Experimental culture and cuisine at the start of the festival

The two Zurich bands "None of Them" and "Tim & Puma Mimi" opened the festival in the Grand Theater of the Club Gray Area, known for experimental music. Together with the two artists Aja Archuleta and Lexagon from San Francisco, they presented a successful mixture of hip-hop, electro and visual arts projections. The two performances by Erika Stucky and Daniel Hellmann were no less experimental. With her "Suicidal Yodels", the San Francisco-born Walliser Stucky provided the perfect soundtrack for the exchange between Zurich and San Francisco. Daniel Hellmann's "Traumboy", meanwhile, was dedicated to the topic of voluntary male prostitution and the stigma associated with it. Both shows were completely sold out and were very popular. Cinema fans got their money's worth at four film evenings by director Marcel Gisler. They were organized by the two film festivals "Pink Apple" and "Frameline".

Culinary delights were offered by the "Chef meets Chef" series. Five top chefs from Zurich and Rapperswil met five top chefs from San Francisco and created creative masterpieces of fusion cuisine together on several evenings.

Scientific exchange on future issues

Together with renowned American partners, including San José State University (SJSU), UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences organized three events on the topics of "Governance of Metropolitan Areas", "Data Science" and "Lean Design, Construction and Facility Management". The productive cooperation between the ZHAW School of Engineering and San José State University (SJSU) within the framework of the festival strengthened the basis for future joint research and development projects and an intensification of student and lecturer exchange. Through its joint event with UC Berkeley, the ZHAW School of Management and Law was able to establish contacts with representatives of the city of San Francisco as well as researchers in Berkeley and other cities in the region. 

The impact of digitization on democracy was the focus of the panel discussion "Digital Democracy" at the University of Zurich (UZH), in which speakers from Stanford University, Wikimedia and the Human Rights Data Analysis Group participated alongside Zurich Professor Fabrizio Gilardi. Among other things, the important contact between the Digital Democracy Lab at UZH and the California-based agency Socialscience One was established. Socialscience One negotiates conditions under which researchers from public universities have access to data from the tech companies in Silicon Valley. For the analysis of the change of democracy through social media, this data is the essential basis. 

Representatives of the governments of Zurich and San Francisco, experts from the World Economic Forum, stakeholders from start-ups and established companies such as Uber and Tesla as well as academics from the University of Zurich, UC Berkeley and MIT exchanged views on the future of mobility and transport in smart cities as part of the Urban Tech Summit. On the same topic, the "Swiss Designathon Team" together with swissnex San Francisco invited to generate creative solutions for the challenges of urbanization in the form of a design thinking hackathon over a weekend. The two workshops enjoyed great popularity and notable participants, such as Josh Costine, Editor-at-Large at TechChrunch, Darton Ito, Innovation Director at the San Francisco Metropolitan Transport Authority (SFMTA), Ratna Amin, Transport Policy Director at SPUR (San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association) and Sarah Williams, Associate Professor at the MIT Urban Planning Department. 

Together with the Global Apprenticeship Network GAN, the California Workforce Association and Social Policy Research Associates SPR, the City of Winterthur organised a seminar on the importance of practical and labour market-oriented training. The fact that the former US ambassador to Switzerland, Suzi LeVine, was recruited for the event shows the interest of the USA in the dual education system. The city of Winterthur was able to further expand its international network in the field of business and vocational education and training. The commitment resulted in contacts with well-known US companies in the ICT industry and important Swiss institutions such as Swissnex or Swisscom, which were represented at the seminar.