Collision from Home is already next week and more than 60 Portuguese startups will be there

This post is part of a collaborative effort between Startup Portugal, The Next Big Idea, and Sapo24, meant to create relevant content to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic.
Content available in Portuguese.

This edition of the international technology conference Collision, which will take place for the second time in Toronto, Canada, is now embracing a completely online format. Between 23 and 25 June, more than 60 Portuguese startups will participate and exhibit virtually at the event as part of a delegation led by Startup Portugal.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this event organized by the same team as the Web Summit changed its name from “Collision” to “Collision from Home”, becoming the first Collision event to take place 100% online.

Attendees can connect from anywhere in the world and watch conversations from CEOs of technology companies, authorities responsible for the development of international policies, and world-renowned figures, live from their homes. The list of speakers includes leaders from companies such as Slack, Microsoft, Facebook, and Google, as well as key figures in the international community – Seth Rogen (actor, comedian, and director), Margaret Atwood (writer), Steve Aoki (DJ and music producer) and Shaquille O’Neal (former NBA player). The full list of speakers can be found here.

The main focus of this year’s conference is about health-related technology. “Industry leaders will show how technology is dealing with the global pandemic and accelerating solutions,” explains the organization. Startups, investors, doctors, and academics linked to this area, including the president of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, will also be attending the event.

In addition to having decided in early March to migrate Collision to a fully online format in 2020, Paddy Cosgrave’s company, responsible for several international technological events, also postponed the Rise conference in Hong Kong to 2021. But they remain confident that the Web Summit will still take place in Lisbon at the end of this year, according to a decision announced this week. The event will have to follow all health protocols and Government regulations, although it may adopt a hybrid format, orchestrating a united face-to-face and an online version.

Collision from Home will test this new completely, online model. “We are well prepared for an online conference because we developed our software from the beginning and this is one of our main concerns in organizing the conference, as we concentrate many things on our app”, says Paddy.

To the many solutions that the conference app already provides, video options will be added. The event will also include virtual networking zones, where each participant can create their own room and will promote interaction among the public, including those who attend the conferences live on the virtual stage. There will also be virtual stands for event partners in a specific area, among other solutions.

Participants will be able to communicate through the Collision from Home app, connect with some of the most influential companies in the world, and with the most relevant startups. An additional inceptive of this completely online experience was the decrease in ticket prices, which went from 500 euros to around 100 euros.

However, this new format, adopted because of the global pandemic crisis, has presented an unfortunate setback to the more than 60 Portuguese startups that are part of Startup Portugal’s delegation set to travel to this year’s Collision – a number considerably higher than the 25 that participated in the 2019 edition. If not for this huge setback, this would have been the largest Portuguese delegation ever from Startup Portugal to attend an international event and they would be on their way to Toronto right now.

But this is not the time for commiserations. We must make the most of this Portuguese presence, which presents interesting solutions in the areas of health, as well as other sectors that maintain their undeniable relevance in the technology industry, such as Artificial Intelligence, Education, Human Resources, Energy and Environment, and Content Marketing, among others. These are areas where we can find a vast range of innovative software solutions for companies.

At Collision from Home, startups have the opportunity to exhibit their projects virtually. They will also have access to contacts promoted directly by the organization, with investors, mentors, and other stakeholders (as was already the case in the previous format), by mail or through the event app. Now, those calls translate into totally remote contacts and meetings.

The global pandemic has forced us to reinvent formats that we took for granted, and it is with this new reality that we now have to work. We should make the most of the knowledge, contacts, and all the opportunities that an event of this nature, although remote, provides.

Source: https://24.sapo.pt/tecnologia/artigos/collision-from-home-o-evento-irmao-da-web-summit-e-ja-para-a-semana-e-vao-la-estar-mais-de-60-startups-portuguesas