Over 800 participants, nearly 70 speakers – experts from Poland and other countries. Workshops, seminars, an international debate, but also children zone of coding, fairs with several dozen companies presenting their products, and a common networking, as well as live report watched by almost 100,000 Internauts and the first place in Twitter ranking – that is how we can sum up the Sector 3.0 Festival, the biggest in Poland event dedicated to new technology application in social activity, which took place in Warsaw on May 29 and 30.
Each year for over 8 years now, the Sector 3.0 Festival attracts hundreds of new technology enthusiasts – representatives of non-profit organizations, business, public administration, science and media. The main part of the event took place in the Copernicus Science Center on the first day, and the hosts of the second-day events were the Festival Partners who held seminars for the Festival participants in their Warsaw offices.
“The purpose of new technologies is to improve the quality of life of citizens,” Marek Zagórski, the Minister of Digital Affairs said during his opening address. Emma Lacey-Bordeaux of CNN spoke about the important subject of the Internet information sharing. “Today, everybody who owns a smartphone is involved in information production and distribution. And since there are more smartphones than people in the world, the Internet becomes very crowded,” the CNN journalist explained. In turn, Jurek Owsiak spoke about great technological progress of the Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity. “Over the last 26 years we have made a giant leap. Some time ago we collected money mainly to cardboard boxes. Today, some 45% of donations are made in electronic form!” he said.
In the seminar part of the Conference the meetings were hosted by Piotr Kraśko of TVN (Future of information in the Internet era), Daniel Rząsa of Google (How to obtain and present information on the Internet), Marcin Waszczuk of Microsoft (Artificial intelligence for everybody) and Mohamed Jimale of AriFarm (A goat, a farm, and a smartphone – or modern fundraising).
The Festival guests could also visit the fairs where several dozen exhibitors presented their offers, including Google, Polish Humanitarian Action, Prowly, and Mozilla. The fair area was supplemented by the makerspace zone, specially built for that purpose and run by the Copernicus Science Center and FabLab. Selected ICT companies also presented their technological innovations such as Cortana by Microsoft or Tilt Brush VR application by Google.
The summing up of the discussions and workshops was the debate on information, knowledge and data, conducted by Dr. Michał Boni, a member of European Parliament, and participated by Sands Fish of MIT Media Lab, Prof. Junseok Hwang of Seoul National University, Krzysztof Jonak of Intel, Dr. Aleksandra Przegalińska of Koźmiński University, Amra Naidoo of muru-D Accelerator and Timos Platsas of Microsoft.
“Each year more and more guests from abroad come to take part in Sector 3.0 Festival. This year we again broke the record of the number of participants. The high interest in the Festival is also proved by the live report popularity. It allows us reach more people with information on the event,” says Dawid Szarański, the “Sector 3.0” Program Director.
The Festival also made an opportunity to present the Polish-American Freedom Foundation prize in the amount of PLN 40,000. It went to RzeczJasna Association of Possible Initiatives of Ostróda for its activities aimed at verifying Internet information and creating the Internet TV that popularizes important social and local problems.
On the second day there were 10 specialized workshops prepared by the Festival Partners which were hosted by among others at Warsaw offices of Microsoft, Google, Cisco and Ericsson, as well as the Ministry of Digital Affairs and Warsaw School of Economics.
“Sector 3.0” is not only the name of the Festival. It is also a program implemented by the Polish-American Freedom Foundation, under which NGOs use new technologies in social activities. This helps them operate more effectively, reach more people, and their experiences in new technologies inspire others to work more effectively. Eight rounds of the Sector 3.0 were held over the period from 2011 to 2018 with a total participation of over 4,100 people.
The Festival organizer and “Sector 3.0” Program Manager is the Information Society Development Foundation.
Main Partner – Intel
Technology Partner – Microsoft, Orange
Supporting Partners – Cisco, Ericsson, Google
Patrons – the Ministry of Digital Affairs, All Digital, Warsaw City Hall, Warsaw School pf Economics
Cooperation – Copernicus Science Center, the Coalition for Polish Innovations, Wolves Summit, Sentione, Meeting Application, Broad Alliance for Digital Skills Media Patrons – TVN24 BiŚ, Polityka weekly, Press, Komputer Świat magazine, PCLab, Mobile Trends, Ngo.pl, Mediafun, Dobra Strona Internetu platform, Crossweb, Fintek.pl, Girls Code Fun, Czwartek Social Media.
