Techsylvania: hotbed for tech innovation in Eastern Europe

As part of our Event spotlight series, we decided to interview the team behind one of Eastern Europe’s leading tech events: Techsylvania. The event started in Cluj, a city Techcrunch named “The Silicon Valley of Transilvania“.

Let’s see how the event started and what are the team’s plans for the future:

Tell us a bit about yourself – how did you decide to start building tech events?

Vlad Ciurca: My background is a mix of economic studies, marketing, IT – product management and business development. In the five years working in IT I also got involved in organizing events. One of the first was Romanian Managers Cluj. The purpose was to create business networking events, something rather new at the time.

Then I met Philipp Kandal, one of the co-founders of Skobbler, currently Telenav and together we analyzed the start-up scene in Cluj-Napoca. We wanted to do something in this direction, so we developed Startup Weekend. Practically, this way at the end of each event some new projects were born. In the next four years five teams received funding from international accelerators and the event grew from 90 participants in the first year, to around 150-160 participants in the next years.

Techsylvania conference

How did Techsylvania start? What helped you decide on the topic and vision?

Vlad Ciurca: Organizing Startup Weekend, me and my co-founder, Oana Petrus, realized that there was clearly a lot of interest in this area of startups, technology and entrepreneurship. In the same time, we saw that all the IT conferences from that time were not really oriented in these directions. Also, they did not have international speakers. So, we can say we had our work cut for us.

In 2014 I started working with Oana on a new concept: Techsylvania. We built an international event where founders from all the world, investors, various experts and entrepreneurs meet in the same location, chat and discover the steps needed to create a technology company.

Techsylvania started in 2014 with 380 attendees and grew to more than 1500 attendees in 2017. Apart from this, the event features a connected devices hackathon where developers build creative projects, as well as a startup competition that featured early stage companies from 9 countries.

How did you manage to develop the wonderful community around Techsylvania?

Oana Petrus: From the first edition we wanted the conference to be an educational course for people who want to discover everything about how a technology company is being born. Our community was built step by step. More and more people joined because we provide a place where they can learn firsthand from the experience of successful entrepreneurs, tech leaders, investors and founders of startups listed to the stock exchange. Also, they can meet other people starting a new project and exchange information.

These are strong reasons for attendees to wish to come back and for others to join the community. In 2017 our conference grew to 1.500 attendees from 1.316 participants in 2016 and 830 in 2015. Our community is strong, and this is clearly shown by the fact that 96% of the 2017 participants expressed their wish to attend Techsylvania in 2018.

In its essence Techsylvania seeks to provide answers. The fifth edition, taking place June 9-12 in Cluj-Napoca, will once again gather key stakeholders, tech leaders and curious minds from all over the world to explore the technology opportunities across Eastern Europe.

What do visitors love most about the event?

Vlad Ciurca: The vibe of the conference, the people they meet, the knowledge they acquire and the speakers they listen and learn from.

Every year we bring international speakers, literally from all over the world and this makes people love our conference. The chance to see new experts and tech leaders every year, all with a vast experience.

Its a rare opportunity to see many of our speakers and guests in this part of the world and even more so to actually be able to interact directly with them. Don’t mind me saying but its an amazing networking event.

“If you want to get a pulse of tech innovation, ecosystem, talents in Eastern Europe, Techsylvania is the gateway. Cluj is one of the most exciting places right now and the event draws the who is who from the erupt tech scene”, Joyce Shen (Thomson Reuters).

What were the greatest challenges starting and developing Techsylvania?

Oana Petrus: The first challenges we faced? We wanted to make the event a great one from the first edition, so a real challenge was the line-up. We knew that if we wanted true knowledge for our attendees we had to convince international speakers to join us as well as people from the Romanian ecosystem.  We succeeded I’d say because we had 19 speakers and among them were HP Jin, Co-Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer at Telenav, Andy Piper, Developer Advocate at Twitter, Johannes Reck, CEO at GetYourGuide and many more. And this was 2014.

Also, another challenge was organizing the hackathon. The focus was on new wearables and connected devices but many of them were not accessible at that time, as they weren’t sold on the market in Romania. Regardless, we have managed to get them to Romania by collaborating with the manufacturers and out them in the hands of the developers to see what creative projects they could develop.

What are your plans for the future?

Oana Petrus: What to expect in 2018? First off, an inspiring speaker’s lineup that will talk about some of the most recent technical developments, product related topics, as well as funding and entrepreneurship trends & best practices.

