Techsylvania: Bridging borders and boundaries to unite people through technology

A couple months ago, in June 2022, I was happy to be back on stage again - this time in Cluj, Romania delivering a talk at Techsylvania. It was great to feel that Techsylvania vibe in-person, talking to people face to face after two long years of mostly virtual conferences.

I’ll be authentic here; I only rarely do blog posts in a way that might be viewed as promotional for events or organizations. Read on and learn why Techsylvania is, so far, my only exception.

This was my second time giving a keynote at Techsylvania. Over the last two years the event and its community has scaled, despite all the challenges the world has given us.

Joining me at Techsylvania were my MongoDB colleagues Diego Freniche Brito and Jorge Ortiz , two of our superstar Mobile Developer Advocates. Their immersive Technical Workshop showcased live coding while exploring the fundamentals of writing Android apps using Kotlin, Compose, and the Realm SDK. iOS developers weren’t left out and we had the opportunity to field many in-depth questions on the repo with equivalent iOS code.

Later, during my keynote, I shared stories and insights from my journey from Start-up to Scale-up. Long story short: Scaling technology and products is challenging, but the greater challenge is scaling yourself to grow teams, be an authentic leader, and create a culture that supports your people as they grow. If you're interested, you can see my talk where I compare the cultures of MongoDB, Grab, Oracle, and AWS here:

Let's get back to the event.

“When we launched Techsylvania in 2014, we envisioned a global event, exploring tech, sharing knowledge, and growing networks. We sensed a gap between West and East in terms of mindsets, processes, leadership, and culture in organizations and wanted Techsylvania to be a bridge. Over time, we’ve grown past that and now are bridging Eastern Europe and the West,? including emerging ecosystems and players in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. It’s been a journey creating a community that spans 4 continents,” says Vlad Ciurca, one of the founders of Techsylvania. .

Oana, Vlad’s co-founder,? elaborated on Techsylvania growth, explaining “Our mission has always been accelerating the growth of our regional technology ecosystem by bringing together founders, investors, and tech experts. Our first edition hosted around 20 speakers, including Andy Piper, Developer Advocate at Twitter and Marcus Segal, COO at Zynga. 2022 was our 9th edition and we hosted more than 50 speakers on 4 stages. We’ve continually evolved new concepts to create value, including Startup Avalanche (an investment competition attracting startups from all over the world), satellite events, a Hackathon, Startup Alley, Q&A sessions, and a dedicated exhibition space for partner companies to showcase their technologies & products and interact with potential business partners, talent, and the media.”

Techsylvania has certainly delivered on its vision of opening up Romania’s technology ecosystem to the world. Each year, the event brings impressive speakers from all over the globe including founders of unicorn and decacorn companies. Among these are Ion Stoica (Co-Founder & Executive Chairman of Databricks), Tom Mueller (Co-Founder & Former CTO of SpaceX), Mark Shuttleworth (Founder of Ubuntu & Canonical), Tony Fadell (Founder of Nest and iPod inventor); top executives like Japjit Tulsi (VP of Engineering at eBay), Andreas Ehn (Wrapp Co-Founder and Spotify’s first employee & CTO), and Scott Belsky (Chief Product Officer at Adobe); global investors ranging from Mark Cuban (Investor on Shark Tank), Tim Draper (early investor in Tesla, Hotmail, Skype), journalists like Kara Swisher (Co-Founder of Recode), Alex Konrad (Senior Editor at Forbes); and many others.

“Techsylvania has become a unique gateway for international investors, companies, and founders to access Romania and Eastern Europe. Investors are increasingly interested in the region’s startups and the global startups joining Techsylvania. The conference also offers the chance to meet the region’s amazing talent, which is an attractive opportunity with so many companies considering Romania for their next engineering hub. We’re also very passionate about bringing global experts with impressive knowledge to teach, inspire, and support the dreamers and entrepreneurs to step up in the business world,” elaborates Vlad.

Without a doubt, Techsylvania has made important contributions in bridging the gap between Eastern Europe and the West. Things are also moving faster compared to the past. Since 2018, Romania has minted its first 2 unicorns: UiPath, a global RPA leader, and Superbet, a top gaming company eyeing global expansion from Romania. With so much potential, there are sure to be more unicorns on the way.?

I also got to spend time with Philipp Kandal , Wui Ngiap Foo , Adrian Pica , and Suthen Thomas Paradatheth , my old Grab friends, and make new friends like Sacha Dragic , Alina Vandenberghe ??? , QuHarrison Terry , Alexandra Nagy , Kyle Maloney , and Alex Bangash . It's a pretty amazing networking event, made more special by networking events like "Dracula's Nights", if you're a speaker.

As a proud member of the Techsylvania community, I’ve seen first-hand how the community catalyzes global connections, uplifting and opening Romania’s technology and entrepreneurship ecosystems. Romania and the entire region is teeming with potential and opportunity - including for my current company, MongoDB, and my former company, Grab, where we had a? team of almost 100 great technologists in Cluj. People are the key ingredient for any business’ success. Because of Techsylvania, I know the country is full of amazing, hard working people, with open minds ready to drive innovation making a meaningful impact.?

Next year, I’ll be joining Techsylvania for their 10 year anniversary, June 7-8, 2023. If you’re a technologist, innovator, dreamer, or do-er, you should be there too. And if you want to be a speaker at this great conference, I’d be happy to connect you.

Thanks to the Techsylvania team for such a wonderful event - it made a difference to me and to many others!