Glimpses of the future: SHIFT 2019 is more than a festival

Next year, SHIFT Business Festival will be moved to the end of August, making SHIFT the kick-off event of the autumn season. The next festival is going to be held on 29th and 30th August 2019. The new timing will allow for collaboration with other events taking place around the same time.

The venue of the next SHIFT will be disclosed later, but during Wednesday’s press conference, CEO Alexander Törnroth already revealed some details about next year’s festival. The program will become more industry-oriented, while remaining focused on future technologies and related ethical issues. One of next year’s partners was revealed to be Silo AI, a leading Artificial Intelligence research lab and service provider.

The first of next year’s keynotes was also made public: Dr. Yoshua Bengio, Director of Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms (MILA https://mila.quebec/en/) and a world-renowned expert on neural networks and deep learning.

At SHIFT Business Festival 2019, the winner of the first Ethical Technology Company of the Year award will be announced. SHIFT is founding the award to encourage businesses to act responsibly, aiming to guide the current rapid technological development in an ethically sound direction while we are still in a regulatory vacuum. Read more about the future and ethics of technology in the SHIFT Manifesto, published on Monday https://theshift.fi/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/The-Manifesto.pdf.

In the future, SHIFT will grow significantly beyond the yearly two-day Business Festival. Already in 2018, SHIFT will begin to organise monthly mini-seminars for business leaders on the topics of corporate responsibility and other ethical questions. With smaller events taking place throughout the year, there will be more varied and extensive opportunities for encounters between businesses, research organisations and individuals.

As the organisation grows, so will its need for staff. In the spirit of SHIFT,  possible new recruits will mainly be from among the ranks of previous years’ volunteers.

According to chair of the board Joonas Suominen, SHIFT will also expand partner collaboration by increasing cooperation with universities and other research organisations, as well as by starting a network that will support the internationalisation of Finnish companies. SHIFT will aid local companies in community building and establishing work spaces abroad. Developing the network will begin with a pilot phase next autumn.

Photo of CEO Alexander Törnroth and Chairman of the Board Joonas Suominen by Juha Oja

Further information

Mari Männistö

Head of Communications

SHIFT Business Festival

+358 45 8684 808

Alexander Törnroth

CEO

SHIFT Business Festival

+358 40 187 7353