Digital Demo Day 2019

See https://digitaldemoday.de/ for official details.

As promised my personal and subjective summary of the visit and collection of topics that I picked up yesterday. I hope you like it and find added value for yourself?

Key Topics for the Startups participating: 3D printing and quick prototyping, Cyber and Data Security, anykind of Sensors, Factory IoT (even for bar/beer, refrigerator and agriculture), desk less workers, co-working spaces --> https://digitaldemoday.de/exhibitors/  

They had 2500+ registrations this year, it was the 3rd Demo Day and all presentations in English language. It started with a short introduction and opening by Thomas Geisel, the Mayor of Duesseldorf followed by Armin Laschet, Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia. No jokes about politicians, but Armin was really struggling with his speech. Too high level in English and a collection of the word digital, possibly 20+ times in less than 10 sentences. One example: "The Government and public services need to keep up with the speed of digital transformations". Let's go on with the presentations I listened to:

• Combining Cloud, IoT, AI & Robotics – Google's Platform for the Industry - Dr. Stefan Ebener, Google https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-stefan-ebener/
  • Focus on Cloud, IoT, AI, Robotics --> Machine Learning
  • “Science fiction did become science fact in the meantime” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ystdF6jN7hc
  • Learning by observing
  • Be good parents for good kids (AI), hand over the right value set to AI and Robots
  • Data is the power to be harnessed
  • Google AI - cows are cool https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6taIMlZysJQ
  • Google lens, consumer based AI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LHP5eh4Y54
  • Google duplex, 1st to beat Turing test for computer https://searchenterpriseai.techtarget.com/definition/Turing-test,  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YaAFRirkfk
  • In ~21M software developers you will only find 1,000 AI specialists
• IBM Watson IoT – AI from the Cloud for Industrial Tech & Applications, Andreas Erler - https://www.linkedin.com/in/erler/
  • AI in Chess, Jeopardy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFR3lOm_xhE
  • Watson in the IBM cloud, offering different APIs https://www.ibm.com/watson/products-services/
  • Is open source now, after buying RedHat
  • Watson cloud in the Frankfurt Data Center, GDPR compliant
  • Supporting Hybrid and Multi-cloud
  • Use cases: Rotterdam Harbor, Tesco Ireland, Cimon on ISS with DLR https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1fu7Yb4zkA  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJMyC9o08OM  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afutNx1weec  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GPhjv17dlo
  • Watson IoT center in Munich https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unI0-OEjb0o
• Henkel X: Cultural Transformation embracing Open Innovation at Henkel, Michaela Bessell, Henkel AG & Co. KGaA - https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaela-bessell-6b034368/
  • “Behind every great technology is a human leveraging it”
  • 3 Focus areas: Make (Henkel AG), Partner (Henkel X), Buy (Henkel ventures)
  • Thomas W. Malone quote: “… new ideas will not come from new technology, but from new ways of collaboration …” https://www.strategy-business.com/article/00257?gko=94468
• Keynote: Man Machine – Who's programming whom?, Ranga Yogeshwar, TV Presenter & Author - https://yogeshwar.de/
  • John Maynard Keynes quote: “The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.”
  • Do not promote “bull s***” ideas: E.g. a stress watch (http://emvio.watch/) – “I know when I have stress, I do not need a watch to tell me” – like an African friend of mine says: “You have the watches, we have the time”
  • Always embrace two sides: Technology and Ethics behind it
  • Another friend of mine with 2 artificial legs (Hugh Herr: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDsNZJTWw0w), gets software updates for his legs every two weeks, he can climb mountains in the meantime that nobody else can
• 1st Panel discussion: How do different Cultures & Regulations impact AI innovation in EU, US, and China? Hosted by Ranga Yogeshwar
  • Participants:
    • Anna Lukasson-Herzig, nyris search engine (https://nyris.io/), worldwide recruiting, 20 developer - https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-anna-lukasson-herzig-801bb6103/
    • Dr. Tu-Lam Pham, China AI expert, Silicon Valley is boring - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tulampham/
    • Joerg Bienert, President of the German federal AI association & aiso lab - https://www.linkedin.com/in/joerg-bienert/
  • China: You can basically get unlimited salary for unlimited knowledge
  • Germany: Should provide MINT (STEM) education starting in 3rd Grade latest
  • Germany government to invest 3 billion in AI, city of Shanghai 15 billion alone
  • In China there is a lot of technical expertise in the government, Germany mainly has politicians, besides Dr. Angela Merkel
  • Germany works 09.00 AM to 05.00 PM Monday to Friday, China works 09.00 AM – 09.00 PM Monday to Saturday
  • Life-long learning is urgently required
• Live Demo: Industrie 4.0 – Simulations for Professionals & Amateurs, Guido Schubert, Fischertechnik - https://www.linkedin.com/in/guido-schubert-ba08b92/
  • Fischertechnik, the best toy of my youth, I still have some stuff at home. You never know 
  • https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6499187336310464512
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoSc6ms9p0U
  • Fischertechnik is working with SAP for IoT simulations, to go away from Powerpoint level and show real action to customers
  • SAP is putting 500k€ software on top of 3k€ HW from Fischertechnik to show end-to-end processes and a fully functioning factory with IoT enabled – see mentioned Youtube video as example
• How a Telco Company drives the Farming Sector Digitization through Smart Solutions in Cooperation with Start-ups, Michael Reinartz, Chief Innovation Officer, Vodafone -  https://www.linkedin.com/in/mreinartz/
  • Uplift - https://vodafoneuplift.de/en/
  • IoT in agriculture to support necessary changes in farming
  • Cost pressure, larger footprint, transparency
  • Barriers for digitization in farming are cost, security, internet connection
• 2nd Panel discussion: From Deep Tech to Unicorns – How do we get from Pure Coincidence to Systematic Success in NRW? Hosted by Dr. Klemens Gaida, digihub Düsseldorf / Rheinland - https://www.linkedin.com/in/klemensgaida/ , https://digihub.de/en
  • Participants:
    • Ingo Franz, Kreaxi - http://www.kreaxi.com/en/
    • André Christ, LeanIX, in Bonn, 90+ people - https://www.leanix.net/en/
    • Lisa Ksienrzyk, gruenderszene.de - https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-ksienrzyk-16198559/
  • How to come from Deep Tech  https://www.startupbusiness.it/what-is-deep-tech-and-which-startups-are-marking-the-road-not-uber/96448/ to Unicorn https://www.cbinsights.com/research/unicorn-startup-market-map/
  • Eco system for startups: Very fast internet, Berlin scene (why only this city??), etc.
• Startup Pitch Final (presenter Felix Thoennessen - https://www.linkedin.com/in/felixthoennessen/, 3 Minutes Pitch, 4 Minutes Q&A
  • Participants:
    • Visensys image recognition SW, http://www.visensys.de/#
    • Foxbase Selector.AI, bridging language gaps between companies and their customer, https://www.foxbase.de/en/
    • Zolitron technology, sensors - Z-Node & Z-Cloud, https://zolitron.com/
    • Kanal Netz, need based cleaning concept, https://www.kanal-netz.de/
  • Winner:
    • Audience decision --> Kanal Netz
    • Jury decision --> Zolitron technology

When you made it up to this sentence, thanks for reading. Very much appreciated .