Just a few days ago, at one of the most beautiful capitals of Europe, Paris, one of the biggest conferences in Europe, was held – Viva Technology 2022. This year the summit made a considerable comeback, where participation, technology, and innovation exceeded the expectations of everyone. Fortunately, I represented 4imag and covered the event. During my time at the conference, I witnessed a lot of innovative technologies, groundbreaking startups, and amazing people that shared their knowledge and expertise with me and the magazine.
Just a few words about the organizer
Viva Technology is Europe’s number one startup and tech event, recognized worldwide for helping businesses in tech transformation, startup growth, and innovation for the common good. Since 2016, VivaTech has brought together the world’s leading business leaders, startups, investors, researchers, and thinkers in Paris for a unique experience combining inspiration, networking, and innovation showcase. This year was held the 6th edition of the conference, and I can say that this conference gets better every year, by wowing us with the content represented in it.
But before I dig in and share my thoughts and experience at the summit. First, I want to share a few numbers with you that perfectly reflect this event’s success.
(Viva Technology provides these numbers)
A total of 91,000 in-person visitors could discover all the innovations and attend the live conferences at the Porte de Versailles expo venue. The digital audience reached almost 300,000 visits, and the VivaTech News channel gathered more than 4.3 million views. The event reached 400 million people and had more than 3 billion views on social networks. The international dimension of VivaTech has been strengthened with 30 countries and 146 nationalities represented.
With a number of 350 speakers from all over the world, representing some of the biggest companies worldwide. Some interesting names that were present at the conference were: Evan Spiegel (Snap), Vitalik Buterin (Ethereum), CZ (Changpeng Zhao) (Binance), and Bret Taylor (Salesforce), Sumbul Desai (Apple), and Ryan Roslansky (LinkedIn). As well as Christel Heydemann (Orange), Bernard Arnault (LVMH), Renaud Dumora (BNP Paribas), Elliot Grant (Google X), Jonas Prising (ManpowerGroup), Cristiano Amon (Qualcomm), Luca De Meo (Renault), , Nicolas Hieronimus (L’Oréal), Yann Le Cun (Meta), Eric Schmidt (Schmidt Future), Garry Kasparov (ambassadeur Avast), Michael Kassan (MediaLink) and many more.
Viva tech
Another interesting figure ‘present’ as a hologram was the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, who called startups and big companies to support Ukraine.
More than 2,000 exhibitors, including 1,800 startups, where almost half of them were international, and 700 investment funds met during the three-day summit. More than 161,000 business connections were made, 71% of which were global interactions on the digital platform of Viva Tech.
This year’s theme of the conference, I witnessed the latest trends in the tech world, including the latest gadgets in Robotics, innovations in AI and ML, the latest IoT technology and Blockchain, best practices about Cyber Security, etc. But some of the main focus points during this conference were topics such as Metaverse, NFTs, web 3.0, green technology, and a lot more. One exciting thing was the fields where these technologies are developing. During this conference, I saw the latest technology in industries such as Education, Health, Infrastructure, Sustainability, Finance, Entertainment, Fashion and Cosmetics, and even Space! Yes, you heard us right. This conference didn’t want to exhibit the latest technology just for planet Earth but on Mars as well.
At this conference, I had the chance to talk with different people and companies that shared a little bit of their world and perspective with 4imag. Here are a few companies that I met and spoke with.
Binance was a point of interest for most guests since the cryptocurrency giant shared its knowledge with the public regarding NFTs and where the future is heading. According to them, we expect a bright future for web 3.0, where decentralization of the internet will be the next step in a technological revolution.
Another giant I met was AWS (Amazon Web Services), which, besides their knowledge sharing in cloud computing services, also came to present their programme that helps newly founded startups get on their feet by offering excellent plans to help the businesses’ infrastructure grow to succeed.
Microsoft was not left behind at this conference as always, and people were eager to go and talk with their experts and gather as much information as possible. I managed to speak with their experts and discuss some of their best practices in software development lifecycles and what we can do to automate all processes further. After all, automation of the methods is the direction in today’s world.
The mighty Google was also present at the conference, showcasing not only their latest techs or discussing the security of their users but also presenting their supported solutions about green energy, acclaiming sustainability. One exciting thing announced during this conference was opening of the new Google Cloud data center in Paris, France.
And of course, last but most certainly not least that we met was Meta, which as always, did not disappoint. With a showcase of their latest technology involving the talk of the moment- Metaverse amazed the audience with their fantastic approach and new features added to the Metaverse world.
But this was only the tip of the iceberg that this conference had to offer. This conference covered everything from robotics, AI, IoT, Metaverse, Web 3, NFTs, Spaceships, and rackets. We can say at the end that we are sad to see it end and can’t wait for next year.
