Tag: innovation

Whether we like it or not, we are going to spend the rest of our lives in the future. This means that it will be a lot better for our common good to start building the one we want to live in. Right now we are witnessing an age in which the reality is moving ahead of science fiction and even Hollywood can’t catch up with the rapid changes in our daily lives. This year, Webit.Festival will address the transformation processes that are shaping the digital economy of the future in Europe and the world. The event will be held on 25-26 April in Sofia Tech Park under the patronage of the President of Bulgaria Rumen Radev, the Mayor of Sofia Yordanka Fandakova and the European Commission. The 5000 attendees, coming from more than 90 countries will have the chance to see 300 top speakers, who will share their vision for the future during 12 parallel conferences, covering fields, such as Marketing & Innovation, Digital Economy Leadership, Smart Cities, Mobility, Digital Transformation, FinTech & Blockchain, Big Data & Cloud, Security & Privacy, Health & Wellbeing, IoE and Software Development. During the Digital Transformation Summit you will get the chance to listen to the Chief Designer of SAP, Martin Wezowski, among many others. Before he started working for a big corporation, he studied construction engineering and modern media production technologies. He also had a career in music, which he left behind few years ago. In a recent interview, Wezowski explained that playing in a band and managing it as a business have him a 360-view of a product life cycle, from the initial idea to getting customers to return and eventually to building up a fan base.

“You need to understand every tiny detail and at the same time see the full strategic overview. It was very educational”, he said.

At Webit, Martin Wezowski will explain to the audience why what it means to be an innovator and designer is merging. It is transforming faster than before, from classic styling of the superficial to system design of everything, including social and political systems, deeply rooted in a space of challenges and promises between cutting edge tech and humanism. In an increasingly exponential and converging digital change, we design a relationship, a behavior, that the product will follow. This change is our most important design brief and the stakes are high, it is just too important to be left only to designers. Martin Wezowski believe that everything can and should be given a purpose through innovation and design, including the innovation systems themselves.

Last year was full of AI technology advancements, but in 2017 experts and big players in this innovative field expect even more. Probably the biggest success was the historic victory of AlphaGo over one of the best Go players in history Lee Sedol. This was the factual presentation to the world of the positives, that the process called deep reinforcement learning can bring.

“Reinforcement learning takes inspiration from the ways that animals learn how certain behaviors tend to result in a positive or negative outcome. Using this approach, a computer can, say, figure out how to navigate a maze by trial and error and then associate the positive outcome—exiting the maze—with the actions that led up to it. This lets a machine learn without instruction or even explicit examples”, explained the senior editor at MIT Technology Review Will Knight.

In 2017, we are likely to see attempts to apply reinforcement learning to problems such as automated driving and industrial robotics. If the outcome is positive, this could completely change transport and manufacturing. At this year’s Webit.Festival Europe you can listen to some of the top experts in the world of artificial intelligence and machine learning. During the AI Summit they will share their expectations about the development of this amazing field of science and technology. The Partner at IBM Ventures Christoph Auer-Welsbach will speak about Deep Tech and AI and will share the best practices for high-growth startups on going from tested idea to scalable company. He will advise the audience how to apply artificial intelligence techniques in products and business. ARX’s Founder and CEO Mark Val will explain how augmented reality and artificial intelligence are transforming remote collaboration and are creating a profound sense of presence and interaction between remote teams. In his speech he will share how transition is currently happening and the impact of it. The Director of Strategic and International Development at Wolfram Research Conrad Wolfram will give his recipe for fixing current education through artificial intelligence. He is recognized as a world authority on fixing maths education, including advocating a fundamental shift to focus on computer-based computational thinking rather than hand calculation. IBM’s Vice President for Cloud and Mobile Technology Jonas Jacobi will tell us what we can learn from AI, Cloud Computing and IoE and will help us realize the power of the combination of these new technologies. The CEO and Founder of Augmented Pixels Vitaliy Goncharuk will talk about the development of augmented reality and the connection between it and the progress in the field of artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, the Chief Software Architect of Google’s Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab Vasil Denchev will explain the primary mission of artificial intelligence - to build good models of the world around us and automatically make accurate predictions for various task of practical importance. 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.

