October 2021 – KigaliTech

Cisco launches Webex Hologram, an augmented reality meeting solution

At WebexOne, Cisco unveiled a preview of its next-generation hybrid work collaboration product. Webex Hologram is the industry’s only real-time meeting solution that takes advantage of augmented reality headsets to combine feature rich Webex meeting functionality with immersive 3D holograms.

With 64% of employees agreeing that the ability to work remotely directly affects whether they stay or leave a job, organizations will increasingly offer flexible work arrangements. Yet this poses a challenge for teams that require hands-on collaboration, such as design or training with a physical object. With Webex Hologram’s holographic capabilities, participants can now interact in ways previously possible only in-person.

“Our mission at Cisco is to empower the 3 billion digital workers on the planet to participate equally from anywhere in the world,” said Jeetu Patel, executive vice president and general manager, Cisco Security and Collaboration. “Webex Hologram represents a large step toward our mission of delivering a delivering a work experience so seamless that there is no gap between virtual and in-person collaboration.”

Global COVID-19 pandemic safety protocols have also heightened the need for enterprises to offer immersive virtual meetings. For example, in the healthcare industry when a new surgical device is introduced, physicians, technicians, sales and support teams need to be trained quickly. With Webex Hologram, this training can be handled remotely to save time and travel, while providing the ability to see the surgical device from every angle and at its actual size as if a physician were in the room.

“Webex Hologram is a powerful tool for our design engineers, drivers and crews as we continue to reimagine hybrid sports and supporting our team on tracks around the world,” said Zak Brown, CEO of McLaren Racing. “Rather than flying a technician to the racing team or explaining procedures through flat images, with the Hologram technology we can immediately show an engine component from every angle, convey sizing, and instruct on assembly and usage as if they were in person – all while saving countless hours in travel time.”

Additional capabilities of Webex Hologram include:

Immersive technology in-use today: Unlike 2D and virtual meeting experiences in the market today, only Webex Hologram enables a feeling of co-presence by delivering photorealistic, real-time holograms of actual people. For participants, this means an experience that’s more engaging and realistic, as opposed to using avatars. This can make all the difference when it comes to training and problem-solving.
Ability to share physical and digital content: With Webex Hologram, the presenter can share both physical content and digital content that allows users to co-create and truly collaborate. Take an auto manufacturer, for instance. Participants can interact with a physical prototype of a vehicle that’s shared in the AR experience to examine and provide feedback on the vehicle’s engine and undercarriage. Design renderings of the car and other digital content can also be shared during the immersive experience.
Multi-dimensional experience for multiple users: Support for a “1:many” presenter experience that enables remote participation from multiple users. Each user simultaneously receives a multi-dimensional experience, as opposed to other offerings that limit usage to single angle views.
Headset agnostic: Webex Hologram is compatible with industry-leading AR headsets, such as Magic Leap and Microsoft HoloLens.

Webex Hologram will soon further bolster the Webex Suite, enabling remote and hybrid workers to engage in immersive experiences using the AR headset of choice. In the past year, Webex by Cisco has introduced nearly 1,000 new features and devices to market, and continues to innovate with emerging technologies.

www.cisco.com

[Africa Cloud Review] Simon Ngunjiri: Cloud is transforming healthcare in Africa

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that many healthcare organizations do not have the necessary agility and business continuity programs or technologies to support them during crises. It is forcing businesses to act on cloud and digital transformation strategies that they had been delaying until now.

In healthcare, cloud computing is applied to overcome two major industry challenges: increasing cost-effectiveness and building a self-sufficient health ecosystem.

Cloud computing, along with increasingly ubiquitous digital tools for collection, aggregation, and analysis of health data, according to Christopher A. LeGrand, CEO, BroadReach Group, offers substantial potential to help the African continent leapfrog many more mature systems in transforming healthcare and improving health outcomes.

Findings from a study on Leveraging cloud computing for improved health service delivery conducted in Kisumu County in Kenya revealed that cloud computing had been adopted by 42 (53%) while Software-as-a-Service, Platform-as-a-Service and Infrastructure-as-a-Service implementations were at 100%, 0% and 5% among adopters, respectively.

‘’Overall, those who had adopted cloud computing realized a significantly higher number of benefits to health service delivery compared to those who had not’’ the study notes.

