The future won’t wait so why should you?
Another year, another edition of future entrepreneurship! Bigger than ever with a 2-day long event in real life again. As soon as you walked in you got swept up in the futuristic vibe. Walking through the future fair to start off your night is the perfect way to roll into the whole evening. Professionals and students alike came in all with different goals. Some wanted to find a job or an internship, while others came to hear all of the amazing speakers. You could feel the excitement in the air and we were ready to start the first day of FE22!
The future fair
You came to FE22 to expand your network, find an internship, or maybe even a job. The future fair is where it’s at. All of our partners got a booth where they could look for the profiles that they needed, show off their products, and to network with everyone who wanted. You could get a quick peek before the first couple of speakers came up on stage and afterward, you could stay as long as your heart desired.
The show
The show was shaping up to be the highlight of the evening and what FE22 is all about: Inspiring young minds to help shape the future! On the first day, we were welcomed by our very own president and vice-president, Max and Lisa. Together with the Alderwoman of Economy and Innovation, Erica Caluwaerts they welcomed everyone in the Waagnatie in Antwerp. Of course, we couldn’t do a show without someone to guide us throughout the 2 days. This year we had 2 amazing hosts, we welcomed Lauren Versnick and our very own Nova.
The first speaker of FE22 was Daan Luining, the founder and CTO of Meatable. He came to talk about the mission of Meatable and how they try to strive for a better future. Meatable specializes in lab-grown meat and Daan explained how they do it and why they do it.
Next up was Pieter Bruyland, the VP of solutions at AB Inbev. He came and told us all about the digital transformation in the food industry. With exclusive insights into the biggest brewery in the world!
We can’t talk about the future without including robotics, so we invited an expert on stage to do just that. Fabien Papleux Fabien, Technology Innovation Strategy Director at Accenture, is a patented inventor and a serial corporate startup entrepreneur, including his last one: Papleux Robotics.
After a short break, everyone in the Waagnatie was ready to go for the panel.
The topic of this panel was the future of media and these were your panelists: Vero Vanden Abeele, Sven Van Vlem, and Calogero Macaluso. Vero is the Co-founder of Tinkerlist and a UX researcher. She came to tell us more about Tinkerlist, a platform for creative television making, and how they keep their ideas innovative and fresh. Sven is the one responsible for all the breaking news notifications you get, as Head of Technology News City at DPG Media he and his team have to think about the future constantly. He told us all about how they keep up with today’s news and how they keep evolving day in and day out. To complete our panel we welcomed Calogero on the stage. He is the Director of Streaming at DPG Media and one of the reasons we can enjoy streaming their content from the comfort of our own homes. These 3 individuals exchanged ideas on various topics and our futurists got a lot of different insights throughout the panel discussion.
To finish our first night we had the honor of receiving Lex Hoefsloot. Lex is the co-founder and CEO at Lightyear. He raised 90+ million in 2021 to build the Lightyear One, a long-range solar electric vehicle with an exceptional range. He told us about the process of building a car and the challenges that come with doing that.
Going home after the first day filled with such amazing speakers, futurists and partners were amazing, and there was yet another day to come!
On the second day of FE22, we started off with a short introduction from Max and Lisa once more and we were ready to welcome our speakers for the second day.
The first speaker of the day was Pieter Van Leugenhagen, the Co-founder and Managing Partner of Yondr. His field of expertise is VR entrepreneurship and how we can apply VR as well as AR and Web 3.0 in professional contexts. He showed us that technology can be used for so much more than just games and gimmicks.
Advertising happens all around us and that’s not going to change anytime soon. To imagine what the future of digital advertising might look like we asked Dhan Claes, Managing Director at Semetis, to tell you all about it. She turned our stage into a movie set for half an hour with a spectacular show and gave us a glimpse at what the future might look like.
The panel of the second day was all about building the port of the future. The speakers who talked about this were Bert De Mot, Dries Van Gheluwe, and Wim Wouters. Bert is Co-founder and CEO at Oxylum, their mission is to guide companies toward CO₂ neutral activities. Dries is an Advisor Business Development at Port of Antwerp and guides companies that want to be part of the ambitious project: working towards a circular, low-carbon economy. Wim is a Creative Technologist and Co-founder at Poppins & Wayne. He makes it possible that ideas can be brought to life through technology. The panel revolved around the sustainability of the port and how technology could make the transition easier.
Our last speaker of FE22 was Nick Rosa, currently leading the Extended Reality (XR) business and co-leading the Metaverse Strategy practice for the Accenture Technology Innovation practice in Europe. We couldn’t ignore a hot topic like this so we provided you with one of the minds paving the way to the future of the Metaverse. He talked about the infinite possibilities that this could provide and the evolution of our way of thinking. the perfect topic to conclude 2 days filled with inspiration, information, and activation.
What the future looked like
2 days filled to the brim with new innovations, products, excellent speakers, a load of network opportunities, and crazy ideas. That might be about half of it. I can write about it as much as you want, but you just had to be there for the full experience. Want to relive FE22? Click here to watch the after movie.
Can’t wait for Future Entrepreneurship 2023? Join the waitlist here!
SINC maakt deel uit van het TAKEOFFANTWERP_ ecosysteem. Dit is een initiatief van de Associatie Universiteit & Hogescholen Antwerpen (UAntwerpen, AP Hogeschool Antwerpen, Antwerp Maritime Academy en KdG Hogeschool) samen met de stad Antwerpen en VOKA. VLAIO ondersteunt dit ecosysteem. #jongondernemen