VIDEO // A short immersion trip to VivaTech, Europe’s largest trade fair dedicated to technology and innovation. Our favorites, and our doubts…
Viva Technology, more commonly known as VivaTech, started on Wednesday June 15, 2022 for four days exclusively dedicated to the latest innovations in the world of Tech. This show, created in 2016 by The echoes and Publicis, is almost a baby in the world of tech-related trade shows, especially if we compare it to the CES in Las Vegas, created in 1967, or the IFA in Berlin, a real ancestor created in the mid-1920s. 2022 therefore marks the return to a hybrid format for this Porte de Versailles show, which had to be canceled in 2020 due to Covid, with a website giving access to all conferences and virtual stands.
A “pro” show that becomes “fun”
VivaTech has always been a bit of a shy show, perhaps even austere, even dull, without craziness. Perhaps it was justified by the combination of his young age and his “B2B” orientation.
This year, there has been a change: “finite” the aisles where you only meet representatives of various brands with a few rare concrete demonstrations of technological innovations. Make way for the robot dogs who walk in the aisles, the cosmonauts who stop to take selfies, the stands sometimes looking like of attractions, with multiple demonstrations sufficiently successful so that we do not have to work our imagination.
On site, a tangible future
If there are always various conferences so that start-ups and giants can present their vision of the future linked to technology, demos are now legion: wherever you go, you want to try this or that concept. It would almost make you forget the traditionally “pro” side of the show. A human-looking AI on a giant screen that challenges us, a robotic arm that prepares coffee, a TV set on a green background but with only one person really there and the second one embedded in the image while she is at hundreds of kilometres… astonishment guaranteed.
This is also one of the most significant things with this 2022 edition of VivaTech: we can try a lot of things, and despite the futuristic aspect, what we are trying seems to be within reach. The concepts finally give way to the concrete.
VivaTech is open to the public on Saturday June 18.