On Tuesday 29 November 2022 at the European Convention Center Luxembourg (ECCL), the 2nd edition of TNT Symposium attracted 700 Technology, Innovation and Digital leaders for a human-centric evening; the prize-giving ceremony and gala dinner were attended by over 500 participants.
Laurent Pulinckx, CIO of Bourse de Luxembourg (LuxSE) was awarded the THECIO23 Prize and will therefore serve as the ambassador of the community throughout 2023. The Luxembourg Tech Firm of the Year Prize was awarded to Fujitsu Luxembourg. The Human.First Honor Prize was granted to Sergio Coronado in recognition of his involvement and leadership in the creation and development of the Luxembourg Tech School (LTS).
Human.First: Tipping the Balance Toward the Human Side
Kamel Amroune, founder and CEO of TechSense by The Dots, opened the symposium by greeting the audience of Luxembourg's Tech, Innovation & Digital community members. He thanked the event's sponsors and partners, whose commitment he underlined, and set the scene for the rest of the day, placed under the Human.First label.
Kamel Amroune gave the floor to the minister of the Economy, Franz Fayot, who delivered an inspiring opening speech by video. His intervention was followed by welcoming remarks from Martin Wolfram, Country Managing Director Luxembourg, Accenture.
Keynotes and Round Table
To explore further the theme of the day, TechSense invited two keynote speakers, Kris Howard, Head of Developer Relations APJ, Amazon Web Services, and Tom Ghelen, Technology Innovation Lead, Accenture.
"Human-first Innovation"
"Amazon set itself the goal of becoming Earth’s most customer-centric company", stated Kris Howard. "Rather than focus on what our competitors are doing or inventing technology in a vacuum, our focus is solely on innovating new solutions that make people’s lives better, to give them a customer experience that is easier, faster, better, and more cost-effective", she explained.
Kris Howard also shared some stories of Luxembourg companies and organizations who are leveraging the Cloud to improve people’s lives. She talked about some of humanity’s biggest challenges around sustainability and closing the technology skills gap, and how Amazon is trying to help.
"Radically Human"
"By Radically Human, we are talking about technologies that are rooted in human capabilities, but are also revolutionary", said Tom Ghelen. He told the audience that, based on this, a new path to business success is emerging. And to begin solving the equation, business leaders must flip commonly held assumptions around five business fundamentals – Intelligence, Data, Expertise, Architecture, and Strategy. "With IDEAS, companies large and small have an innovation framework to re-evaluate and revolutionize the core building blocks of the enterprise", he said.
"Competing in the Radically Human Future" round table
The keynotes were followed by a round table session entitled "How to compete successfully in the radically human future?" and moderated by Rudy Mazzalovo, Managing Director Transformation Partnerships Europe, Accenture. Panelists were Sasha Baillie, CEO of Luxinnovation, Olivier Beaujean, CIO of Cargolux, Vincent Arnal, CIO of LALUX, and Jerry Grbic, CEO of ABBL.
The afternoon sessions ended on a light note with one-man shows by humorists Redouanne Harjane, Ayoub Marceau, and Marine Ella.
In the evening, after a lively networking cocktail, the Prime Minister of Luxembourg, Xavier Bettel, addressed the participants by video conference and voiced his strong support for the development of the country's technology industry an innovators. Mr Bettel's speech was followed by the prize-giving ceremony and dinner. The evening ended with a warm and friendly after-party.