Cloud computing has enabled the development of various e-healthcare platforms. The best examples, Kevin Rombosia, a healthcare leader and geospatial epidemiologist, says in an article published on Business Daily are the development of applications that enable a patient using a smartphone to access clinic consultation, laboratory services, diagnostics, and pharmacy services from the comfort of their homes. ‘’These platforms enable the storage of patient’s medical records such as past medical histories in the cloud and can be retrieved on demand. This is critical for the continuity of clinical care.’’ He says.

The continent has one of the greatest healthcare challenges in the world. Integrating cloud technology in current health care strategies, therefore, provides new ways of healthcare in Africa. This facilitates and engages the system, the health care professionals, and the patients.

According to a recent report by market research solution Reportlinker, the revenue of the global healthcare cloud computing market is expected to reach $52.30 billion by 2026 up from $11.59 billion in 2020, growing at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 28.5 percent during the period. The main growth factors till 2026 the report says include increased adoption of Software as-a-Service (SaaS) cloud service, with a market share of 63.7% in 2020, owing to the increasing number of providers and payors migrating toward more SaaS healthcare computing services to manage the growth inpatient data.

The bottom line, the cloud is more critical than ever in helping healthcare providers respond to the pandemic and prepare for future disruptions.

Simon Ngunjiri Muraya is Google Cloud Architect at Incentro Africa

Ericsson enables smarter networks that learn and improve

Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) launches its Network Data Analytics Function (NWDAF) solution, based on smarter data-driven networks that learn and improve. Ericsson’s NWDAF enables service providers to improve customer experience by using the data generated by the network to flag and fix problems, thus improving service quality.

For 5G, automation is a continuous endeavor ranging from automating specific simple and complex tasks to supporting zero-touch autonomous networking, which requires the application of advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and reasoning. NWDAF achieves this by getting the right data at the right cost to feed into the AI/ML models.

NWDAF enhances network operability by providing insight that helps the service provider identify and solve network problems on different levels as well as input for taking valued business decisions. One example is automated closed loops (data retrieval, analytics processing, insights generation and action enforcement) on different network and application levels.

Ericsson’s NWDAF can drive up to 45 percent reduction in OPEX and CAPEX compared with typical third-party NWDAF implementation with event exposure. Smart data acquisition allows more efficient integration and testing, simpler orchestration and optimal footprint.

Neil McRae, MD Architecture & Strategy, BT Group Chief Architect says: “At BT we connect for good and our customers increasing reliance on the network requires us to think differently. With Ericsson we are working on cloud native solutions for 5G Core architecture to support multiple generations of technologies and we see the need for greater automation and analytics to manage complex networks and ensuring the best quality experience for our customers. I’m pleased to see that Ericsson is launching NWDAF building upon Ericsson’s built-in software probes and Expert Analytics (EEA), a natural next step development to enhance closed loop automation and service assurance that could benefit BT’s Customer Network Experience (CNE) platform.”

Monica Zethzon, Head of Solution Area Packet Core, Ericsson, says: “Everything 5G, especially 5G Core networks, must be automated. Automation will improve operational efficiency, reduce time to market for new services and is required to handle the magnitude of tailor-made services that will be introduced with 5G. With the launch of NWDAF we build the automated closed loop and assurance, enabled by AI and machine learning, to leverage data-driven operation based on network data.”

James Crawshaw, Principal Analyst, Telco IT & Operations, Omdia, says: “Ericsson’s NWDAF adds intelligence to the 5G core, bringing new insights that enable automation and optimization. With this solution, Ericsson shows its technology leadership in 5G Core.”

NWDAF is a reusable set of microservices integrated into Ericsson’s cloud-native dual-mode 5G Core and in Ericsson Expert Analytics . Flexible deployment scenarios and model portability enable the NWDAF to be located both centrally and as a built-in NWDAF in the 5G Core products. NWDAF is based on 3GPP Release 17, defining a distributed network analytics architecture where inference and training, and data repository are separated.

www.ericsson.com

[Column] James Bayhack: How mobile service cloud can transform customer experience

Service, service, service. That’s been the call for businesses that want to keep their clients happy and turn one-time customers into lifelong fans. Now, however, the focus has moved to brilliant customer experience. But what does this mean? And why are we seeing the shift?

Think about how you do business today compared to just a few years ago. Customer service was measured by metrics like how many rings there were before your service department answered. In addition, were your retail staff smiling and pleasant, and did your team respond to a customer email timeously? While customer service is still crucial, there’s a lot more to it in today’s multilayered, omnichannel world of business.

What is Customer Experience (CX)?

