Recordings of the 2023 East meets West Conference, June 16th, Vienna (Austria)

PAVING A NEW WAY

Official Opening and Message from the Co-founders

Pavel and Ludo welcome all participants to their 9th International East meets West Conference and introduce in their unparalleled way the theme of the Conference: “Paving a New Way” together with looking back at their 10th year of existence.

  • Pavel Subrt and Ludo Swinnen, Co-founders of East meets West, Austria

Official Opening

Welcoming the participants of the 9th International East meets West Conference.

  • Rene Knapp, Member of the Management Board, UNIQA Insurance Group AG, Austria

We Break with a Tradition and Look for New Ways

Instead of Ludo's classic "The Look from the East and the Look from the West" we break here the traditional ‘Look’ on our regions and we turn this into making a deeper dive in our basic premise that the LGBTIQ communities are increasingly under pressure from a violent and loud anti-LGBTIQ opposition. Jointly we try to find the best possible strategies to deal with this new thread to our communities.

Intro SLIDES to set the stage

  • Magda Stega, Impact Driven Transgender Advocate, Poland

  • Javier Leonor, Global Pride Lead at Accenture, Netherlands

  • Denis Oleinik, Community Services Manager at LGBTQ+ Group ComingOUT, Russia

  • Razvan Ion, CEO at DerAffe.io the publisher of GAY45.eu, Austria

  • Moderated by Ludo A.F. Swinnen, Co-founder of East meets West, Austria

An East meets West reality check on Austria

This year, East meets West is back in its home-country, Austria where it all started. Also here we have seen changes as Vienna is the traditional key link between East & West. Its interesting to see how our guest country deals with their LGBTIQ community. East meets West is happy to give the leading local LGBTIQ organisations the opportunity to offer you a unique reality check on the LGBTIQ status in their country, the existing situation and their big hopes for the future. 

  • Martina Bednar, Pride@SAP Lead Austria & Slovakia, Austria

  • Conny Felice, CEO at HOSI Salzburg, Austria

  • Markus Kuhn, Co-lead of Diplomats for Equality, Austria / Switzerland

  • Moderated by Pavel Subrt, Co-founder of East meets West, Austria

Cross-country Projects: Re-using Instead of Starting from Scratch

We are happy and proud to bring on the East meets West stage a great example of an initiative, which started small but is on the right path to grow into a pan-European project. This is a touching testimonial, that bright ideas around us exist and that with the right support, their value and benefits can go exponential. We consider this initiative as one of the possible ‘new ways’ to retort in a powerful way to the growing negative social attitude towards our communities.

  • Eleonora Barcziova, People & Culture Manager at Milk, Slovakia

Corporates going beyond their borders

Our session on "Corporates going beyond their borders" will focus on how businesses can help to pave a new way with just a bit of additional effort. How to go beyond the "safe" geographies of corporate head offices and be a strong ally across our CEE region? Which new activities can create an economical value for LGBTIQ community, incl. LGBTIQ business owners? We are sure this will be a real eye-opener for all people concerned! 

  • Andrea Fimian, Founder & CEO at fips consulting, Switzerland

  • Dominic Arnall, CEO at Open for Business, United Kingdom

  • Pawel Dygas, Member of the Management Board, UNIQA Polska, Poland

  • Stuart Bruce Cameron, Founder & CEO of UHLALA Group, Germany

  • Moderated by Tina Lickova, Senior digital researcher and product strategist, Austria

Low Hanging Fruits for entrepreneurship: Tourism

East meets West considers tourism, more than ever, a real unclaimed business goldmine, a real opportunity for not only LGBTIQ entrepreneurs. To emphasize this, we go a step further and show the possible entrances to these new endeavours in CEE region even with a deeper look - we focus on low-hanging fruits. Indeed, tourism offers great opportunities - it creates jobs, strengthens the local economy, contributes to local infrastructure development and can help to conserve the natural environment and important cultural assets and traditions, and reduce inequality and even more important, it allows the LGBTIQ community to take its rightful place in society.

Intro SLIDES on the market potential

  • Thomas Bömkes, Managing Director at Diversity Tourism, Germany

  • Giuseppe Giulio, Account Executive at Gay.it, Italy

  • Zsolt Jordi Erdei, Founder & CEO at Humen Media Group, Hungary

  • Moderated by Sandra Santoro, Founder & Creative Director at gettingmarriedinitaly ®, Italy

The East meets West Awards and Closing Words

What started a few years ago as a new topic on our conferences, the East meets West Awards, have become much coveted signs of appreciation for the work the winners do for the LGBTIQ community. We from East meets West meet people, NGO’s and businesses that are just very good in what they do for our community. We honour here for the 4th time the 3 award categories and give the winners a pat on the shoulder, an encouragement together with an original East meets West 2023 Award Trophy.

  • Moderated by Laco Hudec-Subrt, Founder and CEO at STUDIO45 Vienna, Austria

  • Pavel, Ludo and the Conference Backstage Team

  • QWIEN (Austria), Winner in category “NGO”

  • UNIQA Insurance Group, Winner in category “Corporate”

  • Martina (Tina) Bednar, Winner in category “Individual”