Presidency hosts presentation of the 2017 Presidential Award for Global Contribution in the Field of Information Technology

Later today, the Presidency hosted the presentation of the 2017 Presidential Award for Global Contribution in the Field of Information Technology, after which a reception was held on behalf of the President of the Republic of Armenia to honor Tony Fadel, the founder of Nest Labs Company.

Hovik Musayelyan, Chairman of the Executive Board of the World IT Awards Committee, first presented the background history of the Presidential Award for Global Contribution in the Field of Information Technology, the principles steering the Award Committee and the International Selection Commission, established by the decree of the President of the Republic of Armenia, and the world-renowned award-winners. The speaker highlighted Armenia’s competitive edge in the priority sector of information technology, the great potential that dates a far back as to the Soviet Armenia, which later became a solid basis for further development.

Hovik Musayelyan also spoke about the joint State-private sector initiatives aimed at promoting the development of the IT sector, many of which have become traditional already. The floor was next given to Award Committee member Tony Moroyan who presented the life story of this year’s award winner.

President Serzh Sargsyan handed the prize to Tony Fadel, and delivered a speech at the ceremonious reception held on that occasion. Tony Fadel reciprocated with words of thanks.

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Remarks by President Serzh Sargsyan delivered at the presentation of the Presidential Award for Global Contribution in the Field of Information Technology

Dear Mr Fadel,

Dear Friends,

We have gathered tonight to extend congratulations and express our appreciation to a person who has made a significant contribution to the development of information technology at a young age already.

I am happy to hand the Presidential Award for Global Contribution in the Field of Information Technology to Tony Fadel, the founder of Nest Labs. He is really one of those people who are shaping our everyday life and lifestyle in this digital era.

During its millennial history, the Armenian people has always sought to master and adapt to the local medium everything progressive in the world. This award is the manifestation of our mentality, ideology and aspirations.

For over a decade now, our country has been looking for a niche in the global market of information technology in quest of new achievements. There are about 600 IT companies operating in Armenia, including many world-renowned organizations. This has helped solve the problem of employment for about 20 thousand people.

We have been experiencing an average of 20-25% growth over the past few years. It is important for us to not limit ourselves to the indicators we have. We need to dream up, think of and create new projects and implement them.

We should have thousands of IT companies and hundreds of thousands of specialists working in the field of information technology. That is why we need a dynamic system of special education, and we have a lot to do in this regard. The decades-old traditions and the youth with a strong will shall serve as a solid foundation for achieving those goals. That is my vision.

We shall have many new professionals who will bring our country to the point of changing their work and the overall climate in the country. They will break the psychological template of being a “small country” which sometimes comes to the forefront in our society.

Together with the active involvement of women and men working in this field, we are steadfastly moving towards a knowledge-based technological economy in line with our goal of building an intellectual Armenia.

Dear Colleagues,

I think Mr. Fadel’s solutions relating to iPod players or other innovations should be instructive for our specialists. He has gone through deeper roads overcoming difficulties, learning new lessons on his way to success.

Certainly, there are many major players in the IT industry. However, there are also successful professionals with innovative ideas and start-up companies set up by smaller groups.

New grant-venture financing tools are currently being introduced under the auspices of the Armenian Science and Technology Foundation - FAST - in an effort to encourage the startups. I am sure that they will be useful to our talented scientists and businessmen, and will help them to achieve the desired results. We are determined to provide new opportunities in this area in cooperation with the private sector. Information technology should be one of the driving forces behind the economy.

In this field, we have long been on the global track of competitiveness, and we are confident in our ability to compete with the leaders.

We have a lot of success stories, but the most exciting one is the recent victory of our schoolgirls from Karbi village school in Aragatsotn Marz. These and many other examples give us confidence in tomorrow’s day.

Dear Mr Fadel,

With this award, we wish to highlight the achievements of your team and yourself in the field of iPod players, iPhones, thermoregulators, safe and smart toys for children, and many more.

I hope you will be able to present your success story to our students and professionals and encourage them to reach new heights.

I can not tell how much your curiosity used to be fueled when you joined your grandfather, your father to change the wall outlets at home as a child of 3-4. However, you did not give up and eventually succeeded since you were strong with an earnest desire to live up to your new ideas even after having 80 applications rejected by 80 businessmen.