But the most interesting part of all is that we plan on expanding the Techsylvania platform in the following directions:

  • Satellite events – we want to take advantage of the buzz surrounding Techsylvania during those 4 days and to create more opportunities for those who join us. Explore various fields of know-how, meet new people outside your circles of interest and join us for new experiences
  • Q&A sessions – a lot of you mentioned that you’d like to address specific questions to the speakers, but don’t have the opportunity. As timing is something we care about a great deal and the mainstage design does not allow it, we’re going to take some of our speakers on a dedicate stage, where you’ll be able to ask all the questions you want for 30 minutes
  • Roundtables for executives – we will host topic-oriented discussions for 10–12 executives, moderated by an industry expert. The goal is to stir collaborations and get insights that can help you drive your business forward.

 

Vlad is the Co-Founder of Techsylvania (leading technology event in Eastern Europe) and Codiax (Deep Tech Event).

Previously, he was VP of Business Development at Yopeso, Product Manager at Telenav (working on creating navigation solutions for mobile devices and auto manufacturers), as well as Operations Supervisor at UPS and Ceva Logistics (where he managed a 100-person team (starting from a 4 person team).

Vlad is passionate about building events and communities, having been a Startup Weekend Organizer and Facilitator and co-founding one of the biggest online and offline communities of managers and entrepreneurs in Transylvania, Romanian Managers CLUJ, with close to 900 members.

In 2011, Vlad was named a Technology and Entrepreneurship Expert in the “Young Romania Forum”, a project organized by the League of Romanian Students Abroad, with the aim of getting the younger generation involved in the future of Romania. In 2015, he was invited to speak about the ‘Born Global’ topic during the Romanian Business Leaders Summit, an exclusive event with over 200 top managers and entrepreneurs from Romania.

 

Oana Petrus is the Co-Founder of Techsylvania (leading technology event in Eastern Europe) and Codiax (Deep Tech Event).

Working now in Paddy Power Betfair Cluj as Office Manager, she brings her extensive knowledge of processes and administration, from being in charge of Processes and Quality at Sykes Cluj-Napoca to coordinating teams in Cluj, Cairo and Shanghai.

An experienced manager with over 12 years experience in retail, business development, telecommunications and event organizing, she put her vast know-how to work for brands such as Paddy Power Betfair, Sykes, Orsay, Motivi, s. Oliver, Startup Weekend Cluj and others.

 

January 7, 2018 Event professionals, Event spotlight No comments yet

Do people STILL buy Museum Tickets?

Last week I had the privilege of attending Vienna Contemporary, a modern art fair with a love for technology. Oveit was a part of the CultTech hackathon and we won the innovation award for cultural institutions ticketing </humblebrag>. By being a part of the hackathon we were able to get insights from one of the largest and most beautiful museums in the world: The Kunsthistorisches Museum, home of one of the most exquisite art collection. Here’s how we’ve found that people still buy museum tickets:

If you’ve visited Vienna but somehow missed the museum, don’t worry, you are not the only one. As we gathered some data we’ve noticed that even though the venue is the third most popular thing to visit in Vienna, its number of reviews were slightly off:

Source: Tripadvisor

Source: Tripadvisor

So what is happening here? Why does KHM have 4 times less reviews than the Schonbrunn Palace?

We did a little digging and found some interesting things. And by a little digging I mean analyzing over 3200 reviews using Natural Language Processing (buzzword for using algorithms to sort through text data – we do a bit of that around here).

Here’s what we found:

People love going to the museum for different reasons. But they do love going to the museum.

We’ve got our first insight when we visited the museum (surprising, right?). There’s no algorithm to express the feeling of seeing people immersed in the works of art. Or children having fun by looking at a statue, a Bruegel painting or a crocodile mummy. Yes, they also have that.

The second clue was when we discussed with Florian Pollack, marketing and communications manager for the museum. He mentioned that many tourists would, unfortunately, miss the museum while visiting the Museum of Modern Art or the Natural History Museum. But those that visited the museum were in fact “overwhelmed and impressed” by what they have discovered.

So we decided to test that. We analyzed the review data and found this: the data showed people loved the museum. Ticket buyers where the best evangelists the museum had. We noticed a 96% positive sentiment among those that reviewed their visit to the museum.

Where are the museum ticket buyers coming from?

We digged through data and noticed that most of the museum visitors that reviewed their visits were not coming from Vienna. They were mostly tourists:

khm-interests

Top three cities that buy museum tickets: London, Vienna, New York. However, the long tail was quite long, we noticed. People came from all around the world and they loved their experience. So what exactly where they more interested in?

