TechFest 2021, Sustainability and Space

This year’s it@cork’s TechFest which ended on the 27th of May had a particular focus on the themes of sustainability and space.

Speakers at this annual technology festival highlighted the need for the industry to further focus on sustainability and accessibility. Over 750 people attended the fully virtual three-day event.

Speakers at TechFest

During one of the keynote speeches, Marcus Weldon, Former President of Bell Labs and CTO of Nokia discussed “the three Ps” of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. They are ‘Prosperity, People, and Planet’, and how emerging technologies such as robotics and machine learning will lessen the burden of data overload and repetitive tasks for workers of tomorrow.

He also hailed the pandemic as pushing mass adoption of existing video conferencing software as one of the greatest and lasting innovations of the last year.

In her address, Non-Executive Director at UNICEF Ireland and former Business Group President at Flex, Caroline Dowling said there was a lack of reliable fast broadband in Ireland. She said “For a true digital economy, for fair working from home and business practices, we must solve this issue faster than we have been doing. We need innovation through connecting existing technologies and using them to solve problems.”

Hosted by Jonathan McCrea, other speakers and panellists across the three days had Cathal Wilson, COO of Nexalusm Steve Fleming, CEO of Voxxify, Alan Holland, Founder and CEO at Keelvar and Dr Fiona EdwardsMurphy, cofounder of ApisProtect.

TechFest is supported by Trend Micro, it@cork skillnet, KPMG, Cork City Council, Berkley Recruitment, Telus, River Lee Hotel, Springboard Communications, Glandore and Dell Technologies.