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Web Summit’s Opening Night gathered high-profile speakers, including Changpeng Zhao and Olena Zelenska, to address the major talking points that will come up at the three-day event.
There was record attendance as Web Summit returned to Lisbon for the 2022 edition.
A surprise appearance from the first lady of Ukraine, Olena Zelenska, at Web Summit’s Opening Night saw her call on the tech community for help amid Russia’s invasion of her country.
The first lady did not mince her words, saying, “your chosen profession – your field of expertise – is now a battlefield in Russia’s war against Ukraine”.
Stating that “Russia puts technology at the service of terror,” she urged attendees to use technology to create, and to save and help people.
Olena made an impassioned speech while harrowing images of the effects of Russia’s war on Ukraine were shown – many of which were seen around the world, often through social media.
Olena Zelenska speaking on Centre Stage at Web Summit 2022. Image: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Web Summit via Sportsfile (CC BY 2.0)
“Technology has, in many ways, brought us closer together through social media and messenger apps,” Olena explained.
“You often hear that tech innovation moves the world, but it’s more than that. You have the power to determine the direction in which the world moves,” she said.
“You are the force that moves the world. You have a potential and technologies that can help, but not destroy. I am certain that, by helping Ukraine, you can move the world in the right direction.”
“So I invite you to do so. Let’s do it together,” she added.
Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, founder and CEO of Binance, laid out a bullish attitude to crypto in a fireside conversation, saying “crypto probably is the only stable thing in this very dynamic environment”.
The blame for the so-called crypto freeze, CZ said, lies with global economic and political factors, and that “prices fluctuate … but that’s just macroeconomic. It’s the world that’s not stable”.
CZ believes that the current situation is just a blip in a much more positive, long-term trend for cryptocurrencies: “If you take a five- or 10-year horizon, things look very different.”
The Binance founder also offered a diagnosis of what’s behind the crypto crash: “This 2022 crash has more to do with lending. There’s a lot of lending in the system – a lot of loans, a lot of debt.”
Changepeng Zhao speaking on Centre Stage at Web Summit 2022. Image: Ramsey Cardy/Web Summit (CC BY 2.0)
Moving on to Binance’s US$500 billion loan to Elon Musk to aid in the purchase of Twitter, CZ stated that it was given because “Twitter is the global town square [and] we want to be extremely supportive of free speech”. He was keen to stress that Binance does not wield any influence over Twitter’s direction, saying “Elon Musk is probably a pretty hard guy for me to predict”.
Change is on the horizon for Twitter one way or the other, however: “Now with Elon in charge, the roll-out of features will be much faster. Not all of them will stick.”
“Web Summit is back,” said Web Summit founder and CEO Paddy Cosgrave. It was a record evening for the event, with Paddy pointing out – as he was joined onstage by Mayor Carlos Moedas of Lisbon, and by António Costa Silva, Portugal’s minister of the economy and maritime affairs – that “we have the largest number of attendees ever”.
“I know that innovation is not an idea; it’s a process,” said Carlos in a nod to last week’s launch of Unicorn Factory Lisboa, something he had vowed to create in his talk at last year’s Web Summit.
“Since I [announced the Unicorn Factory last year], we have had eight unicorns set up in Lisbon,” he added, explaining that startups who apply for the programme will spend eight months at the Factory, where they will receive mentoring from big tech companies.
Carlos rounded out his speech by calling Lisbon a “city that I dream of, where the possible meets the impossible”.
Portugal’s minister for economy, António Costa Silva, echoed the mayor’s hopeful outlook for innovation and technology in the country: “We have today one of the highest numbers of unicorns in Europe.”
“We have 20-times more venture capital for our startups. The value [of this sector] has increased 50 times in the last six years,” added the minister.
António announced an economic package of €90 million, intended to support more than 3,000 startups in Lisbon and across the country.
“Technology is not a panacea, but it can help solve the problems we have in front of us,” said the minister, referring to the environmental crisis and other crises humanity is facing.
But he was hopeful that technology has its place if we act now: “The future is not what will happen to us tomorrow; the future is what we start doing right now.”
Carlos Moedas speaking on Centre Stage at Web Summit 2022. Image: Stephen McCarthy/Web Summit (CC BY 2.0)
Apple VP of environmental initiatives Lisa Jackson spoke with Misan Harriman, chair of the Southbank Centre and founder of Culture3, about environmentalism and being true to your personal purpose.
Misan opened their discussion by saying, “We don’t know what time we have. But we do know how we can use that time to be intentional; to have purpose.”
Misan, best known as one of the most widely-shared photographers of the Black Lives Matter movement, spoke to that idea of having purpose, explaining the path to his current roles: “The pictures I took in the summer of 2020 [after the murder of George Floyd] went viral, and I was seen.”
“I was seen by the editor of British Vogue, and commissioned to shoot the cover of the September issue, making me the first Black man to shoot a cover [in the 100-plus years of Vogue’s existence].”
Lisa Jackson and Misan Harriman backstage at Web Summit 2022. Image: Stephen McCarthy/Web Summit (CC BY 2.0)
This inspired Lisa to take stock of how she came to work for Apple: “For a long time, I rejected the title ‘environmentalist’ because I felt it was too small, but now I embrace it.”
The former US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator went on to discuss Apple’s gradual efforts to switch to running on renewable energy then become carbon neutral, and their plans to make every product produced carbon neutral by 2030.
Lisa also called out companies that only pay lip service to environmental, social and governance policies: “There is so much work to do. And I am tired of hearing companies say that they have a lot to do but, when you look into it, there just isn’t a lot going on.”
Main image of the crowd at Opening Night of Web Summit 2022: Ben McShane/Web Summit (CC BY 2.0)
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