What to expect at Transform 2021, the year’s top event on enterprise AI & data 

AI and machine learning continue to be the driving force behind enterprise transformation. As we’ve learned throughout our editorial coverage of the past year — a year that rocked every industry — business leaders need to be able to use these powerful applications in order to achieve a competitive edge.

To that end, VentureBeat is excited to host Transform 2021 digitally this July 12-16, 2021. The 5-day-long event brings technology executives — as well as technology-minded business executives — the one event of the year featuring true applied lessons that can be carried over into organizations across all industries.

Yet, AI applications are really just the end-point of what can be a long and costly journey for companies. For most companies, the starting point begins with getting their data infrastructure right. This is the bedrock of AI.  Accordingly, we’ve opened the lens this year to focus on both AI and data. And, as in the past, Transform covers both strategy and the technology enabling it.

At VentureBeat, we admit we’re rather obsessed with bringing the most comprehensive Transform agenda to our audience. We write more concertedly and deeply than anyone else on these topics: the modern data stack and the processes that you need to build AI.

Late last year, VentureBeat pivoted to make this our exclusive focus. We have millions of monthly readers, and our loyalty — measured as users visiting our site 8 or more times a month — is at a twelve-month high. We are the leading voice on AI themes, according to the third-party tracking service, Techmeme.

But back to Transform. If you join Transform 2021 as a VIP, you’ll also have access to our networking features. Throughout the pandemic, as in-person networking became near-impossible, it’s been vital to allow our community to connect virtually. We’ve worked hard to enable that with 1:1 matchmaking, networking roundtables, and speed-dating sessions we call “Wave” focused on specific themes.

Executives across industries are invited to join the conversation. Transform has tracks covering industries as varied as health care, retail, industrial-manufacturing, finance, and more.

The event has expanded to five days, up from three. You’ll see that the daily agenda is organized around these main practice areas:

Day 1: A day dedicated to general AI/ML automation approaches. We also host our “AI Showcase” in the afternoon.

Day 2: We go deep on data and analytics. Also on Day 2, there’s a data breakfast with Accenture.

Day 3: We look at conversational AI.

Day 4: The edge and IoT and computer vision.

Day 5: The big picture, and things like our AI innovation awards.

Finally, we’ve put focused attention on diversity and inclusion. We’ve made it a company priority to ensure significant presence of under-represented minorities at all of our events — and discussion of issues around DE&I that we all need to be aware of and participate in.

On day 1, we’re hosting our third Women in AI breakfast gathering, presented by Capital One. On the morning of Day 4, we will have a session on BIPOC in AI. And on Friday, Day 5, we’re hosting the Women in AI awards. And there are a host of conversations about inclusion and bias, including a session with Margaret Mitchell, a leading AI researcher on responsible AI, and others featuring executives from Pinterest, Redfin, Intel, and more.

We want to thank our sponsors for making this all happen. They include Accenture, Five9, Capgemini, Capital One, Intel, Abe.ai, DataStax, Kasisto, Labelbox, Skillsoft, Snowflake, Soul Machines, Tamr, Unity, BeyondMinds, Tealium, and Appen.

Register now to reserve your spot. Below is a day-by-day agenda overview.

DAY 1 – JULY 12

Women In AI Breakfast, Presented by Capital One

Topic: ‘Women in AI: A seat at the table.’

How can we get more women into the AI workforce? What are the roles and responsibilities of corporates, academia, governments, & society as a whole in achieving this goal?

Speakers: 

• Kay Firth Butterfield, Head of AI and Machine Learning and Member of the Executive Committee, World Economic Forum
• Kathy Baxter, Principal Architect, Ethical AI Practice, Salesforce
• Tiffany Deng, Program Management Lead- ML Fairness and Responsible AI, Google
• Teuta Mercado, Responsible AI Program Director, Capital One
• Moderator Noelle Silver, Founder, Women in AI

AI/ML Automation Technology Summit

The main event event kicks off with the AI/ML Automation Technology Summit, where VentureBeat and our partners will explore the growing trend of automation in various disciplines within AI & ML.  These range from data collection and preparation, feature engineering,  and model selection to data labeling/annotation, model training and hyperparameter optimization.