Customer experience is how your customers perceive their interactions with your company or brand.

From navigating the website to contacting customer service and receiving the product that they ordered, customer experience is the sum of every interaction the customer has with your company. It impacts their feelings and emotions, encompassing their entire customer journey. It also determines whether or not they come back.

A recent report by integrated customer experience company Ajua found that 81% of Kenyan companies with strong capabilities for delivering customer experience are outperforming their competition. By contrast, 91% of customers will not do business with a company a second time if their first experience is negative.

Findings also suggested that certain industries have upped their CX game and are experiencing growth even in a pandemic. These include banking, insurance, retail, and food and beverage. In the Telco space, Safaricom ranked top in terms of customer experience.

So, some companies are getting it right. Now, the question is, how can you do the same? With such a broad range of expectations, how can you narrow down the most critical factors and eliminate friction where it matters most? You’ll be thrilled to know we’ve done the heavy lifting for you and the easiest solution lies in mobile service cloud.

Here’s how this smart technology helps to solve the most common customer issues.

Creating bulletproof CX in 6 key steps

Omnichannel Inbox

In a single, convenient inbox, you can manage conversations from all channels. This solves the issue of long wait times when customers have a problem or question as it places all communication in one place for easy reference and super-fast response.

It’s common for many customers to conduct research before purchasing something from your company, and checking different platforms is one way of doing this. Whether they trust you or not depends on the quality of information they find and your responses along the way.

An omnichannel inbox allows you to deliver a brilliant customer experience on all channels. Don’t you agree that it looks unprofessional if you respond quickly via live chat but not at all via Facebook? When customers receive excellent service, they will tell their colleagues and friends about it.

Communication Stream

It’s important to communicate with customers wherever they feel comfortable and wherever they are likely to be.

Remember, CX is built on the somewhat fickle foundation of customer perception. What makes one person irate may not bother another, so it makes sense to cover all bases. Communication can make or break your CX. Lengthy delays, inefficient processes, or insufficient access to information will have your customers rolling their eyes in frustration.

Customer experience is about strengthening relationships with customers and building bonds through the use of technology.

Chatbots

It used to be considered bad form to chat with a customer via text or any automated platform, but today it’s the norm. In fact, it’s expected.

Streamline repetitive tasks by automating them. Our system allows you to create your own chatbot to automate conversations and implement quick replies. Your team can serve customers better and more efficiently if you make service easier and faster for them, without weighing them down with unnecessary and unproductive conversations.

Chatbots can reflect the personality of your brand, answer FAQs, and direct customers to where they need to be. Fast. A super-efficient addition to your customer service team, they don’t require sleep so they’re even more perfect for those after-hours shoppers. Your customers will benefit from swift response times for quick questions or enjoy assistance from stress-free and focused staff.

Team Collaboration

The problem of disjointed communication between internal and external teams ends here, as do many customer frustrations.

Remote employees, global time differences, and communication with external parties can get messy and negatively impact your SLAs. And really, your internal communication choices shouldn’t impact your customer’s experience, should they?

Mobile service cloud alleviates this problem by bringing all players together in one place, allowing conversations to be automatically assigned based on skills, or snoozing conversations as needed. It’s like putting everyone in the same room at the same time, relegating forgotten messages or misplaced communication to a thing of the past.

Customer Profile

Develop customer profiles based on data from your CRM or Customer Data Platform. The integration of systems enables you to provide customers with a quicker, more personal service experience.

Data can be displayed right next to the customer’s questions, so there’s no need to search across multiple systems. Improve customer profiles by including all available data and getting more insights about customer impact.

This key area grants your team the information they need to assist a customer, no matter what platform they come from. All data is immediately available to all employees no matter where they are, which, let’s face it, makes you look good!

Statistics

Customers are the lifeblood of a business. This is why corporations are concentrating on how to develop new business and, importantly, retain existing customers. However, if you don’t know where a problem lies, you won’t know how to fix it.

Identifying and addressing customer issues can be prevented by using reporting tools that uncover metrics that directly impact your business. Other vital statistics such as ‘response time’ or ‘availability’ highlight how your team is coping with their responsibilities and where improvements can be made. The data in these reports is invaluable to improving customer experience and deep-diving into customer experience metrics.

As effective as your management team may be, they can’t be omnipresent. But having real-time access to your channels, your team, business partners, and any other stakeholders you care to track gives you information worth its weight in gold.

Boost customer service today!

