Watson Summit Denmark November 2017

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On November 7, we proudly hosted IBM Watson Summit Denmark 2017, IBM Denmark’s annual flagship event for clients and Business Partners. The event emphasized that cognitive technologies – comprising cognitive computing, artificial intelligence and machine learning – are for everyone. As the record-high attendance at Watson Summit in Copenhagen clearly demonstrated, cognitive technologies are top of the agenda across industries, professions, and business sizes.

For many companies and organizations, a key question about technologies like Watson is often “how do we get started?” and “what’s the right approach?”. There is no list with all the answers. As I said during my opening speech at Watson Summit, “Think Big – Start Small – Scale Fast”. The purpose of Watson Summit is indeed to inspire businesses on how to get started by learning from others who already use Watson in their transformation.

Watson Summit highlighted great client cases across banking, insurance, healthcare, the industrial sector, retail and the public sector. The cases that our clients presented targeted both very large organizations, small- and medium-sized businesses as well as startups. For the latter, we ran a special Startup Event. Three startups received awards for pitching the best ideas; congratulations to BotSupply, Plant Jammer and Leapcraft!

At Watson Summit, we also announced the launch of the IBM Cloud Garage in Copenhagen. Already set up in cities like London, New York, San Francisco and Nice, the IBM Cloud Garage helps companies apply the agility and innovation culture of startups to deliver new ideas to clients faster. We are very proud to have the IBM Cloud Garage in Denmark and look forward to providing you with more details.

We had selected a special venue for Watson Summit Denmark: DR Koncerthuset, which is the concert hall complex of DR, the Danish Broadcasting Corporation. To show how artists can apply Watson, KORAGE – a newly-formed choir of well-known Danish singers – opened the event in the concert hall by performing a song co-written by Watson. And to round off the event, Cecilie Waagner Falkenstrøm, Danish AI artist and researcher at Royal College of Art in London, performed her award-winning artwork FRANK, which is partly based on Watson. As these performances showed, Watson is not only for businesses. In fact, Watson has gone from science fiction to mainstream in a matter of very few years.

Above, I have mentioned only a handful of Watson Summit highlights. There are simply too many speakers, client cases, sessions, etc., to be included here. But I would like to extend my sincere thanks to all speakers, clients and Business Partners who made this a very memorable event. I hope IBM Watson Summit Denmark provided you with inspiration and insights and I wish you all the best of luck on your transformation journey.