World digitization process is causing massive changes in the payments industry in the recent years. And it’s not only Blockchain and its cryptocurrencies that are transforming the FinTech world, but a number of new startups that are finding new ways for moving money across the globe. Enterprises have already realized that the key to success in the digital economy is the constant evolution, that can keep them competitive and relevant to customers. A recent New Money survey showed that experts in this industry predict the end of cash money by 2020. More and more organizations stop accepting cash payments, while the number of customers managing their money digitally is rising rapidly. At this year’s Webit.Festival Europe you can listen to some of the top experts in the world of finance and payments. During the FinTech & Blockchain Summit they will share their expectations about the development of money and finance worldwide and the role of technology in it. The Global Head of FinTech at ING Group Benoit Legrand will speak about the process of digital transformation in general and the way his company is tackling the challenge of embedding innovation at its core for the last 20 years. Novus Ordo Capital’s CEO Liliana Reasor will share her thoughts on the disruptive technology in the finance market, which accounts for $1.59 trillion in the US and the EU. She will explain how the FinTech ventures, driven by the digitization of the world, are forming the finance industry of the future. Reasor is a thought leader in the FinTech and the finance industry and is active in several UK FinTech accelerators. She brings more than 18 years of experience in investment banking, lending, trading, investments, and FinTech from tier-one global financial institutions such as JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank, Banc of America Securities, Morgan Stanley, and Moody’s Analytics in the US and the UK. Due to her contribution to the FinTech & finance industry, she was selected as one of the Top 100 Global FinTech Women Influencers and Leaders in 2015. TransferWise’s CEO and Co-Founder Kristo Kaarmann will share his thoughts on the time of change we live in and how technology will change the way we store money, move them between people and businesses and invest them. The Executive VP for Global Product Strategy at Wirecard Christian Von Hammel-Bonten will talk about the future of payments from the point of view of a global leader in online payment technology for all sales channels. Since 2011, von Hammel-Bonten has been responsible for building up Wirecard’s Mobile Payment division. In his function, he managed the launch of various mobile payment solutions and technologies and worked with telecommunication providers and banks. The CEO of Eurogiro Michel Stuijt and the CEO and Co-Founder of Rewire Or Benoz will take part in a panel discussion about the future of payments. Stuijt is a veteran with over 25 years of experience in the financial service industry, the corporate banking business and the ICT sector. Benoz founded his company in 2015 and now Rewire offers a low cost banking solutions for internationals abroad and works with more than 10 000 clients in Israel alone. 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.

The last few decades shattered the myth that research and development of high technology is not possible without state support. But still in some cases the disruptive advances that are transforming whole industries can’t happen without disruptive legislation. Last week California’s Department of Motor Vehicles announced that automakers and tech titans will be allowed to test their fully autonomous cars in the state. Many in the automotive industry thinks that although California is the go-to destination for development of self-driving technologies, the rules established right now are holding research back. The new proposed regulations eliminates the need for human drivers in the car during the test drives. This means that the companies will no longer have to equip vehicles with steering wheels. With the new set of rules, road testing of autonomous vehicles could begin by the end of the year, while the first real models could become available in the market in 2018. According to the law professor at the University of South Carolina Brian Walker Smith California has taken a big step towards the development of a real self-driving car. While many define the new rules as industry-friendly, experts from the automotive sector are confident that they will make our experience on the road much safer than it is today. Just for a week, the Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets doubled its membership. The alliance, founded in 2016 by Lyft, Uber, Ford, Volvo and Waymo now includes not just car manufacturers, but also organizations, that have a real stake in the implementation of this new kind of mobility. Among them are Mothers Against Drunk Driving, National Federation of the Blind, United Spinal Association, the R Street Institute and Mobility 4 All. Yesterday, the Chinese manufacturer NIO showed its concept consumer autonomous vehicle - the NIO EVE. The company is backed by several venture capital firms from China and has hired experts from the biggest brands in the industry, such as Tesla, Lyft and Ford. EVE is a look at NIO’s vision for the future of autonomous vehicles. The interior was the main focus for the designers. It offers various options for entertainment while riding and series of smart displays. The company’s intention is to bring the car to the US market by 2020. It will have a range of more than 960 kilometers, and with just a ten minute charge you will be able to travel additional 320 kilometers. To learn about the latest trends in the world of Mobility and Transportation, visit Webit.Festival Europe in Sofia on April 25th and 26th. During the Mobility Summit you can listen to top level lecturers like the Managing Partner at New Mobility Consulting Alexander Renz, the Oracle’s Digital Director for EMEA Luisella Giani, the Director of International Transportation and Government at Xerox Richard Harris, the Managing Director of Startupbootcamp Smart Transportation and Energy Tanja Kufner and the Director for Urban Development at Siemens Julie Alexander.

