The last part of the Slovenia Business BridgeTM »Get Inspired with Slovenia: Ready4DFuture« brought together ideas of Slovenian groundbreaking individuals, who live the future today. They presented to us their view of what do changes bring for countries, society and business.
Mitja Jermol, Head of the Center for Knowledge Transfer in IT at the Jožef Stefan Institute, who works on the future of education and artificial intelligence said that they asked themselves what Slovenia could offer to the world. »We have the competence interesting to big enterprises and so we started to think about how we could change our education,« said Mr. Jermol and explained how they connected children and students in their wish to create their own dream machine. The children drew their dream machines and the students made them. »Can you imagine the satisfaction of the children and the students? It is important to change the way we think – that we learn because we want to and not because we have to,« said Mr. Jermol and added that we should learn from everyone and then share this knowledge.
»Global infrastructure, global connectivity, content modules, universities, applications and good practices – all of this is already available to us if we only knew how to use it. We lack a systematic and a holistic approach as well as a global consensus, a globally uniformed politics,« said Mr. Jermol.
Matej Čer, Founder of Avantcar, shared with us his vision of the future. »We are entering the 4th industrial revolution. Everything around us will be connected, we will be able to share assets and services. Energy will become renewable and clean, traffic sustainable and effective. By means of new technology, we will be able to produce lab-grown food and the digital community will bring new platforms and virtual reality,« said Mr. Čer and added that technology will bring numerous benefits for the society. We will have a 4-hour workday, more free time, better education, local food and energy production, and no more poverty.
Mr. Čer believes that Slovenia has an exceptional opportunity to use the advantage of this new wave – predominantly in mobility since our market size is perfect. We should focus on becoming regionally self-sufficient in the field of mobility and on using clean energy to become a zero-emissions society and thus improve efficiency. »We are talking about the infrastructure because this is the foundation of everything; history shows that those who adapted to new infrastructure quickly always won the race,« said Mr. Čer.
Jurij Krpan, Art Director at the Kapelica Gallery – Gallery for Contemporary Investigative Art said that performances that included robotic parts on the human body were those that have moved the frontier. Artists started connecting into different organisms and by knowing life and life systems, they started using materials they did not know before. »All the questions related to connectivity are of exceptional importance for post-humanists. Cross-breeding, hybridization, and post-humanism are our main fields of work,« said Krpan and added that at the Kapelica Gallery they have decided to move on from digital transformation towards so-called design thinking.
Krpan also spoke about the importance of the educational system that has to keep up with current requirements. »We have adopted opened education very fast. We have children who will teach children who will teach children. That is how we will form a network of children that will share their ideas and thus create a new educational system,« he added.
Zenel Batagelj, Partner at Valicon and Advisor at Iconomi, spoke at the end of the Conference about the future created by the new economy. He asked himself how to put Slovenia at the center of the world and answered that Slovenia is already there. »New business models are simple. Platforms are available from all over the world and when we speak about success today, we speak about platforms,« said Mr. Batagelj and added that money started being programmed in 2015. »What is smart money? When we send money to someone, the system knows who the owner is,« said Batagelj and added that this is an opportunity for starting new companies, such as ICONOMI.
»ICONOMI is a project launched in Ljubljana that connects everything we know about money and new ideas. And we succeeded,« said Batagelj, adding that Slovenia is the center of cryptocurrencies.
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