This year’s conference was no different, and after two years of being virtual due to COVID, everyone was out in full force to join forces again and show what incredible things can and will be achieved with technology.

“Web3 offers us new types of tools to authenticate and grow, however it also poses a sense of risk for sure, so people will of cause be cautious,” was just one of the many discussions around Web3 and what we may see from the metaverse in the near future from Tomer Poran, Vice President of Business Development at ActiveFence.

And carrying on the conversation around Web3 and crime in the metaverse, Kristina Lucrezia Editor-in-Chief Cointelegraph said: “Humans can be malicious, but there is always a sense of moral and doing the right thing. I think if we have humans working with technology, we will have goodwill.”

Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau from the MIT Technology Review explored some of the current big trends in technology, and one that definitely got people talking was aging clocks. She explained that MIT Technology Review had been looking into this a lot recently, and the phenomenon with aging clocks was intriguing a lot of people in the tech world.

These clocks promise to measure biological age and help identify anti-aging drugs, but there are lingering questions over their accuracy. “A bit eerie, but the thing with this technology is the more you know, the more you can see, open your eyes and make better choices and changes. These are coming and will be a lot more common amongst us sooner rather than later,” Elizabeth said.

Sustainability

You cannot go a day now without discussing or reading about ESGs or sustainability, when it comes to business or technology, and this is all for the right reasons. At this years Summit there were several talks and sessions on how we can make businesses, and scale in a more sustainable way, but also the changes we can make in technology to be more sustainability conscious.

We heard in a couple of sessions from Michelle You - Co-founder of Supercritical, a software company helping businesses get to NetZero, founded just last year. Michelle explained that they focus primarily on tech businesses, as tech emits more emissions than the aviation sector – and this is growing more and more. She added that teams in the technology sector when they become aware do want to do more to change this and make a difference though. “Acting on climate change, tech companies seem to be super conscious on this.”

At the show, there were also several mentions on Greenwashing especially within the tech sector. Michelle was quick to express though she believes most of it is just confusion. “There is so much constantly evolving and changing, and so much literature not to understand.”

Of course, this is not the case for all greenwashing, and some of which is intentional, Michelle said: “For some businesses it is about seeing how much they can get away with.”

Staying on the sustainability conversation, we also heard from Hugh Weldon, Founder of Evocco and Chris Kelly, Founder of Tracworx, who discussed what is more important scaling fast or scaling sustainably?

For Hugh, sustainability had always been on his mind and he for this reason created his company with sustainability at the forefront to try and help solve a problem. He explained: “It was the Paris agreement for me, the signing of the agreement made me realise the extent to the climate problem and how we are not on track at all to fixing it, so I wanted to pro-actively do something myself using technology.”

With Chris, although sustainability is important and key for making a difference, he explained Tracworx started originally to work on packaging, not specifically sustainability. “Sustainability soon came into it, to address the needs of our customers, but it wasn’t the reason we first started.”

A key takeaway from the conversation was whether sustainability is at the front of your mind when creating a business, or it comes secondary, including sustainable choices and values within your startup is not only key to building a good business, but making a positive change in tech.