With Innovation Is Everywhere, I’ve been attending lots of tech events and honestly, they have become less and less interesting over the year.  They’ve become more a platform for PR and networking, with all the buzzwords and uninteresting panels it implies, than a place with well curated speakers ready to share about their experience openly so that everyone can learn and get inspired.  This year, Slush Singapore wanted to change that by offering a program around impact, sustainability and science and by briefing all speakers to avoid buzzwords and share about their personal journey.

Transportation is broken

This year’s edition started with a powerful and energetic presentation by Bibob Gabriele Gresta, co-founder of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, on how to rethink our transportation.  Our transportation system is clearly inefficient : traffic jams, overcrowded metros, luggage lost at airports, road accidents as the primary cause of death, air pollution, etc.

So for those who wouldn’t know what Hyperloop is, the company is based on a concept envisioned by Elon Musk in 2013, with a vision to transform transportation to make it more sustainable, safer, connected, faster and resource efficient. The project is to build a high speed intercity transporter using a low pressure tube train which would reach a speed of 1,200 km/h, with a capacity of 160.000 passengers per day.  Basically we will be able to move faster than airplane speed, but on the ground. The project is supported by 40 partners with decade of experience and 11 countries have signed a letter of intent to build it. The first prototype is built in Toulouse, and a tech center has opened in Brazil. Ukraine, China and Abu Dhabi are among the first other countries that intend to be in the early adopters.

Blockchain: who to trust when nobody is in charge?

As all tech events, Slush Singapore had its part of talks about AI and blockchain. Both technologies bring a ton of opportunities, but also a lot of risks and vulnerabilities. There are reasons to be concerned.

While blockchain is supposed to re-establish trust by “decentralizing”, it has led to hacks (DAO’s $60 million theft in 2016) and scams (88% of ICOs last year would be scams) that have tarnished its reputation.  How can we trust the technology now?

Julian Hosp, co-founder of the cryptocurrency TenX, raised awareness on that issue.  

For Blockchain to impact many industries by cutting down on fees and intermediaries,  it has to solve that problem of trust first.

Blockchain potential in various industries

Impact, sustainability and science

On the topics of sustainability and science, several keynote speakers have raised a few issues with tentative solutions.  

• Teemu Suna, the CEO of Nightingale Health Ltd presented how the healthcare system today is more like a “sickcare” system and why precision medicine can help in preventing diseases rather than treating them.  
• Tommaso Federico Demarie, a physicist with over 7 years experience in the field of quantum computing and co-founder of Entropica Labs, tempted to demystify quantum computing and explained why we need more computing power if we want to understand more about nature with biotech and precision medicine. To be quantum-ready,  can actually start using quantum computing today with IBM Quantum Computing, Rigetti Computing or Xamadu.
• Nick Halla, SVP of Impossible Foods, explained how they have achieved the impossible challenge of making plant-based food as delicious as meat..

The event ended on a poetic note with Linda Liukas, the author and illustrator of Hello Ruby, a children’s picture book about the whimsical world of computers. So, for those who are still trying to understand what machine learning is – here is a nice slide that can come handy :