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As we approach Webit.Festival our team is starting series Q&A with our speakers. We are presenting you the first sessions with Alexander Renz, who will speak during the Mobility track of our Smart Cities Summit. As Managing Partner at New Mobility Consulting, Alex Renz helps corporations, startups and investors take advantage of the opportunities emerging from the digital transformation of transportation and mobility, or New Mobility for short. He explores the transformative impact of connected vehicles, autonomous driving, electric mobility and on demand mobility services and fosters cross-industry collaboration across the emerging New Mobility ecosystem. How will big automotive corporations cope with the changing world of mobility? The Automotive industry is facing challenges on multiple fronts. The shift towards electric mobility will make decades of engineering know how in building combustion engines obsolete. It will also require a lot less workers to build electric vehicles, both at the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and at their supplier networks. The other big changes are connectivity and the vehicle as part of our digital lifestyles. Consumer experiences and data-driven business models will become more and more important, both things that the incumbents are not very good at. But the biggest changes will emerge from driverless vehicles. We believe that driverless cars will have the most profound impact, not only on the car industry itself, but smart cities and real estate, public transport and insurance carrier to name a few. When will we see the full-scale influx of self-driving vehicles? The industry is making fast progress towards Level 3 and Level 4 Autonomous Driving, but it will probably take longer than most people expect before we have full Level 4 (NHTSA) automation where no driver is required at any time and the system can handle all driving situations autonomously. However, with Level 3 we will see vehicles that can drive in a fully automated fashion without the need for a driver in defined use case scenarios. The most likely initial scenarios will be around trucks on highways. For the foreseeable future a driver will steer the truck as soon as it gets off the highway. The other big initial wave will likely be ride hailing, driven by players such as UBER and Lyft as well as the OEMs themselves, who transform into Mobility Services providers. Even though several OEMs have announced fully autonomous production vehicles for ride hailing by 2021 it remains to be seen if that will happen. Especially in cities there are a myriad of driving situations that will challenge the capabilities of robot cars. As much as I am optimistic that these challenges can be addressed, there are regulatory hurdles that need to be overcome. How can the industry monetize the wealth of data generated by connected and autonomous vehicles of the future? Vehicles today are already loaded with sensors that generate massive amounts of data. However, until now the use of these sensors was focused on optimizing the internal functions of the car. Autonomous, connected vehicles will gather a lot of information about the vehicle itself, but also the driver and the environment. The debate as to who owns this data is still ongoing. There are huge data privacy implications and especially the German OEMs are very sensitive to protecting their customer’s privacy. The big challenge for the industry is to develop relevant services that create brand loyalty and consumer engagement. Building relevant, contextual services is difficult, but even harder will be to build services that enough customers are willing to pay for to really matter for OEMs. The Internet services players will have a big advantage here, since their existing services easily translate into the driverless vehicle. I believe that OEMs have a great opportunity if they can manage to combine engineering with digital competencies. They need to learn to design great user experiences and develop data science expertise to harness the data generated by the vehicle. In my view the car will need to become a platform for an ecosystem of services providers, much like we know it from mobile phones. Unfortunately they have relied heavily on suppliers and have given up to much control over what becomes a key strategic battleground. Today’s connected car platforms are legacy technology and the mindset of OEMs continues to be that of a closed system. But there are interesting startup emerging that empower OEMs to develop new business models and increase agility without compromising on security and compliance. What is the most significant technology that will shape the future of mobility in your mind? If I had to pick a single exponential technology, I would say Artificial Intelligence in view of its importance for both automated driving, and digital assistants. However, ultimately it is not about a single exponential technology, but the convergence of technologies such as smart sensors networks, artificial intelligence and autonomous robotic systems. We envision a world where robots such as cars become their own economic agents and will look for passengers and deliveries to generate revenues. Smart contracts on the blockchain will enforce maintenance and insurance policies, govern fares and pay taxes based on actual for road usage. In such as Machine-to-Machine (M2M) economy we will have autonomous vehicles transact with charging stations and other network participants without human intervention. We need a next generation Internet to enable such networks to scale securely. We believe the blockchain has a big role to play in this next generation Internet. It provides a trusted, network-based identity, but also as an asset management and transaction layer. In many ways the blockchain will enable IoT, autonomous robotic systems and artificial intelligence to take us into the future of mobility. That is the core of my session at Webit.Festival in Sofia. Here you can see a full list of the confirmed speakers at Webit.Festival, while here you can get all the information you need about the tickets for the event.