The AI Health Tech subsidiary of Google, Deep Mind Health, is creating a system, based on the blockchain technology, to show how the company uses all the medical data that passes through its processors. The “Verifiable Data Audit” will allow hospitals, doctors and even patients to track their personal information in real-time and see if it has been changed or compromised. Deep Mind is trying to improve medical diagnosis with machine learning. But for developing those tools requires large amounts of confidential data. The company was already criticized, after gaining access to patient records for 1.6 million people in three London hospitals. With its new project, Deep Mind will try to win back some of the lost trust.

“Data can be a powerful force for social progress, helping our most important institutions to improve how they serve their communities. As cities, hospitals and transport systems find new ways to understand what people need from them, they’re unearthing opportunities to change how they work today and identifying existing ideas for the future”, the company’s Co-founder Mustafa Suleyman wrote in a blog post.

It is working in partnership with London’s Royal Free Hospital to develop kidney monitoring software called Streams, but critics still feel that data sharing can give Google too much power over the National Health System. According to Suleyman, data can only benefit society if it has society’s trust and confidence and that is the reason why auditability becomes an increasingly important virtue. He explained that any entry will record the fact that a particular piece of data has been used and also the reason why, for example a blood test was checked against the NHS national algorithm to detect possible acute kidney injury. The new systems are related to the bitcoin cryptocurrency and just like blockchain, the ledger will be append-only, so once a record of data use is added, it can’t be erased later. The ledger will also make it possible for third parties to verify that nobody has tampered with any of the entries. Meanwhile, Google announced a series of new tools to assist users with data preparation and integration, which will upgrade the power and agility of Google Cloud for business clients. The first released product is the new private beta of Google Cloud Dataprep. The tool is visualizing the data preparation, detecting anomalies and using machine learning to suggest data transformation that can improve the quality of information. To learn more about the latest trends in FinTech & Blockchain, Health Tech and Big Data & Cloud visit Webit.Festival Europe in Sofia on April 25 and 26. During the event you can listen to top level speakers, such as the Vice President for Cloud and Mobile Technology Strategy at IBM Jonas Jacobi, the Global Head of FinTech at ING Group Benoit Legrand and the Consultant Surgeon and Co-founder of Virtual Medics and Medical Realities Prof. Shafi Ahmed.

Reducing the size of computer components is a process that never stops surprising us over the past few decades. But IBM managed to shock even the biggest tech enthusiasts, announcing that it has managed to read and write data into a single atom. Although the achievement is still far from its practical application, it is a clear evidence that the concept of atomic data storage is more than accomplishable in the near future. Today’s hard drives take about 100 000 atoms to store a single bit of data, but IBM’s experiment just showed us how much more we can work to improve the computing and storing processes we know now. According to the company, when the technology of atom storage is fully developed, the entire Apple music catalog will be stored in a hard drive with the size of a coin. Тhis has the potential to drastically change the way we see our computing devices. Few years ago we could not imagine that one phone can store hundreds of gigabytes of information, but now this is just one of many remarkable features of the top products on the market. In the near future our wearable gadgets like smartwatches or rings could carry all our personal data. That kind of advance will be really big for the industry, that is expected to generate 17.6 trillion gigabytes of data by the end of 2017. In order to store and analyze all that information, enterprises are going to have to increase their spending. IDC predicts that worldwide revenue for big data and business analytics will grew from nearly $122 billion in 2015 to more than $187 billion in 2019. That is a 50% increase over five years. More than half of that spending will go to services providers, while companies will spend about $55 billion on big data software and $28 billion on hardware in 2019. Sectors like utilities, resource industries, healthcare and banking are likely to see their big data spending rise the fastest, while manufacturing will remain the biggest big data spender overall. If you want to keep up with the hottest trends in the world of data usage and analytics Webit.Festival is the right place for you. During the Big Data & Cloud Summit, you can listen to top level speakers such as the VP for Cloud and Mobile Technology Strategy at IBM Jonas Jacobi and the CTO of Intel Security for EMEA region Raj Samani. 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.

