Tom Brady, Eric Schmidt and AI, the “stars” of this year’s eMerge forum

The innovation and technology forum eMerge Americas will kick off its 2023 edition on Thursday in Miami Beach (USA), with former American football player Tom Brady and former CEO of Google Eric Schmidt as main speakers and the artificial intelligence (AI) at the center of debate.

On the main stage of the Miami Beach Convention Center, the usual venue for this forum and fair that functions as a “bridge” technology between the United States and Latin America, the seven-time winner of the “Super Bowl” will hold a conversation with Felice Gorordo and Melissa Medina, executive director and president, respectively, of eMerge Americas.

The next day it will be the turn of the mayor of Miami, Francis Suárez, and Schmidt, who between 2001 and 2011 was in charge of Google and is the founder of the philanthropic organization Schmidt Futures.

Both will talk about the growing technological profile of this South Florida metropolitan area, where according to the organization of this two-day event, US$ 5.810 million was invested in start-ups in 2022, more than the previous year.

As Gorordo pointed out, Schmidt will also speak about “how AI is positioned to disrupt and improve all aspects of our lives” in this forum, in which he will also participate Angle Bushfounder of Black Women In Artificial Intelligenceand the filmmaker Phil Lordwho was behind the Oscar-winning animated film “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”.

Increasingly consolidated within the sector, the Miami forum, whose first edition was held in 2014, brought together more than 20,000 attendees from fifty countries, as well as some 4,000 organizations last year, a figure that is expected to be exceeded this year. .

Presence of Spain and Latin America

This great forum for technological entrepreneurship is attended by dozens of companies and institutions from Spain and Latin America, which in the case of the former will double its participation this year with fifty startups and, for the first time, with representatives of the innovation departments of two large companies: Iberia and Endesa.

This is the second year that the public body ICEX Spain Export e Inversiones and Red.es have a space in the fairgrounds, with the aim of promoting the international projection of the Spanish sector of the digital economy.

The director of the Infrastructure, Health and Digital Entrepreneurship Division of ICEX, Jose Maria Blasco Ruizwill talk about the benefits of starting a technology company in the Iberian country, where eleven of the 100” companies that this year will be part of the “Startup Showcase” come from.

In this section, the “heart and spirit” of the eMerge Americasas the organization points out, and in which there will be a prize of $420,000 for the company that wins a competition, nine emerging companies from Chile will also participate, among others.

The Chilean delegation arrives at this appointment hand in hand with the official institution ProChilewhose Miami Commerce Commissioner Claudia Serrer and entrepreneurs René Espinoza and Eyal Shats will talk about the technological ecosystem in the Latin American country.

According to ProChileLast year, the country exported US$359 million in technological services, and in the last five years, 136 firms in this sector started operations in the United States, of which 34 chose Florida as their “Launch pad”.

William Malamud, from the American Chamber of Commerce of the Dominican Republic, and Ángela María Camacho, president of the board of directors of the Colombian-American Chamber of Commerce, will be other of the official representatives of Latin American countries that will participate in the forum.

Miami, focus of technological entrepreneurship

In turn, the mayor of Miami-Dade, Daniella Levine Cava, and the president of the Miami-based firm Kaseya, Fred Voccola, will talk about the impact of the public-private partnership in this Florida county.

The mayor of Miami Beach, Dan Gelber, the president of the University of Miami, Julio Frenk, and his counterpart from Miami Dade College, Madeline Pumariega, will speak about the growing technological fabric of South Florida, which is located in the seventh position among the metropolitan areas with the highest technological investment in the US.

Among the issues that will be discussed this year at eMerge Americas are web3, cybersecurity, entrepreneurship and investment with “a focus on diversity, equity and inclusion”, as well as interactive experiences, as the organization pointed out.

In parallel, three congresses will be held: eGov (political leadership), Women, Innovation & Technology (women in technology) and Investment Summit, spread over different stages and with first-class speakers.

Source: EFE