BrainBar Budapest 2018

Stepping out of your comfort zone, leaving the bubble of opinions and thoughts we agree are something we’d love to, but rarely get to do. But there is a special place for debating dangerous ideas and contrarian opinions. Where there are no cookie-cutter answers because discussions and facing our own prejudice and myths are more important: this is Brain Bar.

Between May 31 and June more than ten thousand visitors filled the halls of Corvinus University in Budapest to meet their future. 2000 of them were students and teachers, the festival’s unique VIPs who get free tickets since the festival’s launch in 2015.

This year’s lineup of masterminds from the field of science, politics, business, arts and design featured such highlights as Peter Thiel, the boldest entrepreneur of the Silicon Valley. The co-founder of PayPal and first investor of Facebook is famous for the string of successful companies attached to his name, as well as his daring thoughts. EU Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager kicked off this year’s festival with an open-air talk. The tamer of tech titans reminded the audience that “technology is our future, not our fate”. Large audience gathered around three Michelin star chef Massimo Bottura who shared a secret behind his innovations: “to create the future you have to know everything, and also forget everything you know”. Another star of the festival was Sophia, the world’s first humanoid citizen who answered the audience’s questions about the future and even recalled her very first memory.