OSU Project Update: Autumn Tour Dates
The Open Source University R&D Project remains full steam ahead as we approach the fourth quarter of 2018. During the summer, we had the great honor to be recognized by the Central European Startup Awards as one of the top 5 startups in Bulgaria, but we are definitely not relying on past success.
This Autumn it will be all about research & development. We will be having a small, yet extremely important tour across high-profile academic conferences and industry forums. Below are the forums, starting with NEXT DIFI 2018 for which OSU community can register with a 20% discount by using the OSUNEXTDIFI20 promo code.
NEXT DIFI 2018 (28 September) — The Third Edition of this one-day forum covering the convergence of technology and financial services rapidly changing how the world borrows, buys, and invests. The Financial Innovation Forum, bringing together industry leaders, policy makers, regulators and experts to explore the disruptive forces that are shaping the financial sector into the future and discuss where opportunities lie. It brings together people who want to discover the future of finance and help their company unveiling these new opportunities. Through presentations, panel sessions and on-stage interviews, senior executives from local and international banks will join leaders from other organisations, among which ours, to give their views on what banks, insurance and pension companies must do to stay ahead of the game. As fintech innovations, peer-to-peer lending and big data open the door to new entrants and stimulate greater competition, disruptors are creating alternative modes of finance and shaking up the sector. At the same time, incumbent players are rethinking their business models to remain relevant to a new generation of clients while satisfying the requirements of regulators, shareholders and investors.
Bits & Pretzels 2018 (30 September - 02 October)— by far the biggest forum on our roadmap in September and October, thanks to the Startup Lighthouse and our previous participation in the Baltics Deep Dive Week in Lithuania. Now that we are part of the pan-European Startup Lighthouse community, we will be headed to the Bits & Pretzels founders’ forum in Munich, Germany. We will be tapping into the pool of 5,000 attendees (founders, investors & startup enthusiasts), separated on 7 stages (from inspiration to learning and matchmaking), with 100+ speakers, sharing their insights on stage and 150+ experts, which we will share a table with at Oktoberfest..
Slav Conf 2018 (19–20 October) — The international conference on humanities, business and education was nominated for “Project of the Year” and “Young European of the Year” awards in 2017. This year the two-day event will be held at the Grand Hall of Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”. The topics of the lectures and the panels are related to the career and creative development at humanities and arts, incl. subtopics about the connections of humanities with arts, innovation and technology. The event is aimed at students, lecturers, organizations, managers and people from the educational sector — all of them will receive blockchain-validated certificates of attendance as part of the partnership with OSU, which hosted a lecture at the forum back in 2017.
CEE Block 2018 (25–26 October) — we will be chairing a panel at CEE Block 2018, together with representatives of the European Commission, PwC Zurich, ENDEAVOR, Consensys, and others. CEE Block 2018 is the biggest blockchain forum in Central and Eastern Europe that brings together high-level policy-makers and global brands. It will be under the patronage of Maria Gabriel, the European Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society.
