This year, ByteAnt has visited Web Summit, the most significant and all-encompassing annual IT event in the world. After taking part in the conference our team is anxious to share with you some insightful takeaways along with positive experiences and impressions.

Web Summit Lisbon: A global hub for IT professionals

Traditionally, the iconic event took place on November 4–7 in Lisbon, Portugal and hosted more than 70,000 visitors. Over 1200 speakers delivered interesting and informative reports. About 2100 startups were presented to the attention of the tech-savvy public impressing the attendees with much creativity and lots of innovative ideas and practical insights.

Alongside discussing such popular topics as the adoption of AI, IoT, ML and Big Data, both organizers and the participants were pretty much concerned with seemingly less important, but in fact very pressing issues like the depletion of natural resources, maintaining an ecological balance, climate change, and the development of environmentally sound technologies.

The attendees could enjoy an excellent opportunity to participate in tech and startup workshops while acquiring invaluable experience from the summit. The panel discussions raised the issues concerning tech regulations and politics in tech.

Web Summit panel discussion: A wrap-up of the hottest topics

Here’re some of the opinion leaders of the tech space that impressed us most.

Following the agenda of the summit, Jessica Ennis-Hill, founder and CEO of Jennis Fitness, and Hilary Coles, co-founder of Hers, launched an interesting and productive discussion about finding the best tech to suit your needs, as more health products and pursuits are available in the market than ever before.

Particularly appreciated were 3 startups: YData (elevating data and privacy in AI world); EPICA (an anticipating platform for retail, eCommerce, CPG, media, tech, and telcos); Billon (unifying currency transactions, documents, and identity management);

Christiana Figueres, Founding Partner of Global Optimism, and Kate Brandt, Google's Chief Sustainability Officer drew the attention of the participants to the global environmental problems and a climate crisis, discussing whether we still have enough time to improve the situation.

The third day of the summit brought the interesting discussions concerning a new form of leadership in the digital age – the leaders of eToro, Andela, Walmart, and Mozilla voiced their viewpoints on how to inspire and motivate the next generation.

Big time companies in the spotlight

To realize the full scope of what we were in during the event, let’s see the pool of world’s best IT companies that sent their most favored and inspiring speakers to highlight new tech challenges at the summit:

• Mitchell Baker (Mozilla)
• Isabel Garvey (Abbey Road Studios)
• Eric Cantona (Common Goal)
• Katherine Maher (Wikipedia)
• Michel Barnier (European Commission)
• Kate Brandt (Google)
• Werner Vogels (Amazon)
• Christiana Figueres (Global Optimism)
• Daniel Grieder (Tommy Hilfiger Global & PVH Europe)

Marc Raibert, Boston Dynamics founder and CEO, and his robot dog, Spot, came up with a spectacular performance demonstrating the amazing abilities of his AI pet. He also talked about what to expect from Boston Dynamics in the next few years.

Anna Gedda, CSO of H&M, came to the stage to highlight sustainability in the fashion industry, and the necessity to take care of human and environmental resources. Emphasizing the increasing environmental problems, she suggested changing the recycling system into more efficient and climate-friendly, providing people with jobs and social development.

57% of all the materials that we use are either recycled... or sustainably sourced... and we have a goal to reach 100% of it by 2030
— Anna Gedda, CSO of H&M

Web Summit insights: What is there for us to harness?

What good did it do to us? The summit left quite an indelible and unforgettable impression as it expanded our theoretical and practical knowledge as well as provided an opportunity to build good partnerships.

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We took the right path by making our mind to develop unique and powerful IoT solutions for individuals and enterprises that are required by the market today. Speaking in numbers, the exposure of IoT is quite impressive.

We are reinforced in the view that cloud and big data technologies are the future. The Web Summit 2019 showed that all the stakeholders are very much interested in emerging technologies that for sure will remain the major trend in the coming year.

With the findings gained at the summit, ByteAnt will definitely deliver even more enhanced services to its customers together with greater user experiences. We will always be happy to tell you about new interesting events and trends. You are more than welcome to visit us for getting more information about the advanced services we provide for your very benefit.