YEREVAN — On July 27-28, the Armenian FEMINNO organization held the biggest female innovation conference in Armenia and in the region for the third time. More than 50 speakers gathered under one roof during two days of talks and workshops and discussed the hottest topic of the technological world: Artificial intelligence and its impact on all spheres of life.
FemInno 2024 was opened with a welcome speech by the Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sports, Zhanna Andreasyan, addressed to the conference participants and guests who arrived from more than 10 countries: USA, Great Britain, Germany, Denmark, Austria, Netherlands, Georgia, etc. Mrs. Andreasyan reaffirmed the importance of educational initiatives in the fields of STEM in Armenia. In her speech, she pointed out the positive impact of governmental standards in the field of public education in this direction.
During the opening of the conference, the new collaboration with the WCIT conference was also announced. The founder of FEMINNO, Seda Papoyan, and the executive director of WCIT 2024, Hayk Karapetyan, signed a Memorandum of Understanding.
Among the guest speakers of the FEMINNO conference was Ida Tin representing Germany, who is the creator of the term femtech in 2016. Her Clue mobile app is the number one women’s health app in the world with over 15 million users in 180 countries.
Among the speakers were Sabrina Palme, the founder of Palqee from Great Britain, artificial intelligence researcher Eugenia Stamboliev from Austria, Armen Orujyan, the head of the Armenian FAST Foundation, under whose leadership the “AI Generation” program is implemented in public schools, one of the directors of world-famous Armenian startup Picsart – Madlene Minassian, Danish Nermeen Ghoniem, who is a member of the board of the Danish National Center for Artificial Intelligence, and many others.
Zarik Boghossian, one of the speakers of the conference, an American-Armenian, who is the founder of several successful technology businesses and also an investor in many Armenian startups, shared his story leading to success and conveyed great inspiration to the hall.
This year, FEMINNO was hosted in one of the oldest buildings in Yerevan, the Arno Babajanyan concert hall in the heart of the capital, where talks, workshops, panel discussions and performances were held on all floors. The conference once more cooperated with such international organizations as UNDP and GIZ.
This year, the conference was joined by long-standing partners such as the international Align Technology, as well as new partners, including the Amundi-ACBA asset management company.
“We can already confidently say that every year at the end of July, thanks to FEMINNO, we are able to create an international celebration of women and innovation, which makes Armenia visible and interesting to the world in a new way. We reaffirm that in Armenia and everywhere, women have great potential in all levels of innovation.” – said Seda Papoyan, the head of FEMINNO.
Leading experts and managers of Armenian IT companies shared their experience on FEMINNO’s “Armenia” stage, including Irina Dumanyan, the head of Siemens Armenia, Suzanna Azoyan, the executive director of SADA Armenia, Arsen Baghdasaryan, the head of DataArt, and others. Industry experts in HR like Ani Meruzhan Margaryan, Lilit Gevorgyan, Lilit Papikyan, Narek Aslikyan and others shared their professional experience with the participants.
At the end of the FEMINNO 2024 conference, the organization’s annual scholarship program named after Sona Mnatsakanyan was summarized. 8 young girls received scholarships to pursue their educational goals in the fields of science and technology.
In the near future, the FEMINNO platform plans to bring its traveling conference format to New York, which they called a satellite. The previous FEMINNO “satellites” reached San Francisco and Sydney.