Businesses that adopt a customer experience strategy enjoy success in key areas: their churn rates are reduced, they increase brand loyalty, and revenues are increased. Surely those advantages are worth exploring?

Ultimately, good customer experiences are the most effective form of marketing with the highest ROI. Successful businesses are simply those with happy customers.

ames Bayhack is the Director of sub-Saharan Africa at CM.com

[Africa Cloud Review] Simon Ngunjiri: Data centres are a growing investment opportunity in Africa

Last week, Global software giant Oracle announced that it has chosen Johannesburg as the site of its first African data centre. Joburg will be among the 14 locations across Europe, the Middle East, Asia Pacific, and Latin America that the company says it plans to open cloud regions to support strong customer demand for Oracle Cloud services.

This announcement came at a time when the demand for data centers in Africa continues to rise. According to Gartner, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) data centre market, which includes cloud services, will see spending reach US$5.4 billion in 2022, driven by Digital Transformation initiatives across the region as well as growth in Internet penetration. In addition, industry leaders. believe that projected investment growth in data centre projects is influenced by a growing demand for higher-performance networks, increased management efficiency and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In fact, as we have highlighted in a previous column, Africa is suited to jump to the cloud more than its peers. Cloud adoption—including hybrid and multi-cloud adoption—is expanding fast among both private and public sector organizations of all sizes.

BitTitan, a provider of cloud migrations and managed services automation solutions, has also noted that there is a massive migration to the cloud by organisations in the Middle East and Africa.

“We have seen a growing trend in mergers and divestments as a result of the changing business dynamics brought about by the pandemic. Our data on migration project types in Americas and Europe have shown that this leads to increased activity and the trend is only growing. This will be a regular scenario soon in the Middle East as migrations do not stop after clients have been moved to the cloud,” said Antti Ålander, Channel Manager – EMEA, BitTitan said in an article published by Intelligent CIO.

Last week, US group Vantage Data Centres also announced that it is investing more than 15 billion rand ($1 billion) in its first African campus in Johannesburg. Vantage’s carrier‐neutral 80 megawatts-capacity facility will include 60,000 square metres of data space across three facilities in Johannesburg once fully developed, making it the largest in Africa, the company said in a statement.

Teraco Data Environments Proprietary Limited, Africa’s vendor-neutral data centre and interconnection services provider, recently also announced the completion of Phase 1 of CT2, its new hyperscale data centre in Brackenfell, Cape Town – the largest data centre in the Western Cape.

These increased investments in data centers in Africa is a clear indication that cloud adoption in the region has reached new heights. In 2020, IT spending was hit hard by the pandemic and declined by 4.9% in the META region, according to IDC. The crisis caused by the pandemic, though, appears to have accelerated plans for digital transformation and related projects such as migration to cloud technology.

According to Knight Frank, Africa currently boasts just 140,000 sq m of data centre space, the same as Switzerland. However, rapid digitisation and the roll-out of 4G and 5G infrastructure across the continent means this is set to grow by 50% over the next five years.

Simon Ngunjiri Muraya is Google Cloud Architect at Incentro Africa.

Oracle expands global cloud footprint to meet continued triple-digit growth

Oracle has announced plans to expand its cloud region footprint to support strong customer demand for Oracle Cloud services worldwide.

Over the next year, Oracle will open 14 cloud regions with new locations across Europe, the Middle East, Asia Pacific, and Latin America. Upcoming cloud regions include Milan (Italy), Stockholm (Sweden), Marseille (France), Spain, Singapore (Singapore), Johannesburg (South Africa), Jerusalem (Israel), Mexico, and Colombia.

Additional second regions will open in Abu Dhabi (U.A.E.), Saudi Arabia, France, Israel, and Chile. Oracle plans to have at least 44 cloud regions by the end of 2022, continuing one of the fastest expansions of any major cloud provider.

Oracle provides a broad and consistent set of cloud services across 30 commercial and government cloud regions in 14 countries on five continents to serve its growing global customer base. OCI currently operates 23 commercial regions and seven government regions, in addition to multiple dedicated and national security regions.

“Oracle Cloud Infrastructure has seen stellar growth over the past year,” said Clay Magouyrk, executive vice president, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. “We’ve introduced several hundred new cloud services and features and are continuing to see organizations from around the world increasingly turn to OCI to run their most mission-critical workloads in the cloud. With the additional Cloud regions, even more organizations will be able to use our cloud services to support their growth and overall success.”

