Gramado Summit in Punta
I recently learned about the existence of the Gramado Summit, when it was announced in Uruguay that for the first time it would take place in Punta del Este. And right away I made sure to participate, because as a Uruguayan-Brazilian I couldn’t miss an event that brings together the communities of my heart’s nations. I immediately thought that with my knowledge of both countries’ cultures, I could contribute something nice for the participants. And that’s how my participation was born — with a talk — and Nareia’s with a booth at the business fair.
Soon I’ll publish an article about the process of creating the talk and another where I’ll analyze the content.
The event was fantastic. While I would have liked to see more participants, I also know that building community is like that — step by step — and this was the first year of the Gramado Summit’s internationalization, likely a comparable number of attendees to the first year of the Summit in Gramado.
There were other talks, lots of networking, and a startup battle! I had never seen this format of startup competition before and I loved it. Two Uruguayan startups and one Brazilian made it to the finals, and the big winner was MetaBIX — congratulations! You can find more information here.
It was very interesting to see speakers in Portuguese answering questions in Spanish, startups pitching in Diego Lugano’s Portuñol (which is different from Portuñol but very effective), seeing the cultural closeness between the countries and the friendships that were born starting on a gray Thursday in Punta. Good thing the sun came out on Friday because Punta without sun isn’t Punta.
I loved the services in general but the food in particular — it was a great representation of Uruguayan food with meat as the star, of course.
My talk was Thursday morning and since it was match day for Peñarol against Flamengo for a spot in the Libertadores semifinals, around 4 PM we headed to the Campeón del Siglo with Serginho and Johann. At the business fair, Mica and Seba stayed behind and waited for us at night with a good “asado” to end an eventful day as is customary here in Uruguay. On Friday Alvarito arrived and we watched the Demo Day together.
We closed our participation wishing for the event to keep growing here in Uruguay and to serve as a vehicle for collaboration between the Brazilian and Uruguayan communities. At Nareia we’re available to help in whatever is needed.
Who knows, next year we might organize a side event taking advantage of the Brazilian participants coming over!
