3WX took part in Web Summit, the world's largest technology and entrepreneurship conference, where we got a glimpse of the future.
Meeting those who had ideas that changed the world is a fantastic experience and one of the things we can do at Web Summit. There were 24 stages full of very interesting presentations with more than 1,200 speakers. The hard part was choosing, but to make this easier we had the conference app, very useful for deciding what to see and attend, which also let us interact with all the participants by interest and in person through a QR code system that made it easy to exchange contacts.
They were days of lots of networking and learning that allowed us to absorb a range of unique knowledge on the most varied subjects, from the internet, politics, fake news, fashion, blockchain, innovation and artificial intelligence.
Web Summit is a showcase for startups, each of which has a booth available for a day to present itself and try to talk to the people who interest it most, potential investors or future customers. Startups also have the chance to take part in the pitch competition and gain a global reputation. This year the winner was Wayve, a startup founded by researchers from the University of Cambridge in the UK, which developed an autonomous car system that uses artificial intelligence.
One of the presentations that generated the most interest was by the creator of the internet, Tim Berners-Lee, who spoke about his vision for this network, which he created in 1989 and which changed our lives for the better, but also brought great challenges, especially for our democracy, as the most diverse platforms, which do not guarantee the truthfulness of facts, have enabled the sharing of false information as a means of manipulating society, contributing to widespread distrust. As a solution for the future he proposed an alliance between companies, governments and citizens to ensure respect for our democratic principles.
The most prominent theme was artificial intelligence; many of the startups taking part had this feature in their tools or products. The presentations also addressed this theme very frequently, notably the robot Sophia, accompanied by her brother Han, where their creator, Ben Goertzel, showed the improvements made to facial expressions, such as joy and sadness.
Blockchain was also widely discussed as one of the main future trends, notably the presentation by Peter Smith, CEO of one of the world's largest cryptocurrency wallets, Blockchain, who gave every participant at the event 25 dollars in the digital currency Stellar Lumens.
Web Summit is above all a great community of entrepreneurs, where networking, debate and learning are promoted in the most diverse areas where technology is always present.