As part of Unit8’s mission we’re committed to driving the adoption of AI within the industry, focusing especially on the non-digital native ones. We are also dedicating our time to closing the AI knowledge gap by sharing our experiences, real life use cases, open sourcing some of our libraries and giving lectures to promote the usage of AI. COVID-19 spread has profoundly impacted all of us — at Unit8 we are not different. The virus outbreak was preventing us from delivering on our brand promise to execute on spreading the AI knowledge & adoption. Not anymore! We’re excited to announce ‘Unit8 Talks’ a series of webinars on data & AI dedicated to both business and technology audience (two dedicated tracks). We aim to show real life examples of AI use cases, we will be presenting how AI is solving business problems and we’ll do the deep dives into technologies which we use to deliver on the solutions for our customers. We do hope that you will enjoy the webinars and that you’ll find them insightful and engaging. Join us on Thursdays, 1 PM CET and on demand on our Youtube channel.

What are we announcing

As Unit8 we are announcing a new series of short webinars which will help us continue to share our knowledge and experiences in the area of data and AI, despite the limitations introduced by the COVID-19 outbreak. Thus allowing us to keep up with delivering on our brand promise of spreading the AI awareness and adoption. The webinars are expected to be short (45min), to the point and cover both business and technical topics.

Why are we announcing Unit8 Talks

With the webiar series launch aiming to help Swiss digitalisation efforts. There are also several reasons why we believe launching the webinar series is a good idea, here’s a few:

1. Switzerland lags behind global competitors in AI adoption — according to the 2019 CEO survey by PWC, 85% of the global CEOs expect AI to dramatically change their business over the next 5 years. The adoption of Artificial intelligence varies by country, but the report clearly states that Switzerland is slower with the uptake of these new technologies. The number speak for themselves — about 40% of the Swiss CEOs surveyed answered that they are not currently planning any AI applications (to compare — at global average is 23%). A further 23% of Swiss CEOs indicate that they will develop a plan for deploying AI within the next three years, whereas 30% have so far chosen a very limited approach. Fewer than ten percent say they have already implemented AI in their business. As Unit8 we want to ensure that these numbers improve with time and that we contribute to evangelizing about the positive impact of AI for Swiss companies.
2. AI talent shortage — the Global AI talent report shows that the number of AI specialist is growing at the global level, yet the demand for the talent is outpacing the supply. Additionally, according to the 2019 Top Talent in Switzerland report by digitalswitzerland — shows that Swiss employees seem to be slightly behind their global peers in the acquisition of digital skills (including artificial intelligence, machine learning, data analytics, data mining etc),
3. To be able to deliver on our brand promise of driving AI adoption in Switzerland and Europe, while closing the AI knowledge gap by sharing our experiences and best practices
4. To have fun talking about things we’re passionate about!

What can you expect

A new series of engaging webinars on data and AI:

• short — 45 min (30 min content, 15 for Q&A) — to the point, no fluff, only based on real life experience
• Thursdays, 1PM CET
• based on real life examples of our solutions deployed for our customers

divided into two tracks:

• on business: showcasing real business problems solved with data & AI
• on technology: on variety of data and AI technologies including best practices, stories from the implementations

Why should you care and how will you benefit

If you’re a business oriented person and you’re thinking of deploying AI technologies — try joining our Unit8 Talks — on business track, where you will be able to experience the stories about real-life examples of AI technology in action, lessons learnt from over 40 projects we delivered on, together with practical guides on how to select your first AI use case, which methodologies to use to evaluate AI projects and more.

If you’re a techie, either new to data science/AI or experienced, looking to grow your skills — join the Unit8 Talks — on technology track. Learn from Unit8ers, former employees of companies like Amazon, Apple, Google & Palantir, about their experiences in deploying AI projects. Best practices, tips and tricks and real stories from AI deployments will be shown.

Edit: List of the recordings of Unit8 Talks episodes:

On business

• ‘AI in RegTech’ by Cosmin Argatu
• ‘Improving Overall Equipment Efficiency with Advanced Analytics & AI’by Tomasz Chudzik and Kamil Zalewski
• ‘Selecting a successful AI use case — a guide to a proven methodology with a real life example’ by Kamil Zalewski

On technology

• ‘Building domain specific search engine with Elasticsearch’ by Gael Grosch
• ‘Real data stories: Entity Resolution’ by Bianca Stancu and Radu Jica

More to come in season 2.

Do you want to engage?

Do you have an idea for a session? Would you like to collaborate? Would you like to follow up in depth on particular topics? Reach out!

Unit8 Talks are now launched, looking forward to having you with us.

Follow Unit8 to learn more:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Instagram
• Youtube
• GitHub
• Medium

Thanks to Marcin Pietrzyk.