Canadian Ambassador Philip Pinnington, CANSEE member companies, Redknee, Jantar Group and Greentech, and CANSEE delegation attended the Macedonia2025 Summit, held on October 20-21 at Marriott Hotel, Skopje. This year more than 250 guests attended 11 panel discussions presided by 40 speakers from more than 25 countries in the world.
The Macedonia2025 Summit is a dynamic platform for sharing knowledge, where top notch experts and highly ranked regional and global thought leaders discuss business, technology and leadership.
The speakers discussed on topics such as the electronic vehicle revolution, the development of smart cities, connectivity between platforms and the use of natural resources towards reaching sustainable economic development. Experts from Italy, Norway, Poland, Japan and other countries presented the best practices that are used around the world, and implemented in Macedonia. The panel on women leadership emphasized the importance of women business for every country that is striving to reach sustainable development.
Mr. Mihail Mateski, general manager at Greentech was one of this year’s Summit speaker, during ‘Entrepreneurship in using renewable energies’ panel session. Mr. Mateski spoke on the business case of recycling plastics across the region: general industry trends and prospects including plans for regional expansion.
“Stop littering and start recycling. That waste is a resource. So you need to care. Let’s make recycling cool!”, Mr. Mateski pointed out.
Greentech is a leading recycler of PET packaging and is a member of Green Group which is the largest PET bottle recycler in Eastern Europe.
Key speaker at the Summit, Mr. Guruduth Banavar, Chief Science Officer and Vice President at IBM Research, gave an impressive presentation about the way in which smart systems can analyze and process data which is used in the development of smart cities. Mr. Banavar talked about the example of Rio de Janeiro and cited ways in which people can work to preserve the environment and improve health through the cooperation between humans and machines.
Other keynote speakers were Zdravko Pocivalshek, Slovenian Minister of economic development; Nika Gilauri, Former Prime Minister of Georgia; Karina Barnholt Klepper, Nordic council of ministries; Riccardo Monti, Former President of ICE Italian Trade Agency, Livio Stracca, European Central Bank; Michael Mizrahi, Azrieli college in Jerusalem; Marko Butkovic, European Space Agency, Germany; Shuichi Fukuda, Professor at Stanford University, Francesco Oddone, Independent consultant on European Smart City projects, etc.
CANSEE Canadian Serbian Business Association supported the Summit, second year in a row. The number of CANSEE member companies attending the Summit increases every year and we hope that this good practice will continue to develop in future.
The text was adapted from the Macedonia2025 announcement published on October 27 at www.macedonia2025.com