Part of our tech team participated in Web Summit in November 2017 in Lisbon, Portugal.

Web Summit is the world’s largest tech conference – a massive fest with a mishmash of people from all corners of the world, from different backgrounds and industries.

Besides attending talks (there were 1000 speakers to choose from!), we got a great pulse on the tech industry, gained new knowledge and met some incredible people.

We came back to Stockholm humble before the rapid changes of our world, lit up by great discussions on tech, and a deeper respect for the work of privacy we do on a daily basis.

Meet part of our tech team! Johannes Sjöberg, Sebastian Norling and Jens Rydén.

Five Highlights from Web Summit 2017

1. AI, AI and AI

As Kevin Kelly put it a few years ago:

“The business plans of the next 10,000 startups are easy to forecast: Take X and add AI.”

Well, it was quite clear at the conference that we are entering this era. Talks, seminars and discussions on artifical intelligence were everywhere ?

We all know this by now, AI is in our future. Question is: Will Skynet become reality or can we get our dear computers to play by the book?

2. The Privacy Debate

How much data do we share? Do we share all data with the government or do we share nothing?

How much personal data are we willing to share? Do the pros overweigh the cons?

Sharing data can be a great thing. We can enjoy a better experience with certain products, and feel safe that our fellow passengers on a plane have been vetted. Other perspectives include the feeling of Big brother-watching-me ?, possible problems with data breaches and personal integrity concerns.

GDPR is a big step forward but does it solve all issues. We left with more questions than answers, but excited about the fact that this topic has been brought to the forefront in the tech world.

3. Al Gore and Climate Change

Global warming is a hot topic (pun intended) these days. Water levels are rising, natural disasters are happening more frequently and heat waves are causing all different kinds of issues. As the last talk of the conference, Al Gore entered the center stage and gave us all something to think about. He asked three questions:

Do we really have to change?
Can we change?
Will we change?

While the first two question were pretty much rhetorical (answer is yes to both), the last question is up to us. We know the answer to this last question, but we would like to ask you as well: Will you change?

Seeing Al Gore present was definitely one of the highlights.

You can watch the talk here.

4. Uber launching flying cars

The first blade runner movie predicted flying in cars in Los Angeles in 2019. Reality will now see this happening in Los Angeles as soon as 2020.

Life imitating art? 🙂

Watch the talk here.

5. Mozilla launching new Firefox version

Firefox Quantum. The new Firefox version from Mozilla. Supposedly, it’s twice as fast as the previous version. Mozilla themselves presented this new version during a talk with the title “Reinventing the web browser for modern computers”. These statements got our tech team drooling and that we had to try it out was a fact.

So this week, we appointed a guinea pig for the test to see how it performed. The test was successful and was actually summarised in one word: “NICE ?”. We interpret this result as: it was blazing fast and had a great user experience. Stay tuned for our next scientifically accurate test… ?

You can watch the talk here.

Five Highlights from Web Summit 2017