AWS Public Sector Summit, Brussels 2019

The AWS Public Sector Summit (https://aws.amazon.com/summits/public-sector-summit-brussels/ ) just completed in Brussels. It was a wonderful day with lots of interesting case studies and customer success stories – you can access the full agenda at https://aws.amazon.com/summits/public-sector-summit-brussels/agenda/.

The day started with an explanation of AI offering categories on AWS and a couple of fun demonstrations which highlighted the difference between how humans use intelligence vs how a machine attempts to replicate it.

I then went on to follow how Lancaster university combined voice services and chatbots to build a student-assistance application. They have a base product and they are taking it through the next releases, Want to know more? "Ask LU"

Moving on, the key note speech by Teresa Carlson highlighted the scale of AWS in public sector and how the market is responding wrt cloud adoption. It also introduced the creation of two Cloud Innovation Centres (CIC) in Germany (Munich and CODE).

It was rounded up with customer testimonials from European Commission - here Mario Campolargo explains the journey that the commission has already taken and shared the vision for where it wants to go. It was followed by testimonial from Guido Van Humbeeck (VDAB) on how they have used AI-based matching for Jobnet.

The session in the post lunch session that attracted me the most was on Big Data as it promised to tell us “Everything You Need to Know About Big Data”. That of course was a tall ask, but it was an intense session and it packed as much punch as was possible in less than an hour.

It was followed by a networking reception where I had the chance to have an engaging conversation with Nicolas Cattoir.

As I reflected on the day, few thoughts came back:

• The first session started from 9:00. Four parallel sessions were ongoing, I was attending the one on building intelligent applications using AI – I was worried it would be overcrowded. Imagine my shock when I saw that at 9:00 it was less than half full audience! Admittedly it was raining but this is Brussels and we have weather forecasting. There is no excuse for majority of people to be late (some I am sure will have genuine reasons) – the ultimate capacity, as I expected, ended up as what could be called “overcrowded”. But if we can’t turn up for one day at 9:00 for something we have specific interest, how would we commit to our working life – most of it which might be less interesting than the most recent happenings on AI services on AWS?
• Why are there so many suits that are taking every opportunity to run away to the refreshment area? Where are the developers that service this sector? Some of the people kept working on their laptops (documents and emails) while the most interesting topics are being explained on-stage. The message was surely lost on a large part of the audience. Amazon should either filter the applications (and not depend on FCFS) OR they should tailor the message to fit the audience.
• Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT https://www.hotosm.org/) had an area where they were requesting for some volunteering moments to help them. They had 6 – 8 devices which they were using people to teach how to use their software to help them and people could spend some time using these devices to help map some of the most remote areas of Chad, Turkey and Ethiopia so that the maps can help the disaster relief teams to help on the ground. Most of the time half of the devices left unused (i.e. most of the time only 3 or 4 people were using it) out of a 1200+ crowd! The event came seriously short of reaching its map classifying target (200+ sq km out of 915) Could each of us not have spent 10 minutes to map a few square kilometres? If you are reading this download the MapSwipe app from the mobile application store and see if you can help. I mapped about 100 sq km without missing a session during the summit. Since then I registered the app on my mobile and classified another 500 sq kilometres. The process is simple, there are tutorials on the app and if you still need help, give me a buzz.