IBM @ Websummit 2017
Hans Boef ??
Team lead | Privacy Officer | IBM Champion | Developer Advocate | Business Automation | Novadoc | Community Builder | Workshop host | Innovator | Open source Adopter | AI and IoT Enthusiast | Traveler | Lego nerd |
Last month Websummit 2017 took place in Lisbon. What an event!
If you want to know what Websumit is, here are some numbers:
60,000+ Attendees, 1,200+ Speakers 2,600+ Journalists 170+ Countries
Web Summit started as a simple idea in 2010:
Let’s connect the technology community with all industries, both old and new. It seemed to resonate. Web Summit has grown to become the “largest technology conference in the world”.
In seven years, Web Summit has grown from 400 attendees to over 60,000 attendees from more than 170 countries. No technology conference has ever grown so large so fast. Web Summit has become “Europe’s largest and most important technology marketplace”. An unrivalled global meeting place for the world’s most disruptive technology companies and those interested in how that disruption can transform their businesses and their lives.
As IBM was sponsoring this event, we provided 3 very well visited sessions by Chitra Dorai (CTO, IBM Cognitive Services) and Phil Gilbert (General Manager, IBM Design).
We also hosted 4 workshops including an IoT workshop around Node-RED and the Watson IoT platform where we had 150+ attendees.
IBM had also a great booth with 7 demos:
- IBM TJbot, a Watson Maker Kit: Make your first robot and experiment with AI using IBM Watson Services:
- Star Trek: Bridge Crew in VR: Interact with virtual shipmates in virtual reality using natural language.
- Watson Photo Booth: Answer a few of Watson's questions to get your own personality portrait.
- Watson Conversation Station: Work directly with a subject matter expert to build a chatbot from the ground up.
- Blockchain Coffee Bean Demo: Grow, brew and trade coffee with the power of a blockchain network.
- KONE Elevators Case Study: Learn how Kone is developing the next generation of intelligent elevators.
- Blockchain Vehicle Lifecyle: Discover what blockchain can do for the vehicle manufacturing industry.
Every day from the early morning until closing time, we had a lot of people on the booth, especially the TJBot and the Watson photo boot where very popular. People were waiting for more than an hour to get their photo taken.
Also the Star trek demo was very popular, people could sit as flight crew on the bridge of a space ship wearing vr glasses and using “normal” language to communicate with virtual or “real” bridge crew.
We organized some side events as well, together with Founders+ we organized a Dutch networking event to connect startups with other companies. The other event was for developers which was sold out. Developers could connect with IBM and participate in a retro computer game competition and win prizes.
Next year will be even bigger!