I was privileged to be invited to speak at IBM’s #WatsonSummit2017 on 3rd August 2017. The event was centered around the power of Watson, an IBM question answering computer system capable of answering questions posed in natural language.
The themes covered were vast and eye opening, from Multichoice’s use of Watson in customer service through their AI called TUMI, to how The Weather Company, one of the world’s leaders in weather data, went from a “media company that used data, to a data company that uses media”.
The agenda topic I spoke to was “Preparing for a very Different Tomorrow” in the South African context and the ability for businesses to commercialise local innovations by leveraging government funding, enterprise and supplier development (ESD) and related incentives to enhance their value chains and ensure they are part of the data driven business of tomorrow.