The end of the SiGMA Digital summit, but the beginning of 2020!
After three days of wide-ranging discussion and panels, entrepreneurs and techies, on topics ranging from online gaming regulation, blockchain, eSports, emerging markets and many more, the SiGMA Digital Summit came to an end
Day three saw a litany of activity and interaction as SiGMA Group looked to end the third day of the SiGMA Digital summit with a bang!
The success of the virtual summit prooves the industry’s ability to show flexibility and adaptability in the face of unprecedented upheaval. The lessons learnt will also give SiGMA Group the ability to improve and exponentially increase the quality of all future events.
Opening Remarks by Maltas Minister for Digital Economy, Clayton Bartolo.Opening the SiGMA Asia Focus and Emerging Tech by AIBC Summit was the Hon. Clayton Bartolo, Malta’s Junior Minister for the Digital Economy, who encouraged other governments to follow the Maltese government in including digitisation as part of their public sector strategy.
“Artificial intelligence should become a part of our daily lives, together with the IoTs and Digital Innovation Hubs where we can see a number of start-ups which will be starting their entrepreneurial life in our economy,” he noted.
Following the speech by Bartolo, the Founder and Chairman of Integro Foundation, Brock Pierce, gave a keynote speech on the future of blockchain and cryptocurrencies in what he referred to as the “visionary 20s”. He went on to state that 2020 is going to be the year that we begin to see the industry move beyond the minimally viable product stage to mass adoption.
Founder & Chairman of Integro Foundation, Brock Pierce.“Our industry is providing us with a single source of truth; an immutable record that eliminates the ability for anyone to edit what’s happened, and that history will no longer be written by the victors but the facts will just ‘be’.”
We then saw several panels featuring the likes of Stephan Nilsson, Ben Goertzel, Karla Denise Frias, Taha Sajid, Peter Ing, Faris Oweis, and various other figures who discussed topics such as The Next Financial System: Digi currencies and beyond, Rising Stars: Emerging markets leveraging emerging technology, Emerging technology: US vs Asia and many many others!
The interactivity of the platform also provided for an interesting poll on which emerging tech will most impact the future supply chain models, where 41% of users touted AI to be the most impactful. This was followed by IoT, blockchain, and autonomous vehicles (14%), and both Quantum Computing and Big Data at 9%.
On tech in a time of pandemic, Goertzel said that “we weren’t worried about all the problems inside the system. Now the weakness of the system as a whole is being exposed. The optimistic hope is that this is a wake-up call to modernise and upgrade our systems and explore more robust solutions for the next crisis. Whether that will happen remains to be seen.”
With regards to the dark side of data, Matthew Scerri from KPMG pointed out that “There were a number of organisations that weren’t very well prepared to shift on very short notice even if they had the technology and the investment in place. We’re always talking about disruption and embracing disruption but all of a sudden you have no other option. It’s either embrace disruption or else you’re gone for good. When faced with that fate a lot of organisations took it upon themselves to embrace disruption and see what comes out of it.”
Speaking during the panel on emerging markets leveraging emerging technology, Faris Owers said that “The biggest hurdle is a lot of the problem with blockchain solutions in cities is they haven’t done it in many places. That’s more of behaviour from a municipal standpoint than it is about the virtue of what blockchain tech is. I think through education that’s where you can lead that resistance.”
Panel on The Dark Side of COVID-19.Youtube Personality, The Moon Carl, and Beyond Associates Founder, CryptoWendy O, discussed the race to mass adoption of bitcoin or alt. coins, both noting that people eventually “wake up to the fact that the system is fundamentally flawed” and that “they will start to realise that they don’t want others knowing what they’re spending their money on”.
After three days of debate and discussion, the SiGMA Digital summit has come to a close. Overall, they were a great success and attracted an impressive and interactive audience that added many relevant points to the experience.
If you want to re-live the SiGMA Digital experience go to our Youtube channels – SiGMA – World’s iGaming Festival and AIBC Summit.
Looking to the future, SiGMA Group is working tirelessly to perfect the upcoming LatAm digital event in September, and the physical summit in Malta in November later this year – Register your interest here!
