Diana Stefanova, Managing Site Director EMEA R&D & Strategic Business Development
VMware Bulgaria sparks a passionate drive for innovation throughout the year by running various companywide programs culminating in a one-day conference. This year’s edition took place on June 7th and was hosted in the Sofia Tech Park. RADIO@ is a worldwide roadshow of VMware’s flagship “R&D Innovation Offsite” (RADIO) 3-day event in San Francisco, to share the innovation experience at VMware’s global R&D offices. The forum in Sofia introduced novel content from local engineers and brought the magic of RADIO, where VMware engineers pitch their cutting-edge ideas, learn from their peers about the technical efforts, engage in two-way dialogue, and form new relationships with one another.
RADIO@Bulgaria was a chance for all to experience thought-provoking talks from sharp minds like Dirk Hohndel, VMware Chief Open Source Officer, Kit Colbert, VP & GM, Cloud-Native Apps, Nicola Acutt, VP Sustainability Strategy, Ravi Soundararajan, Principal Engineer, Matt Amdur, Principial Engineer, Aaron Rasmussen, co-founder of Masterclass and our very own Sofia R&D engineers. In addition to innovation, the day also celebrated our company’s diversity and sustainability.
We are so proud of launching our local Power of Difference (POD) community – sharing our vision of VMware Bulgaria being a workplace where everyone’s voice matters. The POD community is about elevating the human factor in all its dimensions present in this unique place and time: gender and gender identity, sexual orientation, race or ethnicity, age, nationality, culture, abilities, religion, and many more categories that shape who we are and the perspective we bring to the table. During the POD launch event at RADIO@Sofia, we hosted an “Inclusion and Authenticity at the Workplace” panel of speakers who represented different diversity groups and leaders in various diversity and inclusion initiatives like Women Who Code, Single Step’s NGO (LGBTI community) and other representatives from different minority communities.
Nicola Acutt started the dialogue about sustainability and VMware’s net positive impact – how our products and culture are about giving more than we take. She also announced that we’d just made a big step toward our 2020 goals by achieving 100% renewable energy in EMEA! Yet another reason to be so proud of being a part of VMware, making these commitments to the planet, empowering our people to be a force for good, and enabling others to do the same with our transformative products. Did you know, customers using VMware virtualization for the past 13 years have managed to avoid 340 million metric tons of CO2? This is equivalent to powering 43% of US households for 1 year! We were all amazed to see the measurement of the impact we were having on the planet through our technology.
This year’s Radio@ was truly inspiring with innovation, future looking trends, and corporate responsibility. Watch the recap video here.
Thank you all who made that possible and looking forward to Radio@ 2018.
