With speakers and performers coming from 80 countries and covering 5 continents, over 10,000 people gathered on the banks of River Danube at Corvinus University for three days of mind-expanding talks, sparkling explorations, and groundbreaking ideas. This was Brain Bar Budapest 2018.
Between May 31-June 2, the Hungarian capital was the place for questioning answers and doing away with stale arguments, as it buzzed with electrifying ideas and illuminating debates – be it the creation of “better” humans through genome editing, solving the migration crisis, giving machines rights or feeding the world’s poor with meals made out of leftover ingredients – there were no taboos on the versatile program.
With HIF’s support, some of the best and brightest from the US, like Peter Thiel, Chairman of Palantir Technologies, one of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, co-founder of PayPal, investor of Facebook, LinkedIn and SpaceX, or David Johnson Director of the Center for Advanced Defence Studies, a decorated veteran and Army strategist, who leads C4ADS, a non-profit leveraging emerging technology to study the illicit networks that perpetrate corruption, trans-national crime, and political violence, made it across the pond to present to the dynamic young audience.
This year, 130 volunteers joined the festival to excel at various tasks, while 2,500 students and teachers were able to attend the event for free. This is what reinforces the fundamental purpose of the festival, according to the event’s founder, Gergely Böszörményi-Nagy, who wants to make our world more accessible to those who might not be able to afford to go to a typical tech, science, culture or design conference. His reasoning?
“Because having even the strongest line-up in Brain Bar’s history can be insufficient to make real impact if we leave out the citizens of the future.”
Watch the recap video of the event here: