This month I founded AI Expo Europe, in Bucharest. I designed it as the first business event dedicated to artificial intelligence in Central and Eastern Europe. I know how that sounds: another conference, another name with “Europe” tacked on the end. Which is exactly why I want to explain why I did it, before we get to the agenda, the venue or the tickets.
This isn’t a press release. It’s closer to a manifesto: what bugged me in 2023, what the region is missing, and what kind of event I would want to attend as an entrepreneur, sitting in the audience rather than standing on stage.
2023, the year everyone talked about AI
If I had to sum up 2023 in one sentence, it would be this: there wasn’t a single business conversation that didn’t end up at AI. Over coffee, in board meetings, at dinner with fellow founders, the topic showed up on its own. What ChatGPT does, what it can do for my company, who it replaces, what it costs. I wrote about it at length in my 2023 review and in the AI guide for small businesses.
Last spring I wrote about how I use ChatGPT in business, in very practical terms. The reactions were telling. Few people asked me “what is AI?”. Most asked “fine, but where do I start?”. That question is the foundation of AI Expo Europe.
What was missing: a place for decision-makers
I looked at the AI events in the region and saw, broadly, two kinds. The first is highly technical: models, architectures, benchmarks. Great for developers, but a factory owner or a sales director walks out with a full head and empty hands. The second is generic: “AI changes everything”, slides with robots and motivational quotes. You leave inspired and, the next morning, you have no idea what to do differently.
There’s a big gap between the two. Business owners and managers need practical answers:
- what is worth implementing now and what can wait;
- what it really costs, not just the licence, but the people, the data and the time;
- what risks come with it: errors, confidential data, dependence on a single vendor;
- what rules are coming and how to prepare for them;
- how to prepare your team so AI becomes a tool, not a bogeyman.
That is what I want AI Expo Europe to be: a place you leave with a list of next steps, not just a mood.
Why here, in Central and Eastern Europe
I have answered “why Bucharest?” once before, when I explained why we brought Crypto Expo Europe to Bucharest. The arguments still hold, and for AI they are even stronger. The region has had excellent tech talent for years. Developers from Romania, Poland, Bulgaria or the Baltic states work for companies all over the world. We have serious IT firms, some with products used globally.
What we lack isn’t competence, it’s visibility and a place to meet. Too often, the region’s best people only run into each other at events in London or Berlin. I believe Bucharest and Romania deserve to be a meeting point, not just a talent pool for others. And a business event, done properly, is one of the simplest ways to get there.
Everyone in the same room
Applied AI doesn’t happen in a single office. For a company to use a new technology well, you need several kinds of people who don’t usually sit at the same table. That’s why I want AI Expo Europe to bring together:
- startup founders building products with AI;
- the companies that want to use them, from SMEs to large corporations;
- investors looking for where to put their money, beyond the hype;
- developers, without whom none of this exists;
- the public sector, which will have to regulate, procure and explain.
The best things at an event rarely happen on stage. They happen in the hallway, between a founder and a client, a developer and an investor, someone from government and someone who has actually shipped something. The organiser’s job is to make those encounters possible.
Applied AI, not hype
I’ve lived through enough waves of enthusiasm to recognise the smell. I’ve seen technologies inflated until they no longer resembled anything real. AI is different, because the tools actually work and are already in people’s hands. But that doesn’t make every promise true.
So my filter is simple: I want people on stage who show what they have done, not what they might do someday. Real cases, with what worked and what didn’t. Demos, not just slides. If someone leaves a panel knowing what to try in their company on Monday morning, the panel has done its job.
Rules, ethics and a fair society
At the end of 2023, Europe reached a political agreement on the AI Act, the first comprehensive law on artificial intelligence. Last summer I wrote about what Europe is preparing on AI regulation, and now things are getting concrete. For a company in the region this isn’t a topic for lawyers, it’s a strategic one: which systems you use, which data, what transparency obligations you have.
But I don’t want to reduce everything to compliance. For me, AI is also a question about what kind of society we are building. Who gets the education to use these tools? What happens to people whose jobs change? How do we make sure algorithms don’t deepen inequality? I want AI Expo Europe to talk openly about education, inclusion and responsible use. Not as a box-ticking PR exercise, but because a technology that helps only a few isn’t progress, it’s privilege.
What I learned from previous events
I’m not starting from scratch. I was a strategic advisor to Crypto Expo Europe and I organise Bucharest Summit, and I wrote down the lessons from organising a large crypto event while they were still fresh. Several of them come straight with me to AI Expo Europe:
- an event is first and foremost logistics and trust, and trust is built from boring details;
- who attends matters more than how many;
- the stage is for people who explain, not people who sell;
- the room will hold both beginners and experts, and the agenda has to respect both.
And one new lesson, specific to AI: the technology moves so fast that what was true six months ago may already be outdated. The programme has to stay alive until close to the event.
How to get involved
We’ll announce the concrete details one by one, when they are certain, not before. Until then, if any of the above struck a chord, follow AI Expo Europe and tell us what you would want to find there. If you have implemented something with AI in your company and have an honest story to tell, with wins and mistakes, I want to hear it. If you’re just starting out and only have questions, even better: your questions are the programme.
So let me ask you directly: if you were in the room at the region’s first business event dedicated to AI, what is the one question you would absolutely want answered?