On March 10-12, the “DigiTec 2022” summit and the exhibition of the same name took place in the Karen Demirchyan Sports and Concert complex. The theme of the conference was “Ambitious tech: Resilience of open economies in the conditions of increasing world instability.”
There were 30 speakers from 9 countries, 2,000 visitors were registered, and 120 companies were represented at the 17th annual exhibition. On March 10, at the official opening of the summit, the technological community was welcomed by Minister of High-Tech Industry Robert Khachatryan, UATE President Alexander Yesayan, President of “DigiTec” summit Raffi Kassarjian, Ambassador of the European Union to Armenia Andrea Wiktorin, Ambassador of the German Federation to Armenia Viktor Richter.
At the summit, a memorandum of cooperation was signed between the Union of Advanced Technology Enterprises (UATE) and Yerevan Municipality. Digitization works are being carried out with great momentum in Yerevan, which will make life easier for citizens and make interaction with the community more accessible.
A memorandum of cooperation was also signed between the Ministry of Economy, Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports, Ministry of High-Tech Industry and SADA company. With the memorandum, government agencies and Google Cloud partner SADA will join efforts to develop equal opportunities for education in Armenia, boost the digitalization of the educational system, in the direction of implementing Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals services and tools. The document was signed by Ministers Vahan Kerobyan, Robert Khachatryan, Deputy Minister Arayik Khzmalyan on one side, and Tony Safoian, President and CEO of SADA Company, on the other.
On March 11, a round of 15-minute venture capital speed meetings or “pitch sessions” was organized between startup founders and CEOs, giving the opportunity to present their ideas to the 5 venture capitalists participating in the event. Parallel to the main summit program, Granatus Ventures’ Impact Tech investment forum took place, which was a unique opportunity to meet startups, investors and key players in the tech industry with high social, health and environmental impact. Тhe forum explored how technologies can solve the most complex problems of sustainable development on a global scale.
Тhe “Enterprise Armenia” investment promotion center and USAID Armenia organized the “Investors Day for Tech” event consisting of three discussions. The main goal of the event was to outline the systemic problems of the IT sector and develop solutions together with the representatives of the important structures of the government, specialists in the field and the business community. Discussions were about the skilled labor market, the lack of STEM education in Armenia’s higher education institutions, as well as data protection regulations in Armenia.
“AMADEE-24”, the organizational team representing the Austrian Space Forum in Armenia, was also presented to Digitec for the first time. According to the organizers, the forum will take place in 2024 under the theme “From Garni (RA) to Garni (Mars)”. The AMADEE-24 simulation of the flight to Mars is for scientific research purposes. Iterations of this simulation run every two years. To carry out the mission, a country is chosen, where a crew of six supposed astronauts participates in a flight and a test landing on Mars.
