genAI for Business: Aftermath of our first independent conference

 

In October, we organized our first independent conference in the UK. The impressions finally settled. Without exaggeration and false modesty, we can announce that genAI for BUSINESS was a complete hit.

The conference was held in the academic environment of the Sci-Tech Daresbury campus, which produced not one, not two, but even three Nobel laureates! As if that wasn’t impressive enough, Alan Turing (yes, that Alan Turing) postulated a part of the foundation of modern information science right there in the 50s. To this day, SciTech remains synonymous with scientific excellence, mostly in AI development and nuclear and space research. One of the more memorable landmarks in the county is the characteristic bell-shaped chimneys, like the one you might remember from the Simpsons intro. If you need to know more about the significance of the Sci-Tech campus, an IBM supercomputer and a vast particle accelerator are also their most prolific tenants.

Now that we are spatially and contextually situated, we can turn our heads towards our conference. 😅

Under the baton of Ina Bičanić Benković, Justin Barnes and Neil Jenkinson masterfully led behind and in front of the scenes. They efficiently managed to seduce the speakers and audience equally with their charm, not to mention the amount of preparation our English lads put into the job.

As for the content, the story was very rounded. During this one-day meeting, the lecturers presented the entire life cycle of the development of LLM projects to the audience. They answered questions like Under what conditions such projects are created, what technologies to use and how to use them, whom are they intended for, what challenges each designer encounters along the way, why the ethical moment is an essential element of every single AI project, and, most importantly, how to raise money for development of such goals. Previous AI projects of the TIS Grupa served as a perfect analysis starting point for each of the questions mentioned above.

From the home team, in addition to the already mentioned, our colorful heptagons were defended by Dženan Lojo and, unexpectedly, Karlo Franić, who ran into the pitch in the last seconds. Due to unexpected complications, he replaced his boss, Tomislav Strgar, at the last minute. We are glad to say Karlo quickly turned into one of the shining stars of the whole event. Once more, it has been proven that a good plan B is the best friend of all challengers of fate.

We want to thank all the speakers and the guests. According to our field agents, the subject was coming up roses. If it’s not apparent, we don’t even try to hide our satisfaction with a well-done job. Still, the most significant confirmation of our success is that our hosts expressed their wish to turn this event into a regular platform for exchanging information on AI.

Learned and inspired by this experience, we throw ourselves into the organization of new forums of this type. .debug, we are coming for you. 😋