In my opinion, the first and most important lesson that your story can teach us is as follows: failures are another step forward on the way to achieving the desired goal. Failure is a new step towards success. One should draw conclusions from failures and go ahead, avoiding the previous mistakes. By the way, this approach is not unique for the field of the information technologies, but also to many other fields from politics to business and beyond.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We have been awarding this prize for the eighth time to individuals who have proposed and implemented revolutionary changes in information technology. Over the past years, we could witness the enthusiasm with which young people met and interacted with their heroes.

Our prize winners are an excellent example of how to make the world better by improving people’s lives and facilitating contacts.

On behalf of all of us, I once again felicitate Mr Fadel and thank him for his work, as his accomplishment is for the whole humanity and many of us use it.

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Remarks by Tony Fadell delivered at the presentation of the Presidential Award for Global Contribution in the Field of Information Technology

Good evening,

This is quite an impressive room. When I walked in, I was quite surprise to see all of you, to see this amazing set of people coming out to see me, so thank you.

First, I would like to say thank you to the President, I would like to say thank you to the Prime Minister, the Committee that nominated and elected me for this award, I am very honored that I can come here and share my stories with you and you truly believe that there is a way to take your country from where it has been, where it is today and where it’s going. So thank you everyone, especially Tony Moroian for these several years of tenacious asking me. We have known each other for 25 years and I am really honored to be here. And in just the last 24 hours of being here, everything I’ve heard from Tony about Armenia, had been true and many of my preconceived notions have been thrown away. So very honored to be here and thank you again for this award.

I would like to leave you with a few words about things I have seen about success in my 25-30 years career in the IT business. The first thing is about creating an environment for success to happen. There are three important things that President has already mentioned, the first one is education, education at all levels, from primary school all the way up and it is not just after postgraduate, but even beyond. The world is a changing place; it is changing faster than ever.

Today is the slowest the world will ever be, it will only accelerate through technology and the people, world citizens not just through the school they have done, but each day. And so whatever programs that you can create to continually educate yourselves as well as your constituents, as well as your population, the better off your economy will be and will allow new things to flourish that we haven’t seen before. The second one, it is about government, it is about government leadership.

I could talk about the stories about the US and leadership there, but I won’t get into that, but government now has a ability to not just have technology inside the government, it’s now about shaping a digital society and creating laws, regulations and working in public-private partnerships to define what digital society is. It is about how we are going to embrace technology, what does privacy mean, what does security mean, what does data access mean for all demographics.

I believe that Armenia has this, after talking to the Prime Minister, after talking to the President; you are on the press of this, onto creating a digital society, as the world has never seen before, because you have a microcosm here and if you look at startups, they always start with a small team. You are a small country, but it can grow outsize if you take advantage of this microcosm that you have and this community you have and lead, not just follow, not just adopt technology, but actually think about what your society can be and work towards it every day and unlike a startup I know tenacity of the Armenian people.

The government is not going away, so if you imagine it in 10 or 20 years and even if there is ups and downs, you’ll get there, because the government is not going away, it’s a state of mind and you will have different startups that will be able to create this digital society for all. So I look forward to see how that goes.

The third thing is about public-private partnership, it’s really about opening up to accept things, people such as myself, investors, teams, mentors into your society as well as having them come into ours so that we can learn and communicate and take the best of the world, because I believe if you can set a digital society sooner than any other country, the world will be looking at you to see how it is done the right way. We can see China trying to do that today; I don’t think they are doing it right with all the humanity endeavors. You could do that here.

So those three thing I believe is what’s going to bring you forward and create a new world here and continuing the success you had over the last 25 years. That said, it is hard. The first 10-15 years of my career I learned a lot, but failed along the way and it takes strength of the entrepreneurs, takes strength of the institutions to understand; you will try, you will fail, but you will learn and you keep going, you don’t stop, you keep trying, because if you know what you believe is true, it will be the future, you will get there one day as long as you keep learning along the way.

So again, I challenge you, I hope to come back, I hope to help you in someway to create that digital society, to show the world what it really means to embrace the next millennia. You have been around many millennia, this country, this people have been around many millennia, just like you have done to create the alphabet, to adopt the Christianity as the first country in the world. Adopt a digital society that is equality for all for all in the digital world and you will again set the stage like you have done in the past.

So, thank you again for this award, honored to be here, thank you Mr. President. Thank you everyone and I’m looking forward to having discussions this evening. Thank you