The Northwest Arkansas Expertise Summit can have a number of programming areas for this 12 months’s fall convention attendees. Not surprisingly, synthetic intelligence (AI)/automation is considered one of them.
In keeping with a Deloitte examine, over 50% of organizations plan to make use of AI and automation applied sciences this 12 months. Different high-achieving organizations are adopting new tech-savvy operational processes regardless of considerations about AI utilization.
To piggyback on the recognition, summit organizers thought further programming to debate AI all year long is perhaps useful. They launched a sequence of knowledge occasions to debate AI and be taught the way it transforms companies and organizations.
Kris Adams is the director of the tech summit, which had about 1,700 attendees registered final 12 months from 28 states.
“Early on in January, once we settled on AI and automation as considered one of our programming tracks for 2023, we thought this was one thing we must always do exterior of the tech summit,” Adams stated. “We thought this is perhaps the best time and spot to construct that neighborhood and lead into the content material we can have on the principal convention within the fall.”
The inaugural AI Sequence occasion on April 27 drew greater than 175 attendees. In the course of the presentation, the subject was Generative AI, a kind of AI that may create varied information, together with pictures, movies, audio and textual content.
“It was an enormous response that confirmed this was one thing the neighborhood needed to see,” Adams stated.
Adams makes use of the phrase “neighborhood” deliberately.
“It’s one of many taglines we’re working with this 12 months,” he stated. “The Northwest Arkansas Expertise Summit is greater than only a convention. We’re actively making an attempt to construct a tech neighborhood in Northwest Arkansas. We need to see expertise not simply dwelling and dealing right here however rising and staying right here in order that Northwest Arkansas actually begins to realize a status. It has already, considerably, however we wish that to strengthen.”
Adams hopes to have no less than three gatherings to debate AI. The second installment is Thursday (June 1) from 5 to 7 p.m. at Bentonville Neighborhood Church. Safety and privateness considerations associated to AI is the subject. There’s extra data, together with register, at this hyperlink.
This 12 months’s Northwest Arkansas Expertise Summit will convene Oct. 29-Nov. 1 on the Rogers Conference Middle and a number of websites all through downtown Bentonville.
“We’ve outgrown the capability to be a multisite occasion in downtown Bentonville,” stated Adams, who was employed because the summit director in March 2022. “We’ll have our programming on the Rogers Conference Middle, and our afterhours social and networking shall be in Bentonville.”
Adams stated this 12 months’s theme is “12 months of the Machine.” Automation and AI shall be an enormous a part of that.
“We wish individuals to have the ability to contact and see and expertise plenty of the expertise we speak about,” he stated. “We’re hoping to lastly capitalize on that now that we’re absolutely in-person once more post-COVID. It is going to be an experiential occasion the place you possibly can try to on and check out among the expertise we’re speaking about.”
Adams famous that the summit is open to anybody, not like different important Northwest Arkansas occasions which might be personal or invitation-only.