Sesame Summit 2026 – application open

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Elena Poughia

Highlights

  • During Media day at Slush, Elena and other journalists were able to see innovative companies like Biotech startup Onego, and sustainability startup Spinnova.
  • I am the CEO of Dataconomy but the Founder of the Data Natives conference.
  • Dataconomy, a media platform focusing on data science, machine learning, and AI, has an interesting history because originally it was part of a company builder which allowed them to incubate and part ways.
  • When Google and the European Commission made a statement about AI ethics (How to make AI technology that is ethical, especially when automated without further human input), it allowed Dataconomy to boost its mission.
  • Monica Rogati‘s, lead of data science on LinkedIn, article on the movement from people being digital natives to becoming data natives and expecting technology to work for them is the inspiration for the conference name.
  • Covid-19 gave Data Natives the opportunity to create hackathons online like the EU vs Virus hackathon, comprised of 25,000 professionals online under commissioner Mariya Gabriel.
  • Now, Data Natives is running the Partisia hackathon in Paris with grants of up to $350,000 which you can check out here.
  • This industry is surprisingly still new, still forming, which on one side means regulations but on the other, it’s things that we can improve.
  • This is why I mentor new sustainability and impact-driven startups and communities like Tech2Impact, African Tech Vision, or the Green Tech Alliance.

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