site.btaNight of Ideas 2024 Dedicated to Sport, with Focus on Contribution of Technology

The Institut francais de Bulgarie will host the Night of Ideas 2024 from 6:00 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. on April 11.

As Paris prepares to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games and Sofia is named this year's World Capital of Sport, the Institute dedicates its Night of Ideas 2024 to the topic of sport, with a particular focus on the contribution of technology, the organizers said.

Admission to the event is free. French/Bulgarian interpretation will be available.

The participants will be looking at technological applications in sport and parasport, their benefits and their limitations. They will try to answer the questions they raise about sporting performance, the meaning of competition and the use of sport as a vehicle for inclusion. "More broadly, we will be asking how technologies can better serve our humanity and whether their contribution helps us to be more socially aware," the Institute said.

There will be two successive debates, involving prominent personalities and experts. The first debate, from 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., will look at the equipment used by athletes in sport and parasport, asking the following question: "Sport and new technologies: a tool for surpassing oneself or technological doping?" The second debate, from 8:15 p.m. to 9:45 p.m., will explore the link between technology and the inclusive virtues of sport by asking: "Do new technologies really serve inclusion in sport?"

The debates will be followed by a screening of the film "We Are People" by wheelchair tennis champion Michael Jeremiasz (with Bulgarian subtitles). Through his life, the film retraces 150 years of the fight for disabled sport and tells the story of the battle for equal rights that the major players in this field have fought to be recognized as true sportsmen and women.

Visitors will be able to try their hand at e-sport on the consoles, virtual reality headsets and tablets available to everyone in the Institute's media library throughout the evening.

Initiated in Paris in 2016 during an evening that brought together foremost French and international thinkers invited to discuss the major issues of our time, the Night of Ideas has quickly become a fixture of the French and international agenda. The Night features conferences, meetings, forums and round tables, as well as screenings, artistic performances and workshops, focused on a particular theme that changes every year. The idea is to enable cultural and educational institutions in France and across to celebrate the free flow of ideas and knowledge.