Digital industry and its influence of Bulgarian businesses
The annual technological conference Webit Bulgaria Summit 2012 started very dynamically: with music, light effects and electricity in the air. The conference held in Sofia on 14 and 15 June was opened by President Rosen Plevneliev. The second leg of the event is due in Istanbul in October.
Let us go back in time for a while. Webit was an idea that emerged in 2009 and it soon became the first event of its kind across Central and Eastern Europe. With time it grew into the biggest such forum in the Balkans and began to attract specialists from the region and from the whole world. It is now the event where people meet to do business and to find out about the latest trends in the sector. The two-day conference welcomed more than 1000 officials from various spheres who shared experience and ideas in the use of new technology and social media: officials involved in marketing, senior management in finance, banking, fast-moving consumer goods, the pharma industry, e-healthcare and the automotive industry, as well as entrepreneurs, software experts, representatives of technological companies, the mass media and the government.
The founder of both the e-Academy and Webit, Plamen Roussev, opened the conference with the following words:
”I should like to take you to a place. Let us imagine for just a minute that we live in a country with zero unemployment and with zero brain-drain too. Yes, many young specialists have left the country, but look at how many stayed! Let us imagine that we live in a country that begins to attract brains and talent; with leaders with a vision, commitment and the will to buck the negative trend. And the leaders are here, now, today…”
In the view of President Rosen Plevneliev the state should become a platform for development. “We have a strong past and we are in for a brilliant future”, the president said addressing the Webit conference. „The Bulgaria 2020 strategy is a mechanism for attaining long-term objectives but all this is determined in 2012.”
Famous banker Levon Hampartsumian added: “Let us leave behind self-deprecation and start thinking more about economic and personal success”. Now here is more from him in an interview for Radio Bulgaria:
“This event is a clear proof of Bulgaria’s potential to become an integrator of modern services, of modern industry”, the banker argued. “Now Webit has spread to Istanbul, a truly cosmopolitan city. Interest in this conference becomes keener. Bulgaria has become interesting from inside out, so the good news is that we have been riding the wave. Bulgaria can become popular with its people who are educated, enterprising, and well-organized. This should be an easy place to do business in, because we are not vying with our past when we had our indisputable successes. We are vying with the rest of the world today. And when we compete with the rest of the world, it becomes quite clear how much more we still have to do and this can take place with organized effort and with public pressure. After all, success is never accidental; it comes as a result of organized efforts that go on for long enough in time.”
Text and photo: bnr.bg
(21.06.2012)