To help customers build true business continuity and disaster protection, while helping them address their in-country data residence requirements, Oracle plans to establish at least two cloud regions in almost every country where it operates. The U.S., Canada, U.K., South Korea, Japan, Brazil, India, and Australia already have two cloud regions.

Oracle’s strategy is to meet customers where they are, enabling customers to keep data and services where they need it. Customers can deploy Oracle Cloud completely within their own data centers with Dedicated Region and Exadata Cloud@Customer, deploy cloud services locally with public cloud-based management, or deploy cloud services remotely on the edge with Roving Edge Infrastructure.

High Availability, Disaster Protection, and Dual Region Cloud Strategy

OCI’s next-generation architecture provides a high-performing, resilient foundation for cloud services, while its physical and virtual network design maximizes performance and security. For example, each Oracle Cloud region contains at least three fault domains, which are groupings of hardware that form logical data centers for high availability and resilience to hardware and network failures. Some regions (Ashburn, Phoenix, Frankfurt, and London) provide further resilience to entire data centers through multiple availability domains (ADs), which each contain three fault domains.

For business continuity and compliance requirements, Oracle’s unique dual-region cloud strategy enables customers to deploy resilient applications in multiple geographically separated locations—without having sensitive data leave the country. To help customers plan data center deployments to meet application requirements and optimize their cloud infrastructure, OCI’s provides a no cost inter-region latency dashboard that provides insights into real-time and historical latency for Oracle Cloud regions around the globe.

Sustainability

Oracle is committed to sustainability and has pledged to power all Oracle Cloud regions worldwide with 100 percent renewable energy by 2025.

Several Oracle Cloud regions, including regions in North America, South America, and Europe are already powered by 100 percent renewable energy, and all Oracle Cloud regions use state-of-the-art energy management and cooling technologies to minimize their impact on the environment.

As part of its renewable energy clean Cloud initiative, Oracle reused or recycled 99.6 percent of its retired hardware in FY21 while strictly adhering to Oracle’s data privacy and security practices.

Cloud Regions Deliver All Cloud Services and Multicloud

Oracle Cloud regions support every Oracle service and feature and are available to customers anywhere in the world. This includes Oracle Autonomous Database, Oracle Container Engine for Kubernetes, Oracle Cloud VMware solution, and Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications.

OCI’s extensive network of more than 70 FastConnect global and regional partners offer customers dedicated connectivity to Oracle Cloud regions and OCI services—providing customers with the best options anywhere in the world. FastConnect provides an easy, elastic, and economical way to create a dedicated and private network connection with higher bandwidth, lower latency, and more consistent performance versus public Internet-based connections.

In addition, OCI and Microsoft Azure have a strategic partnership that enables joint customers to run workloads across the two clouds. This partnership provides a low latency, cross-cloud interconnect between OCI and Azure in eight regions (Ashburn, Toronto, London, Amsterdam, Tokyo, San Jose, Vinhedo and Frankfurt), federated identity for joint customers to deploy applications across both clouds, and a collaborative support model. Customers can run full stack applications in a multi-cloud configuration, while maintaining high-performance connectivity without requiring re-architecture.

They can also migrate existing applications or develop cloud native applications that use a mix of OCI and Azure services.

www.oracle.com

Liquid Intelligent Technologies, Africa Legal launch online courses on legal tech

Liquid Intelligent Technologies through its innovation and partnerships arm Liquid Labs, has partnered with Africa Legal, an organisation that connects legal professionals across the African continent to launch three online courses on legal technology.

The courses are targeted at supporting career development amongst students, budding entrepreneurs, and lawyers.

Liquid Labs aspires to make relevant tech training programmes accessible to students and professionals to bridge the affordability and digital divide, the main deterrents to increased access. The courses will offer targeted training for lawyers and the business community to enable working people to upskill and embrace the opportunities of the digital world.

According to Ben Roberts, the Group Chief Technology, and Innovation Officer at Liquid Intelligent Technologies, “New technologies are challenging the way Africans do things in their everyday lives. For instance, innovations like blockchain deliver smart contracts using digital tech platforms. The advancement of such innovation means that the fourth industrial revolution will create challenges and opportunities at the intersection of law and tech. ‘’

‘’We’ve partnered with Africa Legal on these courses to better equip lawyers through technology, and support technologists to engage with the law. Our aim is to empower and encourage professionals and students in both sectors and to help them leverage these opportunities.” he says.

