> Apply to Founders games here. <<
Adventure Capital: The case for innovation economy in Emerging Markets
Andy Tsao (Managing Director Global Gateway at Silicon Valley Bank) took us on a journey through some of the emerging markets where he had the opportunity to spend time and build the case for innovation economy. He calls it Adventure Capital.
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!
United States vs Emerging markets
What's happening in US in terms of tech and innovation investing?
The US market has been on a 8-year up-cycle. In 2017, 82,9 M USD were invested and for historical context that is the most amount of Venture invested since the year 2000. But then again by looking at the first quarter of 2018 (28.2B USD) if we do a simple annualization - we may be on a course to exceed a 100B USD venture invested in US this year and perhaps we may eclipse the 105B USD from 2000.
If we look at the global set of unicorns - more than half of them reside outside of the US while just 5 years ago nearly 75% of all global venture was invested in Silicon Valley."The US economy is doing well, the stock markets are at all time high, unemployment is at historical low, why are then our investors and entrepreneurs increasingly looking outside the US in emerging markets in terms of creating valuable technology companies?"
Global innovation wave is growing.
➡️ 49% of Global unicorns are outside of US (CB insights) ➡️ 57% of new unicorns are outside US ➡️ China has 55 unicorns, Idia - 9 ➡️ 40% of YC is international ➡️ Less than 45% of global VC is in Silicon Valley Last year, venture commitments in China exceeded $50B for the first time, funded largely by domestic RMB investors. Venture fundraising in china matched US fundraising in 2016, which was the highest total in 15 years. By some measures China is already the largest Venture market in the world. Certainly China is the second largest economy in the world. India is also a good example of "tropicalization" meaning that entrepreneurs and investors can choose business models from developed markets apply innovation to take those models locally to their home market. Flipkart is a good example of that. The company raised billions of dollars and have been competing vigorously with Amazon in India for the e-commerce market.It seems like in many of the emerging markets the banking landscape is very similar - usually dominated by a handful of large powerful banks that act in a monopolistic sort of manner. That means they don't take a lot of risk, they don't treat their customers very well and as a result it gives the entrepreneurs the opportunity to really disrupt, innovate."As I travel around the emerging markets, one of the sectors that really pops out is Fintech."
Secular trends that drive the acceleration of innovation in emerging markets:
➡️ The amount of capital that you need to launch a business today has drastically reduced from a few years ago. ➡️ Entrepreneurs can leverage cloud based technologies using lean startup models, they can get to Proof of concept much quicker than before with much less money. ➡️ Entrepreneurs don't need to go to the large money centers like the Silicon Valley ➡️ Increasing availability for best practices - Endeavor, Techstarts, YC ➡️ Proactive government funding ➡️ More funding available from US and other developed markets ➡️ Rise of the rest - you'd no longer have to be at one of the traditional US tech hubs to launch a relevant high growth technology business.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!