Cartoon of the Week: VivaTech 2018: France is setting innovation as its lodestar

The third edition of one of the largest digital and tech conferences in Europe, VivaTech, is taking place this week from Thursday to Saturday in Paris Porte de Versailles.

During this three-day event, attendees will be celebrating innovation and helping businesses and start-ups to grow.

From inspirational talks to immersive innovations, the line-up of speakers is pretty impressive. With Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and other high-calibre CEOs including Dara Khosrowshahi (Uber), Ginni Rometty (IBM) and Satya Nadella (Microsoft), this will certainly be a great opportunity for French companies not only to learn from the giants, but also to showcase their latest innovations and digital technologies.

The conference will play host to 8000 start-ups, 1400 investors and 1500 journalists. The least we can say is that France is setting the idea of innovation as its lodestar.

French President Emmanuel Macron even claimed that he’s aiming to make France the destination for European tech companies, saying: ‘France is changing like crazy, so we can say France is back and you should choose us.’

As usual, VivaTech’s animations are around AR/VR, drones, robotics, AI and flying car mock-ups. The first two days will be industry-oriented and held in English as the event is international. The third day, however, will be held in French and the door will be open to the wider world.

‘We need to open the event to the public to give people the possibility to discover the innovations going on, to understand the current trends and to touch, feel and experience the new products,’ says co-managing director Maxime Baffert. ‘As part of our mission to celebrate innovation, we believe we must incorporate a wider audience so that we’re not just a conference between professionals.’

VivaTech is also teaming up with TechCrunch to upgrade the popular hackathon event introduced last year. The new hackathon will consist of 25 hours of tasks and challenges for hackers and developers.

Is VivaTech competing with CES?

You go France!

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Brahim Jaouane

I am a Digital Marketing specialist specialized in SEO at eXo Platform. Passionate about new technologies and Digital Marketing. With 10 years' experience, I support companies in their digital communication strategies and implement the tools necessary for their success. My approach combines the use of different traffic acquisition levers and an optimization of the user experience to convert visitors into customers. After various digital experiences in communication agencies as well as in B2B company, I have a wide range of skills and I am able to manage the digital marketing strategy of small and medium-sized companies.