Innotribe, the innovation arm of Swift, is expanding its capacity at the messaging co-operative's annual Sibos jamboree by 50%, but don't expect any chat about distributed ledger technologies, which has now been swallowed up by the mainstream event.
Reflecting the growing interest in fresh technological thinking in banking, Innotribe experienced persistent overflow in its session talks at last year's Sibos, attracting 50% of all delegates to its conference programme which put blockchain technology and its disruptive potential centre stage.
In a blog post outlining this year's programme, Innotribe content curator, Peter Vander Auwera, states: "At Innotribe we don’t have any DLT/blockchain sessions this year: indeed, we covered this subject extensively at previous editions, and many of our colleagues from banking, securities, standards, market infrastructures and Swift Lab have now sessions on DLT/blockchain in their main conference sessions."
Instead, the focus in Geneva at Sibos 2016 will be switched to man-machine convergence and the principles of platform co-operation in disruptive and distributed innovation ecosystems. Visitors to the Innotribe arena will be able to explore collaboration with a wide range of fintech hubs from different continents, and gain insights on the new technologies developed by the startup community in Africa and Latin America through sessions dedicated to the winners of the 2016 Innotribe Startup Challenge.
Innotribe's centrepiece Future of Money debate is also moving to a prime time slot, graduating to full-blown Sibos Big Issue Debate status and taking centre stage in the main Plenary room.
"This is exactly how we saw Innotribe at Sibos from the beginning," says Vander Auwera. "A space where we create awareness of what is cooking at the edges of our ecosystem, topics and trends that will enter mainstream in a couple of years."