The geographic center of technology is shifting, the CEO and founder of global tech conference Web Summit – which will come to Qatar in 2024 – has said during the latest edition of Qatar Foundation’s Education City Speaker Series, as he highlighted that the Middle East is becoming a gateway connecting the world.

The talk, held in collaboration with the Government Communications Office (GCO), was attended by HE Sheikh Jassim bin Mansour bin Jabor Al-Thani, Director of GCO, and was moderated by Dr. Marc Owen Jones, Associate Professor in Digital Humanities and Societies at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, a member of Qatar Foundation (QF).

Speaking at Qatar National Library, Irish entrepreneur Cosgrave said: “I think technology, and the geographic centers of technology of science and innovation, are like a pendulum. They’re always switching.

“If you go back 1,000 years, more of the center of mathematics and science was very much in the Middle East. Skip forward half a millennium and beyond, much of it is in Western Europe later in the US.

“So I think the biggest change over the next 10 years is that the shift in the world is clearly underway. That shift is for the most part towards China, but it means that many other places in the world including the Middle East, and including Qatar are becoming far more important. And that’s a 500-year shift. The world is fundamentally changing.

“And when I think of Qatar, I see it more as a gateway between the East and the West.” Web Summit, which will take place in Qatar next year, is one of the world’s largest tech conferences. With events held all over the world, it attracts startups, investors, and influential tech speakers.

“I think it’s very important for us, when organizing and large gatherings in technology, to be global,” Cosgrave said.

“Any location that you pick needs to be a gateway. It has to be very open minded. It has to have the infrastructure airports, hotels, and venues. And Qatar has absolutely all of that.

Speaking about the some of the conference’s areas of focus, Cosgrave said that, over the years, Web Summit has worked to increase the number of women participants. “I remember, eight or nine years ago, when Web Summit was very young and very small, there was one very stark difference,” he said. “That was the participation of women, which was the case in general at technology conferences. The participation was probably 90 per cent male at the time.” But he said that with the introduction of specific programs for female executives and female entrepreneurs at Web Summit in Lisbon two years ago, the participation of women went up to 50 per cent.

Another key focus of Web Summit, according to Cosgrave, is inspiring the next generation, including university students, from all over the world, which is why scholarship programs, in different guises, were developed to enable students to participate.

The Education City Speaker Series is a QF platform for dialogue that allows the public to hear from and interact with local, regional, and international thought-leaders and experts.

Source: Qatar News Agency