Danae Bezantakou, CEO of Navigator Shipping Consultants, tells me that this remains the most important thing: what gets communicated when you meet someone’s gaze and hold it. It takes confidence to do this, but not the kind built on projecting broad and unwavering expertise. The steadier kind that comes from humility and curiosity. The ability to be able to say with ease you don’t know when you don’t and then listen to see if the person on the other side of the question or someone around them does is one we all need to lean into more often than we want to admit.
This is the 24th year of the Navigator Forum, and it exceeds capacity. Several times throughout the day, they bring in more chairs and shift the seating around in real time. Small groups gather and peer in from the doorways.
There’s a palpable, fluid energy in the room that comes from the format. The topics are familiar to all of us – decarbonization, ESG, geopolitics and the human element – yet the delivery has a welcome, distinct energy about it. One that calls in warmth, humor and ease. There are moments when you can watch someone discovering in that instant exactly what they needed to say on a subject they may have spent their whole lives studying. Instead of drifting onto screens, more of us lean in.
Emmanuel Vordonis compares his closing remarks to playing improvisational jazz, a stream of consciousness shaped by the day’s themes. When it was over, he didn’t remember any of it, while the room stayed absorbed.
Energy like this isn’t easy to create given you never know how many people will show up or what their dynamic will be like once they do. She believes the success comes from the team’s passion for this industry and the desire to give each year its own personality, which means taking risks to incorporate different elements. This year AI joined the conversation, Accenture, and Google Maps founder, Lars Rasmussen, who is now one of Panathēnea’s co-founders, which has reimagined the Greek festival to bring together the ecosystems of tech, art, and startups. He echoes something I found myself saying last year at the Smart Maritime Network event in May – maritime tech must join this conversation also. We all have a lot to learn from each other and we need more opportunities like these that bridge ecosystems to reimagine what collaboration can look like.
Danae loves that each day in shipping is its own beast. “We want to wake up with India and China. We want to sleep with the USA, Colombia, Argentina.” she says. “This is the magic world of shipping.”
