🇧🇷 Bom dia do Brazil!

It’s been a busy and wonderful week in Porto Alegre for South Summit. Let me tell you all about it.

In today’s issue

• ⚡️ Lightning List - What I’m reading this week

• 🇧🇷 Freelance Economy Spotlight - Brazil’s contractor market, explored

• 🎤 South Summit Brazil - Themes, takeaways, and all the pão de queijo you can eat

• ⭐️ Community Spotlight & Sponsor - Welcoming Plannernet to Europe!

⚡️ Lightning List ⚡️ 

🇧🇷 Freelance Economy Spotlight 🇧🇷 

It’s been a while since I’ve done a spotlight on the freelance market in another country. Brazil’s $117 BILLION freelance economy is pretty hard to ignore!

Check out the full writeup here and read some other country spotlights below. If you want me to spotlight your country, just say the word.

• 🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates

• 🇦🇱 Albania

• 🇬🇧 United Kingdom

🎤 South Summit Porto Alegre 2025 🎤 

South Summit Brazil 2025, held April 9-11 at Cais Mauá in Porto Alegre, brought together innovators, entrepreneurs, and industry leaders around the theme of resilience, reflecting the city's recovery from the devastating 2024 floods.

Key Themes Across the Summit

The conference highlighted several crucial areas:

1. Resilience and Recovery – Porto Alegre's rebuilding efforts served as inspiration for discussions on adaptability in business and technology

2. Sustainability – Panels examined integrating environmental consciousness into business models through ESG practices

3. Digitalization – Sessions explored digital transformation's impact on Latin America's economy

4. Social Impact – Speakers discussed leveraging technology to create equitable opportunities

Summit By the Numbers

The event attracted over 23,500 attendees, including 3,000 startups and 900 investors. Networking opportunities like Banco BV's Speed Networking connected entrepreneurs with potential collaborators and investors.

Distinguished speakers spanned enterprise, deep tech, and government, such as Priscyla Laham (President of Microsoft Brasil), Hrish Lotlikar (Co-founder & CEO of SuperWorld), and Sônia Saconi (Governer of the State of Rio Grande do Sul), who shared insights on resilience and innovation strategies.

Digital Inclusion

I have to say, I’ve never quite seen a conference absolutely smash it with inclusion quite in the way that South Summit did this week. There are two takeaways I want to share that encourage us all to raise the bar.

Access to Technology

I am definitely a biased reporter on this one as I was a panelist for the session "AI for All: Expanding Digital Inclusion," featuring Victor Haruo (Head of Ecosystem & Social Impact at DIO.me) and Andrea Beleván (International Program Manager, South Summit).

But we have to get ourselves out of our privileged digital bubble a little bit. As of January 2025, 13.8% of Brazil's population does not have access to the internet. With a total population of approximately 212.2 million, this means around 29.2 million Brazilians remain offline.

Not only is it incredibly important to discuss how AI and technology can help underrepresented groups accelerate their careers, but we have to acknowledge that most of us are coming from a place of incredible technological privilege.

One of the things I loved learning most in my time in Uruguay in 2016 was their super fascinating push to advance tech accessibility and literacy. Overall, Uruguay has one of South America's highest literacy rates (over 98 percent). How did they do this? Every student gets a laptop and every square and park has free public WiFi. It can be done, folks.

Accessibility at the Conference

The summit emphasized accessibility through initiatives like wheelchair ramps and sign language interpreters, and live translation at ALL PRESENTATIONS ON EVERY STAGE, demonstrating a commitment to inclusion beyond just digital spaces. Especially with all of the technological tools at our disposal, I still think many conferences miss the mark of ensuring everybody of all abilities and language proficiency levels can truly participate.

I have to say, as someone with a background in field marketing and events and someone who has attended the world’s largest conferences, South Summit absolutely smashed it. 

Their focus is on creating connections and maintaining a feel of inclusion and participation. From being able to book meetings that sync to your calendar directly in the app, to keeping the size modest (23k is a small intimate gathering to me after the 200k at LEAP in Riyadh), their efforts and attention to detail certainly paid off. It’s a case study for all event managers to go by.

⭐️ Community Spotlight & Sponsor⭐️ 

You know, I don’t actually allow people to purchase spots in the Community Spotlight section, but Plannernet has been a long-time supporter of Weekly Workforce, and I wanted to give them more space this week for their sponsorship than just the ad block. (surprise, Rich!)

Why? It’s a great opportunity to celebrate a massive accomplishment of expanding into Europe, and I want people to know a bit more about them.

🎉 WELCOME TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD! 🎉 

Plannernet is an on-demand freelance talent platform for events experts of all kinds:

• Onsite execution

• Travel directors

• Project support

• Virtual moderators

• Audio & visual engineers

They’ve been operational in the US for many years and have really made a name for themselves as they drive value not only with great event talent, but their super handy free guides, like the compliance map, have been supporting the growth of the freelance economy for us all.

So let’s all take a quick moment to congratulate the Plannernet team on their EU expansion by reading the press release, seeing how they’re already smashing it with big European customers like BCD, and booking a meeting with the team to solve your global events needs.

That’s all for now, pals. See ya next week.

Eryn