The courses on offer are Leveraging off Legal Technology to Grow Your Firm that encourages students to conduct their business in a way that leverages the inherent benefits of legal technology, Change Management for Lawyers that provides the learner with critical change management perspectives relevant to any area of development within their business and Fundamentals of Business Law for Entrepreneurs. This course is designed for emerging entrepreneurs. It provides the platform of legal knowledge required to begin to grow a business from initial start-up to becoming investment ready and will share some insight into what to look for when partnering with a law firm that will be a valuable ally in growing your business.

Africa Legal’s Chief Executive, Scott Cowan, said he was delighted by the partnership which was in line with the platform’s vision of building networks, reinforcing pan-African relationships in the legal community, and building capacity.

“This is just the beginning of an exciting journey and we look forward to offering so much more to our Africa Legal community by way of news, job opportunities and education,” he said.

The courses have been formulated with the vision to augment digital transformation across the continent and provide the right know-how needed for budding entrepreneurs to successfully and efficiently operate in their businesses. These courses from Liquid Labs and Africa Legal will deliver practical knowledge and understanding that will focus on developing critical-thinking skills for students by presenting real-life scenarios, conflicts and solutions in order for them to master the lawyer-based thinking approach in life and their professional paths ahead.

The courses will launch on 4 November 2021. Interested students can now pre-register here.

www.liquid.tech

[Africa Cloud Review] Simon Ngunjiri: Cloud is transforming the education sector in Africa

In our last Africa cloud review column, we highlighted how cloud can help power smart cities in Africa. Cloud provides the digital infrastructure for smart cities: in other words, a city’s cloud will function as a storage and analysis system for the data used in everything.

Other than smart cities, the education sector in Africa is also poised to benefit from cloud.

In an interview with IT News Africa back in 2019, head of E-Learning at the University of Pretoria, Dolf Jordaan noted that the cloud is transforming teaching and learning as we know it, while fast-tracking education improvement from primary school to university. ‘’It allows educators the ability to collaborate on content, share information, and even asses projects,’’ he says.

Cloud computing helps students, teachers, and administrators alike. It allows students access to homework wherever there’s an internet connection, teachers to instantly upload learning materials, and administrators to easily collaborate with one another and save money on data storage.

When the pandemic most African schools decided to take their learning online. Virtual learning finally became a reality. In Kenya, the government introduced a new digital learning model to 24,000 public schools so that virtual learning in Kenya is accessible to all children. Using cloud, schools were able to save money on licenses, hardware, power, and support. Additionally, schools were able to access online editions of textbooks which saved money and ensured students are learning from the most recent books.

The benefits of cloud in education are massive. The safety, stability, and ease of use of cloud computing in education in Africa is resulting in widespread adoption in educational institutions of all sizes and types.

From 3-4 November 202, Google cloud will also be hosting a government and education summit. You can read all about this online event and how to register here.

In the news

Oracle announced that it has selected Johannesburg for its first African Cloud region. Microsoft added Availability Zones to Cloud regions in South Africa and South Korea, while seemingly de-listed a second region in South Africa. Maher Al-Khaiyat, the regional business applications director for Microsoft MEA in a column published on Kenya’s Business Daily also highlighted how cloud-based IT solutions can help firms manage change.

Simon Ngunjiri Muraya is Google Cloud Architect at Incentro Africa.

Samsung AI Forum 2021 Explores Future of AI Research

Samsung Electronics announced today that it will hold the Samsung AI Forum 2021 online via its YouTube channel for two days from November 1 to November 2. Marking its fifth year, the forum gathers world-renowned academics and industry experts on artificial intelligence (AI) and serves as a platform for exchanging ideas, insights and the latest research findings, as well as a platform to discuss the future of AI.

Day 1: AI Research for Tomorrow

On Day 1, which will be hosted by Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT), Samsung’s R&D hub dedicated to cutting-edge future technologies, Dr. Kinam Kim, Vice Chairman & CEO of Device Solutions at Samsung Electronics, will deliver the opening remarks. Under the theme, “AI Research for Tomorrow”, renowned AI experts will discuss various AI technologies and the research direction on AI — from fundamental research to its applications – including how AI research will impact other fields such as new material development and semiconductors.

This year, Professor Yoshua Bengio, the winner of the 2018 Turing Award — often referred to as the Nobel Prize in computing — will deliver the keynote. The keynote speech will be followed by three technology sessions: Scalable and Sustainable AI Computing, AI for Scientific Discovery and Trustworthy Computer Vision.

