Dear guests, speakers, start-ups, artists, and companies from near and far,
I am thrilled to open this year's TONIK. But I'll be honest, my first question when asked to open the event was: What is TONIK? Is it a conference? A business fair? An exhibition? After a somewhat confusing explanation, I concluded that TONIK must be a festival.
It's a melting pot of tech and art, a place to get inspiration for innovation. These are two focus areas of great and growing importance. We've long known that we need to focus on tech in the Faroe Islands, just like the countries around us. We need to educate more tech professionals and foster more tech entrepreneurs. We also need to focus much more on tech resilience and cybersecurity. Recent world events have shown us, with brutal honesty, how important it is to build up our own tech competencies. If TONIK can help strengthen the tech scene, that alone is worth celebrating.
I could talk at length about the importance of art, culture, and the creative industries, and how crucial creativity is for our cultural preservation and development. The creative industries are also becoming increasingly important for our economy and in showing people that the Faroe Islands is a great place to live and work. This alone is worthy of a festival.
But when mixing arts and tech, we get a unique, powerful, and special innovative synergy that neither sphere could create on its own.
So now my understanding of TONIK is that it is a festive reflection of the innovative environment in the Faroe Islands. Not only are the Faroe Islands beautiful, safe, clean, and peaceful, but they are also an exciting and lively place to be. A place for creativity in all forms—art, tech, film, music, design, and IT—all mixed into a strong and perfect TONIK.
I hereby declare TONIK open, and I look forward to meeting all the entrepreneurs and exhibitors.
Thank you.