USC TO HOST ‘INNOVATE ARMENIA’

10:57, 05 Feb 2015
Siranush Ghazanchyan

On Saturday, February 21, the USC Institute of Armenian Studies
will host Innovate Armenia, an all-day event on the USC campus,
Asbarez reports.

>From 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., on two different stages, global change-makers,
trendsetters, out-of-the-box thinkers and creative artists from all
walks of life will be presenting the best of innovative thought,
innovative music and innovative activism. There will be booths
with innovative organizations and tech companies from Armenia and
the Diaspora.

“It’s time to re-position the term ‘Armenia,’ the idea of Armenia in
the same sentence with ‘innovation’ – something we’ve been doing, as
a nation, for thousands of years. We have innovative tech companies,
creative artists, music and food. We have also invited organizations
doing ground-breaking work in Armenia to develop civil society in
new, untraditional ways. We’re proud to present them here, at USC,
at Innovate Armenia,” said Salpi Ghazarian, Director of the USC
Institute of Armenian Studies.

“In every one of today’s leading economic, technology, and social
sectors, there are Armenians standing at the forefront. And many of
those trendsetters will be here, with us on February 21. We hope the
Los Angeles community joins us for this first-of-its-kind event,”
she continued.

On an indoor stage, the headliners will be in conversation throughout
the day with leading USC scholars in technological innovation,
communication, engineering and the arts. Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of
Reddit and deemed by Forbes as ‘the Mayor of the Internet’, will join
Raffi Krikorian, who was, until recently, Vice President of Twitter
and responsible for making the platform user friendly. Also on stage
will be Lara Setrakian of News Deeply – an award-winning journalist
and entrepreneur who is on several ‘Young Global Leaders’ lists. She
has created the multi-source News Deeply platform which looks at
complex hot topics such as Syria or the Ebola outbreak, more broadly.

These special guests will be joined, on and off stage, LIVE and by
Skype, by cutting edge entrepreneurs like Alexander Seropian who
have changed the world of video games and mobile gaming. Alexander
Seropian’s company, Bungee, created the video game HALO, which went
on to change the place of video games in society.

Another presenter, Zareh Baghdasarian, heads Armorway, a company
that uses patented game-theoretic algorithms to convert data into
intelligence-driven strategies, and enhances an organization’s
ability to focus its energy on understanding the competition and
adversaries rather than gathering and analyzing information. He is
also Entrepreneur-in-Residence at USC Viterbi School of Engineering
and will join fellow tech entrepreneur Al Eisaian to talk about their
ground-breaking work in Silicon Valley and in Armenia. Other names in
the emerging personal robotics industry, in gaming, and other sectors
will also be announced.

Several Armenia-based start-ups who are pushing the limits of the
industry will be at INNOVATE ARMENIA including LionSharp, Zangi,
PicsArt, and Teamable. The founders of HIVE, the first Armenian tech
startup accelerator and network, will be there to share their vision.

While all these take place on an indoor stage, on an adjacent lawn,
on the outdoor stage, cutting edge musicians Bei Ru, Sima Cunningham
and Sebu will be joining the new, hip French band Collectif Medz
Bazar for a full day of creative, edgy new music. Throughout the
day, fellow musicians Antranig Kzirian, Element, Ooshatsank, and the
Hosharian Brothers Band will mix the old and the new in creative ways.

“Innovation is not limited to the technological world. In Armenia,
there are civic organizations which have become successful precisely
because they are innovative in their methodology and the way they
define their mission. Nearly a dozen such organizations will be here
to talk about what they do and how they do it,” explained Ghazarian.

These organizations include the Tumo Center for Creative Technologies,
CivilNet Internet television, the Homeland Development Initiative
Foundation, Birthright Armenia, the Impact Hub, Repat Armenia,
Urban Lab, Paros Charitable Foundation, the Armenian Center
for Contemporary and Experimental Art, the American University of
Armenia, the Houshamadyan Project, the Foundation for the Protection
of Wildlife and Culture, and some others. “It’s an opportunity to meet
and speak with the creative people who are making change in Armenia,”
Ghazarian continued.