Co-founder and chairman of Carnation Internet Consulting Ltd.

Assistant professor of the E-business Research Center at Budapest University of Economic Sciences. President of the IVSz e-Committee and board member of IVSz, Hungarian Association of IT Companies

After starting up his own Internet consulting company Carnation Consulting, merging it with a web design company with venture capital injection and successfully putting it on track and in the good hands of the management, Balázs Szekfû’s interest turns more and more into the academic world. His interest evolves around virtual communities, which he studies since the Bulletin Board Systems of the early nineties. His business interest included the creation, maintenance and development of profitable online communities. His field of research is the social aspects of the virtual communities: trust, hacking, security, and the mediated communication between the agents.

His ongoing research focuses on the implementation of emergence in communities. Emergence is what happens when the whole is smarter than the sum of its parts, when a system of relatively simple-minded component parts interacting in relatively simple ways create some higher-level structure or intelligence without any master planner interfering. These kinds of systems tend to evolve from the ground up, and a virtual communities evolve and develop and govern themselves in very similar ways.

In 1993 Balázs Szekfû co-founded Sziget Ltd that organizes the biggest yearly Hungarian music and Arts Festival, last year attended by 200.000 people.

Between 1995 and 1997 he worked as a journalist at the financial weekly Banks and Exchanges and launched the magazine’s website in 1997. 

He graduated with an MBA from the Budapest University of Economic Sciences management and marketing in 1996, studying a semester in Philadelphia throughout his studies. His diploma paper entitled “Cross Cultural Communication”.

In 1997 co-founded Carnation Internet Consulting, where he serves now as the chairman of the board.

He is a frequent speaker at conferences regarding the Internet and it’s impact on society, business and communication, regularly gives lectures at conferences and at Hungarian universities. He’s last publication academic publication is written together with László Z. Karvalics has appeared in the January 2000 issue of Harvard Business Manager in Hungary with the title “Virtual Communities in the New Economy”, and he writes about technology, electronic business and information society issues in the Hungarian press.

His hobbies include paragliding, scuba diving, movies and theatre, computer games, water polo and bicycling.

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