The Virtual Island Summit (VIS) is a free online event connecting remote, rural and island communities to share common experiences and learn from innovators and experts. VIS uses video conferencing technology to bring together island communities from across the world at a zero-carbon conference.
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A big part of our goal for the summit has been to connect as many people, especially island residents, as possible and facilitate a shared feeling of a global community and desire to work together with other individuals and organizations from around the world.
Through this global platform, we hope to be able to facilitate and speed up the collaboration necessary for the creation and sharing of solutions to combat climate change, and help to create more sustainable and resilient communities everywhere, as the issues facing islands are going to increasingly face everyone. This is why it is so vital that the Virtual Island Summit creates a collective mindset to solve these large scale global issues.
See the Virtual Island Summit in action
“It was a privilege to open the Island Innovation Virtual Summit. In Fiji, we see ourselves as an incubator for innovation. That is what all islands have the potential to be - incubators for the big blue and green ideas that can be scaled up around the world.”
Frank BainimaramaPrime Minister of Fiji
Our Approach
A fundamental part of our approach to the Virtual Island Summit is to emphasise the need for input and partnerships from across the private, public, academic and NGO sectors. Attendees have the opportunity to listen to and learn from over 100 different world-class experts from diverse backgrounds including world leaders, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics and NGO leaders. The daily sessions are in various formats and the summit imitates a traditional in-person event with opportunities for attendees to interact with speakers and other attendees. As the event is free to attend, this ensures maximum accessibility to expertise from a variety of fields.
Following on from the success of the first Virtual Island Summit in 2019, we aimed to make the 2020 iteration an even larger and more impactful event, connecting much greater numbers of attendees and speakers. This ambition was matched by the results, as the summit grew to 10,000 attendees, compared to 4,000 the previous year. To help achieve this, we expanded our team, as well as initiating new growth programs including our Ambassador and Hubs programs which were both a huge success. We were able to significantly expand the number of Sponsors and Partners, as well as the number of speakers.
Let’s work together
Our team of experts working together remotely across the world, create customised, bespoke services for our clients to help deliver and exceed the results you are looking for.
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What’s next for the Virtual Island Summit
After the success of the first Virtual Island Summit in 2019 and the even bigger success of the second iteration in 2020, we plan to keep on growing the event in all aspects, including the number of attendees, speakers, sponsors and partners, views of the various sessions, and much more. We aim to continue to make the summit one of the biggest and most impactful events in the world concerning helping to build resilient and sustainable island communities, as well as facilitating and supporting a global community dedicated to advancing the Sustainable Development Goals.
To be able to achieve all of this, since the Virtual Island Summit 2020, we have expanded our team with new members, and have been hard at work on many new projects to help Island Innovation grow including completely redesigning and relaunching our website, creating a revamped and expanded Ambassador Program that encompasses the whole of 2021, rather than only the Virtual Island Summit, and planning new virtual events on Remote Work/Digital Nomads and Island Finance to expand our audience and community.