What are people most interested in when visiting a museum?

By analyzing the data we noticed some things popping up here and there. In case you are thinking about visiting the museum, here’s what the hot topics are:

khm-interests

Art: people were interested in the art collection, the art works, art history and art gallery. Basically – people are going there for the art.

They were mentioning the audio guide as a great resource and among the most interesting works where the coin collection, old masters works, Gustav Klimt’s work as well as Pieter Bruegel’s.

By the way – here’s one of the museum’s most treasured works of art, the Tower of Babel, a classic painting by Pieter Bruegel:

“Well yeah, but that’s just one museum, what does your data say about others… or maybe you don’t have any?” Yeah, we thought you might say that so we went ahead and studied some other museums you might have heard of:

The Metropolitan Museum in New York

The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam

These three museums had a combined 68211 reviews so this turned into a bit more than a side project for a blog post.

Here’s what we’ve found, starting with the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam :

Visitors to the Rijksmuseum love the Night Watch, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, the gift shop and the coffee shop. Oh, and they want to buy museum tickets online.

The Rijksmuseum hosts more than 8000 works that tell the story of 800 years of Dutch history so visitors’ opinions were quite different. However, some common threads did pop up on our research.

London is again on top of our list of most reviews locations. Number two is Amsterdam, an obvious choice as most visitors are bound to be locals. The third spot: New York, New York. But look at number four and five: Sidney and Melbourne, all the way from Australia. If flying on the other side of the planet is not love of art, I don’t know what it is:

rijksmuseum-visitors

Rijksmuseum visitors love The Night Watch and they love Van Gogh

While studying the reviews we noticed (it was kind of hard to miss it) the most loved item in the museum’s collection: The Night Watch.

1106px-The_Nightwatch_by_Rembrandt

Source: Wikipedia

The painting, a work by Rembrandt van Rijn from 1642 is famous for three things:

  • its size (363 cm × 437 cm / 11.91 ft × 14.34 ft)
  • the light and shadows
  • the perception of movement

The work was finished in 1642, when the Dutch Golden Age was at its peak. That’s why you will see “Dutch Golden Age” as one of the hottest topics.

If you wanna get a preview of the painting, before deciding on whether you should visit the museum, the Rijksmuseum has all the info ready for you to preview. Fun fact – you can also see Obama visiting the museum and its most famous painting, in the preview page.

Van Gogh – One of the most famous painters in the world, partly hosted in the Rijksmuseum. Many visitors listed Van Gogh (as well as its close relative “Van Gough” 🙂 ) in their reviews. The reason is one of the most well-known self-portraits:

vangogh-rijks

But these are not the only reasons people buy tickets to museums such as Rijksmuseum. Here are some of the other terms we’ve noticed:

  • art work
  • art museum
  • art lover
  • art gallery

Basically they love art. But they also love some of the other things the museum has to offer, and I might say that The Rijksmuseum is quite an avantgarde museum, building experiences around its works of art. People also come there for the high-quality audio guide, the wonderful gift shop and its coffee shop.

Before they visit they are interested in the entrance fee, buying tickets online and the museum member card. So if you manage a museum – you might take note of this.

PS: the ground floor is THE place to be. Here are the hot topics:

rijksmuseum-topics

Visitors who buy museum tickets to the Van Gogh Museum = Rijksmuseum visitors. But they are looking at different things.

It’s probably no surprise that people who visit the Van Gogh museum are looking for Van Gogh artworks. But they are also interested in its life story, very interested in the gift shop and disappointed by not finding the “Starry Night” (it’s at the Museum of Modern Art)

starry-night

Not pictured above: one of the artworks in the Van Gogh Museum 🙂

Visitors are also interested in the gift shop and buying tickets online. So that topic again.

For a more extended interests list have a look below:

van-gogh-interests

PS: get ready for the long lines:

long-lines-van-gogh

The Metropolitan: visited by New Yorkers, Brits and Aussies. Main point of interest: Frank Lloyd Wright, Andy Warhol and the Costume Institute

Unlike the previous museums, most reviews come from New Yorkers. By far:

metropolitan-locations

Hard to see? let’s turn shift the perspective a bit:

met-visitors

As you can see most reviews come from New Yorkers, followed by visitors from London and then Sydney and Melbourne. Apparently, EU visitors are not really interested in visiting The Met, and if they are, they are a bit shy about it.

