StartUP Conference 2020 “Today vs Tomorrow”. University Students Explore Current Innovations with Future Impact
“I believe that the success rate of AUBGers is a result of the fact that students on campus are constantly engaged in organizing events. Students are constantly putting their knowledge into practice,” shares for Trending Topics Georgi Malchev, an AUBG graduate and the current managing partner of Xplora. Until the Covid-19 outbreak, the university campus had often turned into a place where on-site conferences, challenges, workshops, and hackathons were organized. Now student clubs are rethinking event organization and equipping themselves with the tools to host their events safely despite the pandemic – by choosing to go virtual.
The innovations of Today and the possibilities of Tomorrow
The next big AUBG event happening this Saturday, 24th October 2020, is the StartUP Conference, organized by StartUP@Blagoevgard – the student club, which creates events with an entrepreneurial focus. Bringing together startup enthusiasts, business leaders and successful entrepreneurs, the ninth consecutive edition of the Conference will present sixteen inspiring speakers under the topic “Today vs Tomorrow”. The event will combine presentations, 1:1 interviews with Bulgarian and international founders, two group discussions, and one fireside discussion. As the StartUP Conference will unfold in a hybrid format, the content will be live-streamed via an interactive platform with some of the action taking place physically in the studio of Launchee. Moreover, due to the advantages that the virtual format offers, the participants will be able to choose which one of the two simultaneously happening Today and Tomorrow panels to attend. The Conference aims to preserve the interaction, which is a characteristic for events with on-site attendance by allowing the participants to explore virtual expo booths, take part in giveaway challenges, engage in online conversations, and pose questions via a live chat. Since the event will be free, the attendees will only have to register in order to access the platform. Trending Topics SEE is an official media partner of the event and will also live stream it on its channels.
Agile future of work, decentralized technologies, and innovations in the local ecosystem
As one of the topics for online presentations holds -‘What’s next? The future is cooler than you think’, the attendees will catch a glimpse into some of the possible ways entrepreneurship will look like tomorrow to get inspired to catch the opportunities of today. The participants will also hear the intriguing entrepreneurial stories and advice of speakers among whom are the French keynote innovation evangelist Phillipe Boulanger, the three-time CEO of PR agencies and a leadership development strategist, Elise Mitchell, and Ekaterina Stambolieva – a serial impact entrepreneur who fights wildfires with AI technologies. The developments in the local startup ecosystem will also be in the spotlight with Miroslav Miroslavov from OfficeRnD, Ivo Vasilev from Reloyalty, Elena Nikolova from ESCREO, and Dimitar Karaivanov from Kandanize sharing the stories of their startup journeys. The group discussions in the two panels will explore how to combine leadership and innovation in order to navigate through the local ecosystem and what is the potential of using blockchain technologies to make the future more decentralized.
