Highlights of the annual regional creative festival in Almaty
June 15, 2022, Almaty. – Registration for the sixth annual Go Viral festival has started in Almaty! From June 24-26, we will bring together over 60 experts, 6-panel discussions, 12 master classes, and 12 workshops, and the main stage will feature the bands Ninety One, DAMU, Soul Note, singer Tori Park, singer NasiafromAsia, Jordan, and Dj KOKONJA, and Dj Nurboogie. The festival will take place at KIMEP University.
Participation is free! Please review the schedule and register at www.GoViral.kz.
This year’s theme is “Search. Invent. Solve.” Speakers and participants will discuss the latest trends, key challenges, and opportunities for collaboration and innovation in media, business, culture, and technology.
This year’s special guest will be Oscar Garcia, founder and chief specialist of Silicon Valley-based company Aspira Consulting. Oscar will share insights on how to launch and grow startups with or without outside investment. Together with Kazakhstani business angels, Oscar will participate in a start-up expo, in which start-up founders pitch their projects.
D Billions, a musical group from Bishkek performing children’s songs on various topics, will also come to the festival. The musical group has three channels: Russian, English, and Spanish. The English-speaking channel has more than 18 million subscribers and 5 billion views. D Billions team will share their experience creating viral content and talk about how creators find their niche.
The festival will also include a Non-Fungible Token (NFT) exhibition of Kazakhstani artists, showcasing the intersection of digital commerce and artistic creativity. Festival participants will be able to buy digital works of the artists and get a physical copy of the purchased work. Moreover, the festival will include various experiments and scientific workshops in order to popularize science and familiarize the general public.
Since its beginning in Almaty in 2017, Go Viral has grown from a three-day event into a regional community of representatives from media, business, culture, and technology from five Central Asian countries. This year, the U.S. Missions are sponsoring festivals in all five Central Asian countries.
“Go Viral is one fantastic event that has persevered and expanded through the pandemic’s challenges. We pivoted to an online format in 2020 and hybrid format in 2021, which helped expand the reach to engage innovators across Central Asia. This year, I’m so proud we will host in-person Go Viral person events to bring together creative communities in all five Central Asian countries. Right now, we are looking forward to a fantastic Almaty line-up, from NFTs, to media trends, to Ninety One, this year’s festival is sure to be engaging, informative, and productive,” said U.S. Consul General in Almaty Caroline Savage.
Registration for the festival is open until June 21 at 11:59 p.m. at http://festival.goviral.kz/. You can also read more about the program for all three days of the festival on the website. Participation is free, but space for some sessions is limited, to register today!
This year’s festival is supported by Chevron, MOST-business incubator, Batyrkhan Shukenov Fund, WeProject, Baribar, Econetwork, “48 Hour Film Race” short films competition, Obscura company, and Almaty Space and MakerSpace.
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Go Viral is a platform for sharing experiences, a community of media, business, culture, and technology representatives from Central Asian countries, and an annual regional festival. The project is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and supported by the U.S. Diplomatic Missions to Central Asia. Since October 2021, the project has been implemented by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) in Central Asia, with programs and events throughout the region.