Regarding the interests, you will find that people who buy museum tickets to the Metropolitan Museum are interested in:

and more:

metropolitan-interests

Regarding the overall feeling, I would say visitors were overwhelmed. Attributes such as great, wonderful and huge were used to describe the museum:

met-museum-feelings

So – that’s the end – four great museums and 65 000 reviews later I can surely say that people do buy museum tickets. Each museum has its own stars and people are attracted to these culture stars. Visitors love to spend time enjoying the museum experience and they want to purchase mementos of these visits. They are interested in buying their tickets online, spending enough time within the museum and enjoying unique works. Oh and by the way: it helps to have a cafe.

September 26, 2017 Events, Museums No comments yet

AI Events – stats and intelligence on Artificial Intelligence events

We love AI here at Oveit. We see great potential in using Artificial Intelligence to solve real-world problems. That’s why we have set up a special program for AI event organizers (basically free Oveit usage for AI events).

But we went a little further. We wanted to know what makes a great AI event great. So our data science team did a little data digging and here’s what we found:

AI is already a global phenomenon. AI events are popping all over the world

We used Facebook’s events API to search for the most popular AI events and the things we’ve found are astonishing. You would expect AI events to show up in hi-tech areas, and they do. But they also show up in parts of the world where you would really not expect.

For example, the data gathered between the 10th and 14th of September shows the most popular AI event was hosted in Lima, Peru, followed by an event in Vilnius, Lithuania. And this brings us to our …

Top 10 most popular AI events

We selected the most interesting AI events and decided to see which is more popular, in terms of people attending.

Here is our top 10:

10. Artificial Intelligence with McKinsey & Company is presented by McKinsey and NOVA Aarhaus University and features topics such as processing natural language, recognizing patterns, and decision-making.

9. Startup Weekend Artificial Intelligence Mexico City, organized by TechStars’ Startup Weekend community. You will notice that this is not the only Startup Weekend entry in this list which goes to show just how influential TechStars is in the growing AI startups community.

8. The Artificial Intelligence Conference SF, organized by O’Reilly Media. An awesome line up of AI scientists, startup owners, and VC’s. This conference is the perfect mashup of technology, science, and startups, in the best spot on the planet for innovation to develop: San Francisco.

7. Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence is an event organized by the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at Cambridge. Yes, you’ve read that right: Study of Existential Risk. The topics are covered by Max Erik Tegmark, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-founder of the Future of Life Institute.

Now, this is where things get really interesting. The Future of Life Institute was co-founded by prof. Max Erik Tegmark. However, the institute lists among its scientific advisory board some well-known people: Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, Stuard Russell and yes… that is right: Morgan Freeman and Alan Alda. Definitely worth attending.

6. Bayesian Networks—Artificial Intelligence for Research was an event organized in San Francisco by the great people at BayesiaLab. The free seminar focused on using bayesian networks for aspects where data is scarce. Unlike Deep Learning and other machine learning techniques, bayesian networks can work great with “Small(er) Data”. It seems the event caught the attention of its intended audience: Bioinformaticians, biostatisticians, clinical scientists, computer scientists, data scientists, decision scientists, demographers, ecologists, econometricians, economists, epidemiologists, knowledge managers, management scientists, market researchers, marketing scientists, operations research analysts, policy analysts, predictive modelers, research investigators, risk managers, social scientists, statisticians, plus students and teachers of related fields.

5. Scientific Controversies No. 12: Artificial Intelligence was hosted by Pioneer Works, ‘a cultural center dedicated to experimentation, education, and production across disciplines’, in Brooklyn, US. The topics discussed were machine consciousness, willfulness and whether when such aspects arise would we be able to understand the newly silicon sentient beings. Pioneer Works Director of Sciences Janna Levin invited Yann LeCun, Director of AI research at Facebook and NYU professor, and Max Tegmark, Director of the Future of Life Institute and MIT professor to discuss these topics.

4. Startup Weekend Montreal – Artificial Intelligence – a Startup Weekend / Techstars event that gathers the AI focused community in Montreal. As stated by the event organizers: “Startup Weekend is a 54-hour competition designed to provide an amazing experiential learning opportunity for AI enthusiasts, developers, designers, and business-minded individuals to come together to create a business.”

3. LDN Talks The Future of Artificial Intelligence, hosted by Prof. Nick Jennings, Vice-Provost (Research) and Professor of Artificial Intelligence at Imperial College London. The event tackled the topic of computers and humans working together, especially now as computers are able to manage ever more complex tasks, due to new advancements in AI and hardware.

