Author: Volker Page 1 of 73

Data and IoT: The Secret Sauce

I thought I’d let you know I recently had a little piece of writing published at the rather formidable Smart Industry magazine. I speak about how data is the secret (as in often times hidden) ingredient in what makes the Internet of Things truly powerful. Head over here to give it a read. Thank you.

More on AI and our Future [with video] & a note on this blog

You may have seen my TEDx Manchester talk on AI & The Future of Work. It went down a storm (over 175,000 views at the time of writing) and you can re-watch it here. It triggered a number of talks over this past year and the talk evolved a bit:

I am seeking to give a very high-level (so be gentle with me) overview on the crossroads some of today’s and tomorrow’s meta-trends bring us. These are data, sensors (which are data nodes) and AI & machine learning. The combination of the three will likely be amongst the biggest contributors to the fundamental changes the next few decades will bring, and it is of vital importance we all make ourselves familiar with them and address them proactively rather than wait and see what might be.

Here is the latest iteration of this (WordPress says “it will do all the work” but apologies if it’s only a link):

https://vimeo.com/user4193632/review/244384629/d957dda0ab

Aside from this, you will have noticed that I am not blogging very actively these days. Besides not having the time anymore to be as dedicated to it as I used to be, I feel that the time of a siloed, single-destination blog might have run its time. You will find me more often on Twitter or Facebook (and, very occasionally, on Medium).

The pages on here I am keeping updated are 1) the info on my speaking gigs (though some of the corporate ones cannot be posted) and 2) my bio. Keep checking it. I still love you! 🙂

TEDx Manchester: AI & The Future of Work [VIDEO]

A few weeks back, I gave a talk at TEDx Manchester (see this post for slides and some background info). Now, TEDx have also posted the video to the talk. I hope you will enjoy it:

TEDx Manchester: AI & The Future of Work [SLIDES]

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of opening this year’s TEDx Manchester with a keynote on AI & the Future of Work.

The thesis was (compressed into a frantic 15 minutes marred by a disobedient clicker) that in today’s day and age, mere knowledge is not necessarily power any longer because we have access to so much of it. At the same time, computers and AI and machine-learning algorithms make such quick advances that even tasks that were previously thought to be firmly in the domain of man are now being disrupted by machines. This has potentially very profound impacts not only on how we will live but also on how our society can work: if large parts of the population is no longer in the position to earn a living and lead a dignified life, we need to think afresh.

I focussed here on what is there already (with a somewhat crude shock-and-awe approach to wake everyone up) and offer a few hints on where we can focus to inoculate us and future generations (to an extent).

Here’s a link to the slides (SlideShare awarded them their “SlideShare of the Day”, so if nothing else, they’re pretty):

Education – the Trillion Dollar Opportunity

This past week, I had the great honour and pleasure to give a keynote at the Mobile Word Congress‘ hotter sibling that is 4YFN, sizing up the opportunity of the education market, which is something I have been looking at a lot in the course of my work with Emerge Education, Europe’s leading EdTech accelerator, over the past few years.

In it, I have been outlining the immense size of the market at hand as well as the incredible impact startups and investments in this sector can have on the world. I also offered some thoughts on how to work around some of the obstacles that such a traditionally “hard” sector poses.

The video of the talk will follow shortly. In the interim, here are my slides of it. I hope you will enjoy them.

Barcelona, here we come (once more)

It is February, we’re still hanging in there, so we will again be descending upon that magnificent city in Catalunya that is Barcelona (which, of course, is that little bit less appealing because, together with us, there will be a ton of other mobile industry folks in town, so that taxis are hard to get, hotels hard to afford, and parties hard to get into, but, hey…). Because it is the week of Mobile World Congress

This year, I have the great honour to moderate a high-octane panel at the MMIX portion of the Mobile World Congress on a topic that I could call “told you so”. Namely, we will be discussing “Games: the new destination for brands.” I will be joined by some super-cool names in the (pun/no-pun intended) game, namely:

Alas, that is of course not enough. On the very same day and only a short taxi ride down the road, I will have the great pleasure to delivering a keynote at the terrific 4YFN (that is short for “Four Years From Now”) conference, the uber-cool entrepreneurship conference that was the ugly duckling of its big sibling MWC but is soon catching up in size (and has, of course, overtaking MWC in terms of cutting edge ages ago). I will be keynoting with a spotlight on the education sector, urging people to “Change the World: One Trillion Dollar Market at a Time.”

Following my keynote at 4YFN will be a terrific panel on the hot trends in EdTech. It will be moderated by the CEO of Emerge Education (Europe’s leading EdTech accelerator where I am a Venture Partner) and participants will be Jesse Lozano (CEO of Pi-Top), Mads Holmen (CEO of Bibblio), Diego Olchese (CEO of Crehana) and Tom Hatton (CEO of RefMe). Definitely try to attend that one! It highlights the great work Emerge Education is doing and will also expose you to some of the brightest young CEO’s in the space, all of which passionate young entrepreneurs who have chosen to go where they can effect change (rather than puttering about with the 47th something-something-platform-SaaS-something play).

If you’re around, join me for those. It should be great fun! 🙂

[Disclaimer: I am a Venture Partner at Emerge Education, an investor in Pi-Top and an investor in and Chairman of Bibblio].

Smart Citizens – Populating Smart Cities

I have recently been thinking a lot about the advances we are seeing in the Internet of Things (IoT) and Smart Cities. The impact on everyones’ lives will be significant and I believe – this evolves as one of my ongoing themes – that human-centric design will be of the utmost importance in ensuring that the outcomes from this will be accepted and embraced, which I am convinced constitutes one of the most important building blocks in ensuring the efficacy of the technologies we are building.

I was given the opportunity to speak about this recently at the wonderful IoT Shifts conference in Barcelona. The following are my slides from that talk. As usual, they are quite visual (which presumably made Slideshare choose them as their “Top Presentation of the Day“), so please feel free to get in touch should you require more context from me.

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