On 25th of February I decided to attend a conference – Innovation Explorer 2016. I went there not as a speaker(strange for me too), but as someone who recently started his own company and as someone who wanted to get some practical advises and create some new contacts. (I did live blogging from the conference sharing both what I found useful and also the problems I saw during the presentations of the speakers).

The result: For such a premium conference – one that costs more than 100 Euros for a day(that’s a lot for Bulgaria), I am completely sure I will not attend next year. Why? Even though the networking was, let’s say, OK, the content was on a very, very low level. There were speakers from companies like Google, Intel, Pixar, HPE who instead of providing value to the audience(I will not even touch on their presentation skills and slide designs – you can see more on the link above), they were doing self-promotion of their companies!? Are you kidding me? As a speaker, your presentation must be focused towards your audience’s needs, not yours! Anyways…

The best speaker at the whole event was a woman from Bulgaria(surprise, surprise to all of you event managers who still believe that just because the speaker is from a different country than Bulgaria, then he/she is 100% better than the ones here) who is the president’s adviser on innovation and who talked about what we as a country should be striving for and doing in the next few years in case we want to advance as a nation.

To sum it up, my opinion is that Innovation Explorer was nothing special. At least the conference. May be the workshops were great and may be the VIP dinner allowed for better networking. I don’t know. The main event though, was not worth the money and if there is an event next year, I would seriously consider whether I should go. Especially on a price like this.