For decades, The World Expos have been the international epicenter of innovations and ideas that shaped the future. Traditionally, the purpose of the expo held first in London in 1851 is to bring together hundreds of nations from all over the globe, providing them the context to highlight a fine mixture of national culture and top-notch ideas to inspire the world. From the telephone and the Eiffel Tower to X-Ray machines, touchscreens, and humanoid robots, the international exhibitions have been the meeting point where pieces of future encountered the challenges of the present, determining humankind to grow and evolve.

In 2022, mindit had the honor to be there. As part of Romania’s official delegation under economic mission (being an ATIC member, mindit represents national capabilities from a tech perspective since 2015), Roxana Staneiu and Alexandru Puiu went to Expo Dubai 2020 to discuss ideas and innovations on Machine learning, Artificial Intelligence, and how we approach data-driven development to shape the future of technology. Today, Expo Dubai 2020 will close its gates after six months of highlighting unimaginable plans and initiatives, and we are so excited to share more about how we experienced it.

Being the largest event ever held in the Middle East, Expo Dubai 2020 gravitated around the idea of “Connecting Minds and Creating the Future” through sustainability, mobility, and opportunity. We had the chance to observe how hundreds of countries came together to find solutions to our greatest challenges while discovering the latest scientific and technological innovations in various fields, such as technology, space travel, and climate change. We got to experience the cultural taste of the global pavilions and learned more about how they envisaged the future of IoT, transport or even nature: hyperloop, smart cities, autonomous robots, AI tools, disruptive devices, holograms, etc.

Taking part in the Romanian economic mission on Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, we discussed how we position ourselves in the current tech sector. We believe that data is the future, and we have been working on implementing data-driven approaches using the state of the art technologies and tools for developing custom-made solutions. We had the opportunity to conduct discussions with various officials from international Pavilions, such as New Zealand, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, talking about fostering bilateral relations through the lenses of software development. We were happy to see a lot of openness and interest from the pavilions in terms of introducing us to the IT sector in their countries, having in mind everyone is more and more interested in the global digital transformation governed by ML and AI.

Expo Dubai 2020 was a lively and novel journey that allowed us to emerge into the future by employing technology as a time travel machine. Bringing the world together in a unique place, with the common purpose of finding solutions to essential challenges we face as humanity, can only be a fundamental catalyst for bringing new ideas to life. We are glad to have been part of this immersive and integrated experience, emphasizing the role of data-driven development in ML and AI environments.

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