Tech experts around the world list the Internet of Everything (IoE) as one of the top trends in the digital economy. The term brings together people, processes, data and things to make networked connections more relevant and valuable than ever before and create new opportunities for businesses, individuals and countries. Expansion of this process is connecting people in more relevant and valuable ways. It helps for converting data into intelligence and making better decisions. IoE delivers the right information to the right person at the right time, while connecting physical devices and objects to the internet. Many new technologies will enable a wider range of IoE services and some of them will also pose interesting challenges for implementation. The upcoming 5G tech is intended to enable network operators to evolve their current business models to support a wider variety of relationships with partners and customers in the IoE. Meanwhile network functions virtualization and cloud technologies have the potential to radically change communications and office environments from physical world to reality where everything is software-based and easy to change. At this year’s Webit.Festival you can listen to some of the top experts in this innovative field of digital industry. During the IoE Summit they will share their thoughts on the development of IoT, Smart Homes, M2M, Wearables, Education Tech and Virtual and Augmented Reality. The CEO of Amyx+ Scott Amyx will show how to successfully execute in IoT and how to turn disruption into innovation. The expert is winner of the Cloud & DevOps World Innovation award and was voted among the top IoT Influencers & Experts by Inc. Magazine. Right after him, the CEO of Elemental Machines Sridhar Iyengar will show us how IoT is helping solve the complex world of science and will explain why smart devices are still not a part of every research laboratory. The Global Editorial Director of Wall Street Journal Custom Studios Fara Warner will speak on the best ways to tell a story in the world of virtual and augmented reality from media’s point of view. Josh Software’s Co-founder Gautam Rege will share his thoughts on the future of smart homes, where everything happens at the touch of a button and how it will affect our quality of life. The CEO of TechHuddle Richard Yeo will talk about the current state of ecommerce and will give his predictions for the future of IoE. Meanwhile, the Vice President of SCA for Digital Transformation Gael De Talhouet will tell the audience about the rise of IoT and subscription models and the automation of purchases. Here you can see a full list of the confirmed speakers at Webit.Festival, while here you can get all the information you need about the tickets for the event.

Despite the fact that over the last century medicine noted significant achievements that led to the increase in life expectancy of more than 20 years, health care remains one of the most inefficient and unreformed sectors. Today, connectivity and information are the hottest words in the world of health technology. The new trends in this extremely important field are improving communication, but still pose some concerns for safety of personal information. Experts predict that this year we will see a big jump in data integration in healthcare. This can lead to simplified processes, health monitoring with mobile apps and will have an overall positive impact on patient engagement. The current medical data systems were designed before the Big Data revolution and need to change for better connection between the various sources of information. All the upcoming transformations will impact the delivery of care that benefits both the patient and the provider. Patients are increasingly accessing healthcare services from home as national health systems and vendors begin to get on board. By the end of 2017 nearly 90% of all large employers in the USA are expected to offer telehealth benefits, up from 75% in 2016 and only 30% in 2015. This dramatic increase is an opportunity for many employees to utilize innovative telehealth services for their families. At this year’s Webit.Festival you can listen to some of the top experts in those innovative fields of digital industry. During the Health & Wellbeing Summit they will share their thoughts on the development of VR in medicine, using cognitive technologies to address today’s most pressing issues and the emergence of medical wearables. The Consultant surgeon and Co-founder of Virtual Medics and Medical Realities prof. Shafi Ahmed will explain how the rise of virtual reality technologies will help for improving surgical education. Last year the professor performed the world’s first VR operation, which was watched by more than 55 000 people in 140 countries and reached 4.5 million users on Twitter. The Deputy Chief Health Officer at IBM’s Watson Lisa Latts will speak about the problems of today’s healthcare delivery worldwide and how artificial intelligence can help for crucial data analysis. She will also explain how Watson is helping pharmaceutical companies speed up the discovery of targets for drug development. Meanwhile, the Founder and CEO of Biovotion Dr. Andreas Caduff will talk about the next wave of healthtech wearables and the emergence of devices that combine the ease of use and design of the consumer world, the intelligence of sophisticated monitoring with the compliance and regulatory requirements from the medical device area. Here you can see a full list of the confirmed speakers at Webit.Festival, while here you can get all the information you need about the tickets for the event.