Web Summit Returns To Lisbon In 2021 Featuring Microsoft's President, Amazon Alexa's Head And More

The Web Summit has become an unmissable conference for the tech world. The event is coming to Lisbon for the first time in five years and it features a large number of key industry members. Microsoft's President Brad Smith  will give a keynote speech, also will Internet Bill of Rights' Ro Khanna, Tinder CEO Jim Lanzone and Amazon Alexa's Head Tom Taylor, among others, which makes this a must-see event.

From the 1st to the 4th of November 2021, Web Summit's famous technology conference will occur in Lisbon for the first time in five years. At a moment of enormous uncertainty for many businesses, as a result of the pandemic, Web Summit brings together: founders and CEOs of technological firms, fast-growing startups, politicians, and leaders of the state to address a simple question: Where to next?

Through covering people who are confronting the industry's key issues today, this company's stages have included a wide variety of subjects; from deep tech and data science to design and environmental sustainability. According to KPMG, “in three days, Web Summit created new contacts and acquired strong leads that turn into important commercial relationships.” All of this contributed to Forbes declaring the "Web Summit to be the best technology conference in the world."

In response to the health dangers posed by the coronavirus epidemic, the program held its first entirely digital edition. However, the 2021 Web Summit will return to Lisbon in the Altice Arena, welcoming over 100,000 industry people for business and knowledge transfer for four days. Over 1,100 speakers will share their thoughts on the Web Summit stages, ranging from the CEOs of some of the largest technology corporations to the founders of forward-thinking start-ups.

The personalities of the Web Summit

Brad Smith, President of Microsoft

Brad Smith is the current President of Microsoft. An American Attorney, who after graduation joined the legal firm Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C. in 1986. He had one requirement for the job: he owned his own computer. He was the first in the business to have one, which ran Microsoft Word version 1.0. Smith spent three years in Washington, D.C., and four years in London, where he ran Covington's software practice. He had become a partner by 1993.

Smith joined Microsoft in 1993. For three years he led its Legal and Corporate Affairs team in Europe, then five years as deputy general counsel, from 2002 onwards. Smith was promoted to president and chief legal officer of Microsoft in 2015, in this position Smith was responsible for Microsoft's corporate, external, and legal affairs, whilst also being the firm's chief compliance officer. Smith announced the establishment of Microsoft Philanthropies, a department of the corporation committed to contributing money and services to the public good, three months into his new role. In the two years afterward, Microsoft Philanthropies has given tens of millions of dollars in grants to education and refugee groups, as well as hundreds of millions of dollars in Microsoft Azure cloud computing services to charities and researchers.

Jim Lanzone, CEO of Tinder

Jim Lanzone is the current CEO of Tinder. His background speaks for itself: he is the former Corporation Chief Digital Officer and President of CBS Interactive, which is a top ten consumer Internet property with over 300 million users worldwide. This company is one of the world's largest digital media companies (now the digital secondary of ViacomCBS).

As CEO of Tinder, Lanzone has contributed to the most popular app for meeting new people in the world. Tinder has been downloaded over 400 million times and is accessible in 190 countries and 40 languages. Tinder has over 6.2 million paying customers as of 2020 and is the highest-grossing non-gaming app in the world.

Tinder creates a user profile using images that have previously been submitted to Facebook. Basic information is acquired, and the social graphs of the users are examined. Candidates that are most likely to be compatible based on geographical proximity, a large number of mutual acquaintances, and shared hobbies are filtered into a list of matches. The software allows the user to anonymously like another person by swiping right or pass by swiping left based on the findings of potential prospects.

Ro Khanna, Internet Bill of Rights

Ro Khanna is a politician, lawyer, and scholar who now serves as the United States Representative for California's 17th congressional district. President Barack Obama nominated him as deputy assistant secretary of the United States Department of Commerce in 2009. Khanna made international trade visits and attempted to increase US exports in that role. This resulted in him being appointed to the White House Business Council.

The Endless Frontier Act, co-sponsored by Khanna, and others is a significant increase in research funding that will help to establish technology hubs around the country. This legislation was crucial in making it easier for companies to give apprenticeships to soldiers, since it was adopted by both the House and Senate and signed into law by President Trump on November 21, 2017. In addition to this, Khanna also put forward the Internet bill of rights.

According to Khanna, the Founding Fathers regarded people's right to privacy over their "persons, homes, papers, and assets" as a vital component of democracy Hence, as society has been becoming more digital, the same precautions should apply to our online actions.

He feels our laws have been pushed far beyond our technological capabilities, resulting in widespread breaches of our civil liberties. As a result, Khanna proposed six principles for an internet bill of rights, including the right to universal web access, internet privacy, the right to be free of unlawful data collection, the right to expose the amount, nature, and dates of secret government data requests, the right to be fully informed of the framework of data use, and the right to be informed of any change in control over data. Khanna feels that this will be critical in restricting the National Security Agency's (NSA) reach and in guaranteeing the future safety of the American internet world.

Tom Taylor, Amazon Alexa's Head

Amazon Alexa and Echo teams are led by Tom Taylor. He is in charge of over 10,000 engineers, scientists, product, business, operations, and sales professionals who are creating on behalf of consumers in order to deliver Alexa, the cloud-based voice service, to tens of millions of Amazon and third-party device makers' devices.

Tom began his career with Amazon in 2000 as the Director of Operations For US Fulfillment Centers. Since then, he has handled a variety of positions within the firm, including developing and expanding the Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) programme. As Senior Vice President, Amazon Seller Services, he was in charge of Amazon Payments, Transactional Risk Management, and Fulfillment by Amazon. Before joining Amazon, Tom worked for General Motors and K2 Sports for 15 years in Manufacturing and Plant Management.

And these are only the beginning in a live conference packed with big names. Along the four days, names such as FC Barcelona star Gerard Pique, Founder & President at Kosmos; Jen Wong, COO at Reddit; Margrethe Vestager, EVP: A Europe Fit for the Digital Age at European Commission; António Costa, Prime Minister at Government of Portugal will be others that will participate in the event.

We live in uncertain times for tech and business and Web Summit is trying to shed some light on tech advancements by bringing together major players in the industry. "At Web Summit, we welcome the people who are tackling the big challenges facing industry today. Our tracks cover topics ranging from deep tech and data science, to design and environmental sustainability. KPMG said that “In three days, we made new contacts and collected solid leads that convert into valuable business relationships,” the organizers said.

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