infoShare – hungry for more!
For two days, Gdańsk became the capital of IT and new technologies. A number of startups, entrepreneurs and technology freaks came to AmberExpo to be a part of this extraordinary celebration. “infoShare – the biggest in CEE Region Tech & New Media festival” – can be read on the official website of the event. All of those who took part in this year’s edition, became convinced that this slogan is far from idle bragging. More than 4500 participants, 80 international speakers, 5 stages and more than 150 exhibitors – the numbers are impressive. Today, all participants have already started another week of work and challenges. Nevertheless, I’m sure that the majority of us feel stronger and wiser after this amazing festival. Being full of energy and feeling positive impact infoShare had on us, we are ready to face another exciting week. In the meantime, however, let’s go back to infoShare for a while and read about our impressions and memories.
infoShare started on Thursday and for us the most important part of it was evening due to the fact that it was the time of our portfolio company Quantum Lab Co. and its owner – Bartosz Rychlicki. In the last performance of the first day, his speech “Rise of Affective Computing on Market Research” moved people who stayed at the main stage. Difficult and incomprehensible as it might have seemed, the topic occurred to be extremely gripping and Rychlicki turned out to be a great speaker. Nowadays, we can observe worldwide bloom of companies delivering information about customers’ emotional engagement towards TV and Internet advertisements. Quantum Lab’s idea is to teach computers how people feel. During his speech, Rychlicki raised and answered the most intriguing questions about affective computing (human-computer relation, in which the machine has the ability to detect and appropriately respond to its user’s emotions) and its future. Judging by a long round of questions from the audience, Bartosz Rychlicki succeeded in presenting his views and engaging the crowd as well as making people interested in his work.
From our point of view, Friday’s events were crucial as our Space Panel, workshops and discussions with Black Pearls VC experts were planned then. The Space Panel hosted by R&D Manager Chris Kanawka, started from the speeches of three international guests. Sebastian Marcu told about his idea and production of the Rosetta & Philae cartoon series, which gained worldwide recognition. The series was created to accompany the Rosetta mission, which resulted in the first ever landing of a spacecraft on a comet on 12 November 2014. The second expert was Jean-Jacques Favier – the originator of the experiments performed during space missions. As Payload Specialist he flew on STS-78 NASA Columbia space shuttle mission in 1996, logging 17 days in orbit – the experiences and memories were the topic of his lecture. Last but not least, Adrian Pica – a Startup Weekend organizer and facilitator appeared on stage. In the afternoon, Chris Kanawka and Lucas Lanneau performed space workshops on project POSITION and GNSS.
Apart from the Space Panel, our representatives took part in other events. Hubert Szczołek was one of the judges during infoShare Startup Zone Contest and our Investment Director, Radek Białas told about his biggest business achievements and advised on how to obtain financial support during “Commercialisation – success stories” panel. Moreover, our Black Pearls VC crew was leading business consultations in the main hall of AmberExpo. Lots of work, but even more satisfaction.
Not only was infoShare an amazing event because of our input, but we also had an opportunity to listen to and meet international experts like Peter Vesterbacka from Rovio, a company responsible for “Angry Birds”.
infoShare 2015 is over. It provided us with a huge doze of inspiration. Now, with heads full of ideas and creativity, we are going back to work making this year the time of increasing expansion. We can’t wait for the next year’s edition hoping that our future role at infoShare will be at least twice as important as this year’s participation. Although we cannot complain, Black Pearls VC is hungry for more!
Photos from the event available on our FACEBOOK and HERE