2. Artificial Intelligence Group Meetup happens in Vilnius, Lithuania and is powered by Rise Vilnius, a tech hub with offices all over the world, together with Baltijos pažangių technologijų institutas. The great guys at Rise Vilnius were kind enough to post a video on this first meetup, for those not able to make it to the meetup:

1: Startup Weekend Artificial Intelligence Lima – a startup event focused on AI, organized by StartupWeekend in Peru, which is itself powered by TechStars, a worldwide network of tech entrepreneurs. More info and registration options on the event can be found on the event’s website.

What are the hottest topics around AI events?

So you’ve seen the hottest events right now. But how about the topics discussed within these events? Well, we did a little more research and searched for the hot buzzwords and the most interesting topics discussed. Here’s what we’ve found:

The most important topics discussed within AI events:

ExpressionNo.
0artificial intelligence60
1machine learning26
2startup weekend26
3knowledge discovery22
4big data13
5networks—artificial intelligence11
6knowledge acquisition11
7software platform11
8knowledge modeling11
9bayesian networks11
10network paradigm11
11expert knowledge modeling11
12digital marketing10
13complex software10
14star trek9
15bridge crew8
16computer science7
17science fiction7
18ibm watson7
19ibm ’7
20deep learning6

And if you want to see the distribution in a graphic format, have a look below:

AI events topics

As for the most popular words, here they are:

ai_hot_words

We really hope you’ve enjoyed this post and if you find it easier, add a comment below on another type of events you might want to get new insights on.

September 19, 2017 Business events, Events, Infographics No comments yet

Event ticketing in Netherlands with iDEAL

Are you planning a paid event in Netherlands? You are in luck because we have integrated iDEAL payments with Oveit. Not only that but Oveit is now available in Nederlands as a localized interface. You now have access to our easy to use app for event ticketing in Netherlands as well as the most popular electronic payment method in the region.

In the past years the Netherlands epayments market has seen a spectacular growth in the adoption of the iDEAL payments system:

chart (1)

Source: iDEAL

As this adoption will probably continue, we have decided to integrate iDEAL through Stripe Sources for event planners in Netherlands. As with all other payment methods supported by Oveit, registration payments go directly to your account.

With Oveit you have instant access to the tools you need to build your fantastic conference, cultural event or festival. You can get started right now by registering and selecting iDEAL in your account, under Billing > Payment methods.

Oveit provides you with an easy way of registering attendees directly on your own website by just copying and pasting an short embed code. Your embed widget an be customized to fit your branding:

Access control is easier than ever with our mobile apps for both iOS and Android. Ticket scanning and data sync is done automatically so you get real time reports regarding attendance and checkins.

Our event ticketing app is great for access control but with Oveit perks you can prepack more than just an entrance to the event:

Create Conference Badges

If you think this is a good fit or your event – be sure to check out the other features you get when using Oveit. We hope you build a wonderful experience for your attendees.

August 22, 2017 Event management, Events No comments yet

Free event management app for AI events

At Oveit we believe in the promise of Artificial Intelligence and its revolutionary power. As Andrew Ng mentioned, AI will transform healthcare, transportation, entertainment, manufacturing, just to name a few and it will improve the lives of many, many people.

The AI revolution is not powered by algorithms, big companies or VC funds. It is powered by a community of passionate researchers and scientists that believe in a better future, one where we all can be free from unfulfilling work and free to pursue dreams and passion.

free event management app for AI events

Alex Knight

We also believe that collaborative events such as conferences, workshops, meetups and congresses are great ways for the AI community to meet and work together and pursue common goals.

Oveit is a software startup founded on two principles: fusing communities and helping build a better future through the events we support. AI events resonate with this vision.

We think it is our duty to support upcoming AI scientists and researchers and most of all – those that bring them together through their events. That’s why we have decided to offer any event planner that hosts AI conferences, workshops and meetups free usage for Oveit for a 12 month period. Yup, that is correct: a free event management app for all AI event planners.

If you are planning an Artificial Intelligence event and you need an event management software for registration, payment, access control or others, just ask for your free account.

All you’ll have to do is send us an email at contact [at] oveit.com with a few details about your event (topics and date) together with the email you have used to register on Oveit. Afterwards – you can use your free event management app for the next 12 months. By the way – there are no strings attached.

We sincerely hope you will find our tools useful and we thank you for your effort in building the AI community.

August 21, 2017 Event professionals, Events No comments yet