Porto Tech Hub brings academic and business worlds together
The 9th edition of the Porto Tech Hub Conference brought together more than 1,400 participants and thirty partner companies at Alfândega do Porto, with talks, practical workshops and networking being the highlights. The event strengthened the link between the academic and business worlds, promoting the sharing of knowledge and technological innovation.
More than 1,400 participants, thirty partners and a program that included almost 25 talks and four practical workshops. These were the figures for the 9th edition of the Porto Tech Hub Conference, an event that the organization intends to put not only on the agenda of the national technology ecosystem, but also on the international one. At Alfândega do Porto, Luís Silva, president of Porto Tech Hub, underlined the growing impact of the initiative: “Over these nine years, we’ve been trying to create an impact on the city, the region and the Northern ecosystem. Not only by bringing in international speakers, but also by giving visibility to national speakers. Something very important that we promote at this conference is the sharing of information, not least because technology changes very quickly and it’s difficult to always be on the top of the wave.”
Stephen Chin, vice president of developer relations at JFrog, gave the opening talk ‘Give Your LLMs a Left Brain’, in which he used an analogy with the human brain to explain how large language models (LLMs) work. In Stephen Chin’s view, while the human brain has two hemispheres – the right, associated with creativity and intuition, and the left, with logic and analysis – AI, similarly, has strengths and limitations depending on the task. The expert pointed out that while generative AI is excellent for creative tasks, it faces a major challenge in terms of accuracy and updating information.
Among the speakers, Nicolas Fränkel addressed the challenge of maintaining security in complex corporate environments with hundreds of applications and multiple accesses, while Kim van Wilgen presented practical strategies for leading self-organizing teams in dynamic environments. Sander Hoogendoorn explored the concept of organizational “unlocking” in the post-Agile era, giving concrete examples of tools that can promote continuous innovation.
Getting Hands-On
The workshops, dubbed ‘deep dives’ by Samuel Santos, vice-president of Porto Tech Hub, allowed participants to deepen their knowledge in areas such as quantum computing, systems architecture, data science, cloud and generative AI development tools. Samuel Santos was a particular fan of this concept, as in this way participants “can take their computers with them and learn and ask questions on the spot”.
One aspect that was particularly emphasized by both Luís Silva and Samuel Santos was the need to bridge the gap between the academic and business worlds, something that, incidentally, is part of Porto Tech Hub’s “mission”: “Today, there is already a greater awareness of the importance of bringing the academic, innovation and business worlds closer together. We have a lot of talent here in Porto, who finish higher education very well prepared and with this mentality already in place. In fact, the association has formed a partnership with the Porto Higher Engineering Institute (ISEP), which has resulted in the creation of four postgraduate courses, two of which are focused on specializing professionals who are already in the market, partially funded by the Santander Foundation.
Portugal Has An “Entrepreneurial Spirit”
In addition to the technical content, the event stood out for its networking opportunities and for promoting an entrepreneurial spirit. Luís Silva recognized the evolution of this mentality in the country: “What I’ve seen, especially in recent years, is people leaving companies and setting up their own startups. This was unthinkable a few years ago; there was the fear of losing a place that was perhaps already very dignified within the organizational structure.”
The future of the Porto Tech Hub Conference is already set, with the 10th edition scheduled for October 7, 2025. Samuel Santos also recalled that this ninth edition “exceeded the expectations” of the organization and “reflected the relevance” of the event for the city. “For the next edition, in which we celebrate our tenth anniversary, the aim is to continue to be at the forefront of technology and to boost this community,” he concluded.
