Today is the start of our second week in Cyprus. We start back up business meetings today and today they are held at the university of Nicosia. Our first business we talked to was Fleet Management Limited. They are one of the fastest growing ship companies in the island and specialize in managing ships. They are also the 2nd largest ship management company in the world. Owners can either manage a ship themselves or they can hire someone else to do it. FML is one of the companies ship owners can hire. Some types of ships they can manage are bulk carriers, container ships, car carriers, oil tankers and billers. They have Over 625 vessels in service and 20,000 seafarers that are managing other peoples ships. Came to Cyprus because as third party ship management the island is first in world and 3rd worldwide in this sector.
Next we were able to talk to the CEO of the University of Nicosia. He specializes in the block chain technology sector and have us insight on different aspects of this rising idea. He founded the initiative on blockchain. UNIC was the first in the world to accept Bitcoin for tuition, Offer credit bearing course in crypto, and Launch degree program on digital currency. Bitcoin is database of bitcoins but there’s no one in charge of that database. He told us that there’s Two ways to store data, database and blockchain. One upside about Bitcoin is that Bitcoin is a payment that can be instantaneous across borders in a fast way. It isn’t meant to be used in small transactions like lunch, but maybe someday when machines are interacting and need to buy something.
We then got a presentation from Professor Spyros Makeidakis. He is a very well known individual in the sector of forecasting and even has his own competition called the Makeidakis competition, in that it’s a forecasting competition that can win prizes. They range from M1 to M6 which is currently going on now. He told us forecast is used to see what people want and when they want it. He explained how the competitions were helpful information and they found new ways to forecast over time.
