The jury members —
Gonçal Calvo
Head of Innovation at BMAT Music Innovators
Gonçal Calvo is the Head of Innovation at BMAT, a music tech company that acts as the operating system for the music industry using data and proprietary technology to streamline royalties and copyright. With a foundation in telecommunications engineering (UPC, Barcelona) and specialized training in computer science applied to music (IRCAM, Paris), Gonçal has spent over 14 years at BMAT. He’s been instrumental in building the company’s core music databases and now drives innovation through strategic R&D&I projects and partnerships, exploring cutting-edge technologies to empower the music industry. Essentially, he’s focused on using technology to make the music ecosystem fairer and more efficient.
Karim Fanous
Director, Innovation & New Digital Business, Global Digital Strategy, Universal Music Group
Director, Innovation & New Digital Business, Global Digital Strategy, Universal Music Group. Member of Abbey Road REDD advisory board; Innovate UK BridgeAI expert working group. Previously Head of Research & Insight at Music Ally.
Kristian Horsburgh
Managing Director, 1535° Creative Hub Differdange
Kristian James Horsburgh Managing Director at 1535° Creative Hub Differdange, where he focuses on fostering innovation and growth in the Cultural and Creative Industries. Kristian’s career is rooted in his passion for bridging the worlds of creativity and entrepreneurship.
He holds a bachelor’s degree in Law and initially worked in the financial sector, but his love for the creative industries made him found Trust in Talent, a non-profit organization dedicated to advising artists contractual issues and project management. He also developed a matchmaking platform for artists to build new business relationships.
He eventually earned a second degree in Media and Event Management. This shifted his career towards managing media channels and launching creative projects, including his work at the Luxembourg cultural center Rotondes. His expertise in event management and media strategy allowed him to work independently before joining Luxinnovation in 2023 as Creative Industry Cluster Manager.
Kristian’s focus is to ensure the continued dynamic growth of Luxembourg’s creative industries through innovation, collaboration and digitalisation.
Steve Vranakis
Co-founder of Catalytic Creative and Strategy Studio,
Ex-Google Creative Lab Executive Creative Director
Steve is an award winning creative who has worked on the launch of the iPhone and Amazon in the UK with NASA (Space Lab), The United Nations, UNICEF and headed up the Creative Lab at Google in EMEA for over 10 years.
He was appointed as the first ever Chief Creative Officer for Greece to develop a new country narrative as a Special Advisor to the Prime Minister.
To help the Tourism Industry cope with the effects of the Covid-19 crisis, he launched #GreeceFromHome and in an effort to make Athens a year round destination launched: Athens. The city is the museum.
Some of his past projects include a machine learning AI musical instrument: the NSynth Super, Assembly of Youth, an installation giving youth a voice at the United Nations, Inside Abbey Road – a virtual tour of the iconic music studios, Project Jacquard – an interactive wearables fabric and Chrome Web Lab, an installation connected live to the internet from the Science Museum in London.
You can view some of those projects here:
https://youtu.be/MeHdXaSNaRU
Steve also worked on the launch of project Bloks, a physical coding platform that teaches kids to code for which he was granted two Google patents and bringing dinosaurs back to life in Virtual Reality at the Natural History Museums in London and Berlin.
In 2015 Steve went to the island of Lesvos to build a mobile information site (refugee.info) to help Syrian refugees fleeing civil war keep safe. This was scaled across dozens of NGO’s going on to help thousands of refugees.
Steve’s work has been recognised by the D&AD (33 including 2 yellow pencils), Cannes Lions (12 including a Grand Prix and Marketer of the year), ADC, One Show’s, Campaign Big, Webbys, Lovies, FWA, BIMA and Clios. Two of his projects are also in the permanent collection of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York (Sketchbots and Jacquard).
His work has been featured in WIRED, The New York Times, Telegraph, Wall Street Journal, Creative Review, Huffington Post, FT, Design Week, Adage and he’s written columns for Adweek, Marketing, Campaign and conducted interviews with the BBC, CNN, CNBC, Lürzer’s Archive and Shots.
Steve has spoken at TEDx about ‘Making technology matter’, SingularityU about ‘Nation Branding’ and the Palais in Cannes on ‘What creativity can do’.
Steve also serves as an advisor to fashion technology startup unmade.com as well as SUPERPERSONAL, an AI company using visual personalisation tech.
In 2017 he was president of D&AD where he made it his mission to help young people from disadvantaged backgrounds get into the creative industries.
Patrick Zucchetta
Serial Entrepreneur into digital cinema and music intelligence
Over the last 20 years, Patrick ran a career of serial entrepreneur investing into various markets from Digital Cinema to Music Intelligence & AI based Ed Tech, reinvesting from successful exits into new ventures. Initial expertise into technology with engineer background, expanding into Business Development through years with international expertise and networking from USA to China.
Mar
Galtés
Corporate Development Director, Tech Barcelona
During her 27 years in the Economics section of La Vanguardia newspaper
(1991-2018), Mar was a reference writer for the Catalan industrial, technological and digital ecosystem. As a journalist, she has followed the evolution and transformation of hundreds of companies, both startups and multinational corporations. And she has interviewed entrepreneurs and presidents of major global corporations and visited companies and factories on different continents.
Between March 2019 and December 2020, she worked for the communication consultancy LLYC, where she developed a business area focused on technology companies and startups.
Arnab
Naskar
co-CEO, STOKR
Arnab, the co-CEO of STOKR – a Web3 investment platform supervised by CSSF, Luxembourg as a virtual assets service provider – is a staunch advocate for decentralized capital markets. With a legal background, he’s passionate about law-tech intersections and has influenced EU blockchain policy as INATBA’s Finance chair for well over 2 years. Managing a Luxembourg crypto fund and a regular at European blockchain events since 2017.