How can I get digital?
Is it important to be digital?
Answers to these questions and many more weregiven during our last Mini-Conference – Get Digital. It took place on the 16th of April in the Helix.
The time was split between a poster presentation and the followed Get Digital Conference.
Poster Exhibition
The Poster Exhibition had two very positive aspects. Firstly, we could meet our DICE team a last time and additionally we got the opportunity to have a look at all the amazing posters designed by other groups. I really enjoyed this part of the day. Especially, I was amazed by how different the posters were and at the same time how similar others. There were groups that used the layout provided by the Module and consequently, all had a quite similar appearance. On the other hand there were eye-catching posters entirely designed by the groups. Meanwhile, it was surprising to see how common certain apps were. A lot of apps offered navigation on the campus, others co-ordinated the clubs and societies and lastly, a few were designed to get all of us organized. I am curious to find out which one was the best and therefore, I hope that the winner will be announced to all of us.
Now it was time to Get Digital. As on the last conferences this one was opened by Dr. Theo Lynn who finished up by introducing Prof. Martin Curley, Vice-President and Managing Director of Intel Labs Europe, as the first speaker.
“This decade we will create and extend computing technology to connect and enrich the lives of every person on earth”
– Intel –
Martin talked to us about how the future could be like as cloud computing keeps on developing further and gaining more importance. He made an astonishing comparison that was really eye-catching and that I won’t forget soon. According to him we would fly from Dublin two New York in a matter of seconds if the speed of airplanes developed as fast as cloud computing does. Furthermore, he talked to us about three main trends that will shape the upcoming years:
- Digital Transformation (driven by: Big Data, Cloud Computing, Client Continuum, Cyber Physical Systems and Security)
- Sustainability (if the consumption continues to grow, we will need two earths to support us. Therefore, resource decoupling is needed to resolve the issue according to Martin.)
- Mass Collaboration (moving innovation out of the lap and collaborate with others to increase efficiency and quality)
Throughout explaining these three trends Martin always referred back to the Moore’s Law, named after Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore.
Cloud computing is something that will gain more and more impact in our daily life. Let’s see where it is going to!
I really liked that he addressed the subject of sustainability. In the by Martin recommended video “An Inconvenient Truth” (by Al Gore) you even can get more information about this topic. For me this was one of the most mind blowing videos I ever saw, so don’t miss out! Watch it!
“We need to change our business culture.”
– IC⁴ –
Dr. Constantin Gurdgiev from the Irish Centre for Cloud Computing and Commerce was the next speaker with the intention to get us digital. He mainly outlined the advantages and disadvantages of cloud computing. In general it was really challenging for me to follow his train of thoughts every now and then. This was mainly because he did not use any power point slides to underline his speech. Some visual aid would have been extremely helpful for me. I liked that he shared his personal vision for Ireland with us. According to him Ireland, with an economy dominated by the service sector, should focus on cloud based services in the future. Lastly, he presented the different challenges Ireland has to face in order to succeed:
- Do not rely on the Irish Government (they do not have a clue about entrepreneurship)
- Ireland needs to get more tolerant in its economy and culture
“Computing is everywhere, the cloud is everywhere “
– Microsoft –
Representing Microsoft Clair Dillan was the third speaker to step up on stage. From all the presentations we saw over the time of the Module this definitely was one of the eye-catching ones. Not only the Power Point slides were amazing, also the videos she used to underline her speech as well as her style of brining the message across.
She presented a vision of Cloud computing to us. Firstly, she impressed us with some numbers that stressed the increasing importance of cloud computing. According to her “the growth of Cloud computing (=27.6%) is 4 times greater than the growth of the IT industry (=6.7%) as a whole”. Modern computing exists of 4 components:
- Multi-Device (People use more and more devices in general e.g. almost everyone in the audience had 5 or more devices at home.)
- Social (our relationships are changing as our use of devices is changing)
- Connected (more and more things are connected e.g. open the car with your smart phone)
- Natural (our attitudes towards and our behaviour with technology)
These 4 components were also represented in the videos that followed. Clair showed us two impressing ones. The first was from 2o11 stating a vision about how fare cloud computing can be driven in the future and the second was from 2o12 showing that the visions from 2o11 already came reality. Have a look at the vision from 2o11:
To round off her session, Claire gave us some thoughts. Her personal vision is that we will stop using the word cloud because it will be everywhere anyways. It will become normal part of our life. And as the videos stated: “best way to create the future is to invent it.”
Her presentation definitely was my favoured one. It really opened my eyes to what technology can make possible for us and how fast technology is developing.
“Do not fall into the marketing flaw that everything is just social, or that everything is just digital.”
– Marketo –
Fergus Gloster, Managing Director of Marketo International, was the final speaker. Founded in 2007 Marketo is a company producing marketing automation software designed to help businesses to survive in the online world.
The Internet, the World Wide Web, Google as well as search marketing, e-commerce and more recently social media have changed the role of modern marketers and the buying process. I really enjoyed how he brought the difficult relationship of marketing and sales persons in a funny way across. While marketing staff thinks that sales people are really serious and no fun, sales staff thinks that all marketers have a relaxing job by drawing pictures all day long. What I believe the fact that the current sales and marketing model is dysfunctional as buying has changed and there is no longer a scarcity of information was really striking. Before I never thought about it that way, but it is obviously through – we can get all the information we are looking for in the internet at any time. At the end we were left with a piece of advice: “Do not fall into the marketing flaw that everything is just social, or that everything is just digital.”
To conclude, Get Digital made it clear for me how important the cloud is and that it is already everywhere. I recognized that I already take it for grand now, even though it is changing all the time and continuously introducing us to new tools. I am curious to see where the road of cloud computing will lead us to.
To sum up our Dice module it needs to be said this module was a lovely change to the common lectures. I learned a lot during all the sessions and got good insights in different subjects. Even though some of my comments on the different speakers where critical though out the time of writing this blog, overall all of the speakers were perfectly chosen because they presented highly relevant and interesting topics. Lastly, I want to thank everyone who took part in organizing and giving the different sessions of the module. You can be certain that your effort was worthwhile because it definitely will help us in our career.
So LET’S GET CREATIVE, SOCIAL, MOBILE, STARTED and DIGITAL.
DICE - Get Series - DCU 