The massive development of digital technology in recent years increased the pressure on the local government officials to invest resources in the integration of multiple information and communication technology and Internet of Things (IoT) solutions in secure fashion to manage their city’s assets. Urbanisation processes and the proliferation of private automobiles create huge problems for the old infrastructure and have unwanted side effects, such as air pollution and heavy traffic. And although we can’t deal with them all, today’s technologies provide multiple solutions to create a better and more comfortable future for all of us. By the end of this year, 75% of cities worldwide will fail to take full advantage of Smart City Data and digital assets due to lack of process, project management and change management skills. According to IDC by 2019 30% of urban consumers will use bots or intelligent assistants for multimodal route planning to manage costs, carbon impact and other travel preferences. At this year’s Webit.Festival you can listen to some of the top experts in this innovative field of digital industry. During the Smart Cities Summit they will share their thoughts on Smart Administration, Smart Mobility and Transport, Smart Energy, Sustainability, Cleantech, Cities' Digital Transformation and City innovation through collaboration with the startup world. The Summit will be chaired by the Mayor of Sofia Mrs. Yordanka Fandakova. It gathers mayors, municipality administrations, EU Commission and European Committee of the Regions members, Cities Council members, Cities' Agency heads, Smart City solution providers and selected innovative startups from around Europe and aims to address all of the crucial factors that are facing urban administrators in today’s digital world. At Smart Cities summit you shall meet mayors from Bulgaria, including from Burgas, Varna, Stara Zagora, Gabrovo, Vidin, Yambol, Lovech, Shumen, as well as from the region, such as the mayor of Tirana, Mostar, Rijeca, etc. Among the partners of the Summit are Sofia Municipality, Oblak.bg, MasterCard, Cisco, The Bulgarian Chamber of Architects, Basscom, BAIT and major Bulgarian and International media. The event gives unique opportunity for direct access to mayors, deputy mayors, top level municipality administrators and all interested parties within the city administrations responsible for Smart City Solution implementations. The CIO of the City of Palo Alto Dr. Jonathan Reichental will tell us what happens when we begin to build intelligence into the fabric of how our cities operate and what opportunities present themselves when we are smart about connecting the right things together. The Director of Technology Evangelism at Built.io Kurt Collins will share his vision about a future, where AI creates and maintains integrations between SaaS services and hardware is a requirement for smart cities. The CEO of Amyx+ Scott Amyx will explain how to innovate and execute in IoT and how to turn disruption into innovation. Innovate UK’s Interim Head of Urban Living & Built Environment Mike Pitts will talk about the challenges before urban populations around the world and how cities can satisfy the needs of their citizens. The Global Managing Director for Smart Cities of Cisco Systems Amr Salem will share his expectations about the growth opportunities driven by improving the quality of life for citizens, and therefore technology functions as a mere enabler to create added value in efficiency. International Telecommunication Union's Deputy Secretary General Malcolm Johnson will explain his organization's role as the United Nations specialized agency for information and communication technologies. The Director of Communications and Marketing at Xerox Richard Harris will explain the latest trends in the implementation of intelligent transport systems. 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.

For the last few years we have witnessed an incredible growth in the market for mobile apps, that is expected to generate over 268 billion mobile downloads and an income of $77 billion in 2017. But now many experts predict the coming of post-app era. This does not mean that apps on our smartphones, tablets and PC’s are going to disappear completely, but that we will be interacting with them differently. We are seeing the battle between the two most used platforms for mobile iOS and Android since the creation of the smartphone. And while the apps in Apple’s store make the most money, they account to only 15% of all downloaded apps. The market is changing fast and some apps just lose their attractiveness or becomes a built-in tool in the new phones. That was the case with the flashlight, most camera apps and other things, that your phone already can do. For example, usage of dedicated video apps declined four percentage points between 2015 and 2016, that of standalone maps apps dropped three percentage points while social media app usage reduced by two percentage points. On the other hand, the use of messaging apps increased 3% and shopping apps grew with 4%. According to the CEO of data quality services company PCA Predict Jamie Turner the significant work on newer browser technology that feels as fast as native apps will remove the need for hundreds of them to exist. Gartner expects that by 2020 almost 40% of mobile interactions will be made by smart agents, or virtual private assistants. This means that we can predict major developments of products like Google Now, Cortana, Siri and Alexa. For the last year the use of digital assistants increased by 4%. At this year’s Webit.Festival you can listen to some of the top Digital Transformation experts in the world, like the CEO of JetPack Aviation David Mayman, the Partner for Europe and Innovation at VCI Roby Strancel, the CMO of AngelHack Brian Collins and the Chief Designer at SAP Martin Wezowski. 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.