ASPEN at Rethink Digital Fest in Łódź – creativity drives the future
On October 24, 2025, Heller Consult took part in the fourth edition of Rethink Digital Fest, which was held at Łódzka Specjalna Strefa Ekonomiczna S.A.. This event proved once again that Łódź is one of the most dynamically developing centers of creativity and innovation in Poland.
Three spaces of inspiration
This year’s festival was organized around three main thematic stages:
- SPACE TECH – dedicated to space technologies,
- DIGITAL ECONOMY – focused on the digital economy,
- CREATIVE powered by Filmteractive – celebrating creativity and culture.
CREATIVE stage powered by Filmteractive
This part of the festival was a true center of creative energy. Representatives of business, culture and technology came together on stage to show that creativity is not an add-on to business, but its drive.
The event was opened by Adam Pustelnik, vice mayor of Lodz, and Olgierd Cygan, founder of Filmteractive and president of Future.Company. Both stressed that today innovation does not exist without imagination and courage to create new solutions.
Among the topics that caught the attention of the participants were:
- cooperation between Poland and France within the creative sector,
- the history of the Evian brand as an example of how emotions build a company’s identity (lecture by Dawid Borowiec, Global Brand Director),
- discussions on the synergy of art and business,
- the role of AI in advertising and the question of whether artificial intelligence can really understand humans,
- the example of BNP Paribas, which shows that investing in culture is an investment in the future,
- a presentation by Creative Europe Desk Poland on funding opportunities for creative projects.
SPACE TECH - Polish innovation reaches into space
The SPACE TECH stage presented the latest developments in space technology, including the participation of Polish experts and companies in international projects.
Among the topics discussed during the session were:
- the backstage of the IGNIS mission and the participation of Poles in European Space Agency projects,
- support for SMEs in the space sector,
- Space Pitching Arena competition, in which DEPOTracer won, and KopterSoft received an honorable mention.
Karol Opara talks about ASPEN
Of particular interest was a presentation by Karol Opara, Ph.D., who presented the ASPEN project, an innovative solution being developed in cooperation with the European Space Agency.
Karol Opara, an expert in optimization and artificial intelligence, has been working for years with Heller Consult, where he is involved in developing modern methods for monitoring road infrastructure. The ASPEN project has developed technology to assess the condition of roads, bike paths and sidewalks using smartphones placed in vehicles.
Karol Opara is currently a professor at the Institute of Systems Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences and a visiting professor at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology in Japan.
DIGITAL ECONOMY - the future of the digital economy
The DIGITAL ECONOMY stage was dominated by topics related to the development of artificial intelligence, data security and cooperation between business and science.
Speeches and discussions included:
- a presentation by Marcin Plaskowski of the European Commission on the development of the European AI ecosystem,
- a presentation by Mark Miller of Google on practical applications of generative AI,
- a debate on security and innovation in public administration,
- a presentation of the PLLUM project – a Polish language model being developed by the University of Lodz,
- a Startup Boost session on cooperation between large corporations and startups.
Creativity and technology - the duo of the future
The fourth edition of Rethink Digital Fest once again confirmed that Lodz is becoming one of the most important technological and creative centers in the country. It is here that the worlds of business, science and culture meet – creating together a vision of the future in which creativity is the new currency of success.