In particular, in this year’s forum, various AI startups will provide an overview of the current trends in cutting-edge AI technology and share their actual business application models. In addition, the AI research leaders at SAIT will participate in the forum as speakers and give presentations on the current status and vision of Samsung’s AI research.

The Samsung AI Researcher of the Year awards,¹ which were established last year in an effort to discover excelling rising researchers in the field of AI, will also be presented during the forum. Last year, five researchers including Professor Kyunghyun Cho of New York University were awarded.

As the co-chairs of this year’s forum, Dr. Gyoyoung Jin, President and Head of SAIT and Professor Bengio, who was appointed as the Samsung AI Professor last year, will continue to cooperate to highlight outstanding rising researchers and expand the base of AI research.

“This year’s forum will be organized as a venue for sharing the current status of AI technology research and AI applications as well as discussing ways to transform AI into a technology that substantially contributes to our daily lives,” said Professor Bengio.

Day 2: AI in a Human World

Day 2 sessions will be hosted by Samsung Research, the company’s advanced R&D hub that leads the development of future technologies for its Consumer Electronics division and IT & Mobile Communications division. Under the theme “AI in a Human World”, Dr. Sebastian Seung, President and Head of Samsung Research, will deliver the opening remarks, and AI experts who have been actively engaging in AI research activities worldwide will share their insights on the current status of AI and future research directions that will have an important impact on our lives.

The keynote will be delivered by Professor Leslie Valiant, the 2010 Turing Award winner, of Harvard University on the subject of integrating machine learning and inference for next-generation AI. This will be followed by technology sessions: Interpretability for Skeptical Minds and Understanding Matter with Deep Learning.

Dr. Daniel Lee, Executive Vice President and Head of Samsung Research Global AI Center, will preside over an in-depth panel discussion with the speakers regarding the ‘future prospects and considerations of each AI sector’.

Lightning talks (5-minute speeches, 7 sessions) will also take place this year where members of the Samsung Research Global AI Center and 5 AI centers (Cambridge, U.K.; New York, U.S.; Toronto, Canada; Montreal, Canada; and Moscow, Russia) will take part.

“This year’s AI Forum will help us better understand where the current AI technology developments are heading and also about AI applicable products which are becoming smarter,” said Dr. Sebastian Seung, President and Head of Samsung Research. “I expect that many people who are interested in AI will participate in the forum since it will be held as an online event this year.”

The event will be open to anyone who is interested in AI. Registration is available through the Samsung AI Forum 2021 Website from October 6 to the respective event dates.

www.samsung.com

Facebook announces winners of 2021 Community Accelerator Program in Africa

Facebook announced the winners of the 2021 Facebook Community Accelerator Program, highlighting the 13 Facebook community leaders from Nigeria, South Africa, and Kenya who will receive training, mentorship and up to $50,000 USD in funds to invest in an initiative that extends their community’s positive impact. The 13 winners emerged out of over 13,000 applicants who entered the competition.

The Community Accelerator is part of Facebook’s Community Leadership Program, a program to help leaders harness the power of their community to turn impactful ideas into action. Leaders will learn how to harness the power of their community to turn impactful ideas into action. This year’s cohort features a diverse spectrum of communities engaged in interesting social impact activities ranging from combating child sexual abuse to helping moms and sharing stories of ordinary and extraordinary Nigerians from around the world.

“We are excited to announce the 13 Facebook community leaders in Africa who have been helping to resolve social challenges, empowering their audiences with knowledge while connecting with others that share their interests or passion for a cause.” Kiran Yoliswa, Partner Management Lead, Middle East and Africa Community Partnerships at Facebook said . “At Facebook, we are committed to helping people realise their full potential through initiatives like this. We want these community leaders to use the Facebook platform to drive change and provide support and encouragement for thousands of people. We are impressed with the outcome of this year’s Community Accelerator and we look forward to helping our 2021 community Accelerator winners amplify their influence for greater work.”

Community leaders from across Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa as part of the Facebook Community Accelerator include:

Achimugu Elizabeth, Protect The Child Foundation from Nigeria: Protect The Child Foundation is committed to protecting and defending the innocence of children against all forms of sexual abuse and exploitation. Our vision is to have a world that is safe for children to live in. A world free from child sexual abuse and all forms of abuse.

