Valencia Digital Summit 2022 has turned the city into the world capital of tech innovation. The international tech event began its programme of talks and debates today at the City of Arts and Sciences and has beaten its own record of attendees with more than 12,000 registrations from over 35 countries.
The Regional Minister for Education, Research, Culture and Sport, Josefina Bueno; the Vice-President of the Valencia Provincial Council, Carlos Fernández Bielsa, and the deputy Mayor of the Valencia City Council, Sandra Gómez, accompanied Juan Luis Hortelano, President of Startup Valencia, for the institutional inauguration. During the inauguration, they recognised that events such as Valencia Digital Summit give Valencia international visibility and make it a focal point for digitalisation and entrepreneurship. They affirmed that this progress translates into greater job creation and an increase in economic competitiveness.
A few hours earlier, the conference began with a welcome from the President of Startup Valencia together with Alex Barrera, Founder and Editor-in-chief of The Aleph Report, in which they gave way to Rafael Climent, Minister of Sustainable Economy, Productive Sectors, Trade and Employment; Paula Carsí, Innovation Manager at Ford Europe, and Mª Dolores Parra, General Director of Internationalisation at the Generalitat, to examine the success story of Ford and its relationship with Valencia. The Regional Minister emphasised that the automotive industry in the Valencian Community is an example of how innovation is increasingly being implemented in traditional sectors. He also pointed out that the innovation ecosystem of the Valencian Community has generated high value employment and over €150 million.
The main stage then brought together members of the main European investment groups such as Lina Chong, from Target Global; Julie Kainz, from Lightspeed; César Chanut, from OneRagtime, and Óscar Ramos, from SOSV Orbit, in the round table discussion “What international investors think of Spain”. During the debate, they analysed Spain’s evolution towards becoming an attractive destination for international investment, as well as the challenges it faces in maintaining that reputation.
From the afternoon programme, the talk “Learnings from Scaling Amazon and Google” given by Alex Barrera and Ann Hiatt, a leadership strategist with more than 15 years of experience in Silicon Valley as Executive Business Partner of Jeff Bezos (founder and CEO of Amazon) and Eric Schmidt (CEO/Executive Chairman of Google and currently based in the Valencian Community), aroused particular interest.
Throughout the day, there were numerous presentations and round tables that addressed the subject of open innovation from different points of view, such as the search for opportunities, agility, and the challenges of such collaboration. Topics including mobility, the pursuit of funding, and public-private collaboration were also discussed on this first day of Valencia Digital Summit.
The 10 finalists of the VDS2022 Competition (Trebellar, Arkadia Space, Mojito360, Exheus, Reental, Proky, Delivers.ai, Drill Surgeries, BizAway and IDNow) had the opportunity to showcase their projects to the attendees at an event moderated by Paloma Mas, Events and Culture Manager at Plug and Play. An international jury made up of key players such as Sébastien Lefebvre, Partner at the French venture capital firm Elaia; Nelly Markova, Principal of the English venture capital firm Molten Ventures; Rachelle Young, Program Director for TNW – the main event of Amsterdam’s tech ecosystem promoted by the Financial Times – and Juan Luis Hortelano, president of Startup Valencia, is in charge of choosing the winners from the Seed and Growth categories. The winners will be announced tomorrow during the closing ceremony.
Blockchain Forum
Throughout the second day of the event, the Blockchain Forum was held and it focused on the applications and uses of this technology across different sectors.
The conference was made possible with the collaboration of leading companies such as ClimateTrade, ClimateCoin, Utopia, Asterius, Reental, Trazable, bit2me and Crowmie, which interacted with attendees interested in blockchain technology in the exhibition area of the event. Regarding content, the forum began with a round table on climate balance and sustainability. The following debate focused on venture capital and investment in blockchain companies, in which Mariano Amartino (Managing Director for the Americas at Microsoft for Startups), Jaime Sendagorta (Vice-President of GP Bullhound), Koh Onozawa (Managing Partner at Bit2Me) and Fran Piera (General Partner at Successful Fund) analysed the current state of the market and the future challenges that investment in blockchain technology will entail.
The forum also addressed topics such as education, sport and supply chains, investment sustainability, tokenisation, NFTs and the metaverse. It is worth calling attention to the participation, among others, of Sam Hamilton, Creative Director of Decentraland, one of the most renowned metaverses in the global tech ecosystem.
An international technological event
Since its first edition in 2018, Valencia Digital Summit has recorded exponential growth that has led it to become an internationally recognised tech event. The latest edition alone, held on the 15th and 16th of December last year, generated an economic impact of more than €4.8 million. The event, which was attended by leaders of world-renowned companies such as Airbus, Google and Amazon, as well as consolidated startups such as Jeff, Jobandtalent and Gorillas, brought together more than 5,500 people in person and more than 5,000 online. In addition, 20% of all attendees came from abroad and from up to 25 different countries.
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