The opening session of the Web Summit 2020 took place this Wednesday, 2nd December. Pandemic forced Europe’s largest tech event to go fully online. Filomena Cautela, presenter at RTP TV and hostess of Web Summit opening ceremony, welcomed the attendees and approximately 6000 participants rapidly joined the chat and shared their enthusiasm and expectations.
Filomena Cautela listed the five stages of the event, highlighted the dynamics of the online format and the networking opportunities. Despite the differences from other years, “this edition will be as fascinating and transforming as previous ones”, she said.
After a brief intervention by Paddy Cosgrave, the Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa welcomed the participants. According to António Costa, an event of this dimension, which involves more than 150 countries (online), promotes knowledge exchange and different experiences, and transmits “strength and hope”.
The Prime Minister (PM) stressed that despite all the uncertainty, Portugal continued to invest in technologies and innovation. “2020 is not just the year of the pandemic. Portugal has been able to play in the champions league of innovation”, the PM said referring to the “strong innovator” classification attributed to Portugal, in June, by the European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS 2020). “Even before the start of the pandemic, Portugal launched the action plan for the digital transition aimed at the digital empowerment of people, companies and government agencies”, he recalled. The PM also highlighted “the number of students in research and technology areas in Portugal increased 14%”.
“The post-pandemic world will be different. It is up to us to ensure that it will be better. We will make the Web Summit 2020 the starting point to build a better future”, said the PM.
The Mayor of Lisbon, Fernando Medina, highlighted “events like the web summit, which have a compelling and positive impact, are more important than ever; events that change the way we think and exceed the limits in these challenging times”.
The Mayor of Lisbon stressed “in the coming months it will be necessary to guarantee a quick recovery to mitigate the social impacts of the pandemic and the economic crisis”. Fernando Medina stressed “we will continue our work to make Lisbon a carbon neutral city in the future, with a more sustainable system, better public transport and better cycling infrastructure”.
The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, stressed the impact of technology on our lives, particularly in times of pandemic. “The Web Summit is a European pride and and it gives me hope that indeed the 2020s can be our digital decade”. According to the president von der Leyen, Europe possesses incredible potential to be a “global leader” in the next wave of digital transformation.
The news of this year’s edition
Thousands of participants were already online before 8 a.m. The Web Summit 2020 is designed as a two-screen experience: the mobile app (personalise event and connect with peers), and the web app (premium talks and workshops).
The online format allowed to increase the lenght of lectures and other activities from 6 to 12 hours. This edition brings together more than 100 thousand participants and 800 speakers.
The usual startup competition is also taking place in a similar way. The organization estimates that there will be 1250 investors registered and ready to support the most promising ideas of the event.
André de Aragão Azevedo, Secretary of State for Digital Transition, Sir Tim Berners Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, Liang Hua, chairman of Huawei, Cal Henderson, co-founder of Slack, and Young Sohn, president of Samsung, attended the virtual stages in the first day of the event.