Godwin Juliet, Naija Graphic Designers from Nigeria: Established in 2008, this creative community connects the graphic design industry in Nigeria and beyond with the aim of supporting, up-skilling and offering opportunities for graphic designers to raise industry standards. The community connects employers with freelancers, as well as supporting women creatives.

Izevbokun Osamakue, Mothers, Kids And More from Nigeria: Impactful community empowering Nigerian and African women (and their children) to help each other to progress in their personal and professional lives. The community’s aim is to extract and recognise the potential within and without, and empower women to reach out to other women when they need help. Their long-term mission is to have the opportunity to have a centre where women can come in and get empowered.

Michael Louisa, Natural Hair Babes from Nigeria: Large community focused on natural hair, sisterhood and cultural and economic empowerment for Nigerian women and girls. They created an entrepreneurial sales network in November 2020 when we launched our flagship product, a natural hair herb which is very effective in the maintenance of natural hair, so far, 160 women have been empowered as distributors.

Mwaniki Sam, Teachers’ Notice Board Kenya from Kenya: This group is geared towards national cohesion and integration by bringing together teachers, trainees and tutors from all Teacher Training Colleges in Kenya to build relationships, share job vacancies and promote businesses.

Nworah Martin, Tales of Nigerians from Nigeria: Tales of Nigerians is an emotional support and mental wellness community where members have a safe space to share their real life experiences. Through community events, trainings’ and on-ground outreach, we have directly impacted around 20,000 members. Our positive impact for the long-term is to continue equipping our growing members with the right tools to grow their emotional intelligence, mental wellness and synergy with other members.

Ogudoro Peter, Nigerian Teachers from Nigeria: This community for Nigerian teachers has the big ambition of changing the country’s education system one teacher at a time. Community is made up primarily of teachers who are not receiving good training services from their employers for the very important jobs they do. The community is focused on helping them to acquire the skills they need to make Nigeria’s education system globally competitive.

Olisa Enoch, Prepare for JAMB UTME from Nigeria: Prepare for JAMB UTME helps students prepare for Nigeria’s university admission exam with learning resources and news. Their long-term mission is to have all the learning resources (exam syllabus, quizzes, study notes, videos, question and answer forum) all in one place, which members should be able to access freely or through a subscription service.

Philip Udeochu, Portfolio 9 (Community) from Nigeria: is a Digital Entrepreneurship and Empowerment Platform (DEEP) with a mandate to bring entrepreneurship and vocational education to people at the bottom of the pyramid in Africa using social media. P9’s mission is to make entrepreneurship accessible by ‘simplifying’ and ‘innovatively’ delivering it to everyone’s doorstep through collective and interactive learning and support, using social media systems and tools. P9 has supported the learning needs of a growing community of over 500k members (currently).

Ramuada Tshililo, South African Arts & Culture Youth Forum from South Africa: SAACYF is a community that trains and empowers underprivileged artists from township and rural areas in South Africa through partnership with other organisations, businesses and governments. Their aim is to make Arts, Culture & Heritage opportunities accessible to poor disadvantaged artists through job creation.

Splinters Lucretia, The Official Ocean View/Slangkop Group from South Africa: Ocean View (originally named Slangkop) was established in 1968 by the apartheid government as a township for forcibly removed coloured people. The community is historically disadvantaged, poverty-stricken and affected by a wide range of social ills. The FB group fosters safety and security, as well as delivering education, hospital care, feeding and community upliftment programmes to empower the local population.

Urhefe Ofejiro, Naija Nurses Forum from Nigeria: Established in 2012, this is a community for nurses across Nigeria who collaborate in providing quality and accessible healthcare services to individuals, whilst supporting each other and sharing best practices in their profession.

Wala Amakove, Wanderlust Diaries Ltd from Kenya: brings together a community of travellers to share stories. Founded during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020, this mega community of African travellers promotes eco-tourism in Kenya and other African countries as a driver for community development.

To develop their community, all of the selected leaders spent five months learning from experts, coaches, and a customized curriculum. They learned community identity foundations, leading action-oriented programmes and sustainability. They also had early access to new Facebook products aimed at helping communities better manage and activate their members.

What participants will do?

Strengthen their community: Learn from experts, coaches and a customized curriculum so their community can work better together.

Plan your initiatives: Identify important initiatives that will create a positive impact on the broader world and develop a plan to mobilize their community around their goals.

Execute: Collaborate on their initiatives with top advocates and leaders in the community space and utilize new products aimed at helping them manage and activate their members.

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