Elazig: Emerging City of Makers and Developers

You are here:

Home
General
Elazig: Emerging City of Makers and Developers

21 April 2017 Leave a commentGeneral

“It was great to be in Elazig and to meet such a talented people especially students young people making robots, new generation drones, creating new ideas and a big willing to develop more. I was impressed of seeing these people in Eastern Anatolia a city I’ve been first time in my life. I was amazed how those students from Fırat and Inonu Universities stayed tuned all day in the conference rooms in different sessions, even at the last day’s last conference, that was remarkable. I see a great potential for ICT development in this city and investments should be done for these people immediately.” are the words of Leyla Arsan CEO of TAGES who had been as a speaker in the DBB’17 Conference which was the first and extensive ICT meeting in Eastern Anatolia Region of Turkey organized by Fırat University, Firat Teknokent, Harput Agency and Nida Agency in Elazig Akgun Hotel on March 9-10, 2017. The aim of the event was to bring together regional and national business, government, politics, academics, entrepreneurs and investors with the ICT professionals from all over Turkey in order to enhance cooperation, investments and create sectoral-regional synergies in ICT sector in Eastern Anatolia, Turkey. During the event, the issues of technology in the region, in the country and in the world were discussed within 4 main topics below by the ICT professionals and the sector experts:

Future Technologies
Business Solutions and Digitalisation
Public Information Solutions
New Generation Telecommunication

The event started with the opening speeches of Prof. Erhan AKIN, General Manager of Firat Teknokent, Nezih Kuleyin, President of TOSYOV, İlker Tabak, President of Turkish Informatics Association, Tayfun Acarer, Former President of BTK, Dr. Halil Yesilcimen, Deputy Managing Director of Turksat, Prof. Kutbettin Demirdag, Rector of Firat University, Mucahit Yanilmaz, Mayor of Elazig, and Murat Zorluoglu, Governor of Elazig.

There were also distinguished professors and ICT leaders as speakers in the event with their visionary speeches on Machine Learning by Prof.. Dr. Sıddık Yarman, on Industry 4.0 by Suat Baysan and Digital Marketing by Prof. Dr. Gonca Telli besides other important speakers and participants.

After the opening speeches, parallel sessions started in 4 main categories above. During 2-days event, the most popular sessions were about future innovative technologies, 3D printer technologies, cloud technologies, Industry 4.0, Big Data, 4G and 5G technology, IoT, R&D and innovation, e-commerce, e-signature, digital marketing, education technologies, health technologies, cyber security, smart cities, and new generation telecommunication.

Leyla Arsan, CEO of TAGES, was one of the speakers of the event and gave two speeches on European Digital Single Market in “Digital Business World” panel session and Smart Cities and Open Data in “Digital Transformation and Smart Cities” panel session. Arsan pointed out the importance of open data policies, city digital plans, legal regulations and integration with Europe to develop Turkey and played the video to inspire students on the Hackathonist organised in 2014. She also emphasized some of the most important facilitators to be a smart city such as Open Data, SDKs and APIs, development portals and Start-Up ecosystems of municipalities and cities.

There was a great interest from all type of participants to the event. Especially, high participation of university students was very pleasing. Next year the event will be organized in other city in Eastern Anatolia Region and it will continue with the other cities upcoming years.