Speakers will explore how these automation technologies will change the role of data science teams and how they can co-exist to deliver better applied AI solutions. We will dive deep into the role of data in AI and how enterprises can collect high-quality data using both traditional methods of building their own datasets and leveraging alternative automation strategies such as using synthetic data or crowdsourcing the data to build high-quality AI while addressing issues such as privacy, bias, fairness, and trustworthiness of the data. We will learn about case studies from health acare, finance, security, and retail that deal with AI applications such as user personalization, sales & marketing acceleration, financial fraud mitigation, cybersecurity enhancement, and more.

DAY 2 – JULY 13

Big Bytes in AI & Data, Presented by Accenture

Topic: “Decoding the Data”

Great applications rely on good data, just like an automobile relies on good oil. Panelists will walk us through the steps their organizations took to analyze & normalize data, including things like ensuring accuracy and reliability. They will review the various technologies used, as well as key strategies, and learnings to ensure their resulting applications are accurate, robust, and bias-free.

Speakers:

• Anjali Dewan, VP, American Express
• Mark Clare, Enterprise Head of Data Strategy & Enablement, Evernorth, a subsidiary of Cigna Corporation
• Arnab Chakraborty, Global Managing Director – Applied Intelligence North America Lead, Accenture
• Ian Wong, Co-founder & Chief Technology Officer, Opendoor
• Moderated by Valerie Nygaard, Product Lead, Google

Data, Analytics & Intelligent Automation Summit

Presented by Accenture

In this Data, Analytics, and Intelligent Automation summit day, we will explore the evolution of RPA from delivering tactical, point solutions to the promise of strategic, enterprise-wide, hyper-automation. We will discuss the ins and outs of how to deliver the most impactful RPA by optimizing your business processes before automating them — and also cover where RPA is headed, including the infusion of AI. We will look at the role of data analytics and how it has transformed and empowered business decision-making. We will talk about how the world has come to rely on data and data analytics to generate better and more informed outcomes for all its constituents. We will learn about case studies from manufacturing, health care, finance, and retail that deal with AI applications such as automating patient health alerts and recommendations, automating manufacturing processes, data-driven, personalized risk underwriting, retail consumer buying-pattern prediction, fraudulent insurance claim identification, and more.

DAY 3 – JULY 14

Conversational AI & Intelligent AI Assistants Summit

Presented by Five9

One of the most common use cases of applied AI is conversational AI or intelligent AI assistants used primarily to facilitate enterprises to serve their customers at scale more efficiently and through support from the call center. Conversational AI and intelligent AI assistants are being leveraged by organizations across the board in the form of text chatbots, and voice assistants which use NLP/NLU to look beyond rules to truly understand intent, carry out a multi-turn conversation while retaining context, and deliver a great user experience. Companies have made several recent advances in terms of leveraging big data to deliver highly personalized and relevant content and integrating all their systems to ensure a seamless and delightful experience for the user.

As conversational AI advances and AI assistants become more and more intelligent and human-like, we will discuss how we can analyze, train, and sensitize AI natural language to make it explainable, fair, and free of gender and racial stereotypes and biases.  We will learn about case studies from finance, manufacturing, health care, retail, and security that deal with AI applications such as financial robo-advisors, personal health care assistants, personalized voice-enabled retail shopping assistants, security strategies to make hacker-proof virtual assistants, and more. Hear from industry-leading practitioners and luminaries who will talk about their journeys and learnings in implementing these technologies, how they unlocked value/ROI from them, and their thoughts about what the future holds.

DAY 4 – JULY 15

AI at the Edge & IoT Summit

As more and more IoT devices enter our lives and AI becomes omnipresent, the need to deliver AI at the edge of the network – either on the device or in close proximity to the device — becomes critical to improve performance by processing the data at the edge rather than sending it to the cloud. Edge computing also offers the advantage of keeping the data local and hence more secure.

IoT devices and edge computing along with rapid advances in computing power are creating an ecosystem that can deliver powerful AI business applications that were hitherto unthinkable. At the VB Transform AI at the Edge & IoT Summit, we’ll discuss topics such as ensuring greater user privacy, enabling lower latency, enabling better search and personalization, enabling and accelerating automation, delivering real-time intelligence, etc.

We will learn about case studies from manufacturing, retail, and security that deal with AI applications such as self-monitoring factories with machines that can schedule their own predictive maintenance, edge AI-powered IoT devices that are making retail showrooms super-efficient and effective, security strategies to make edge AI nodes hacker-proof, AI-enabled IoT devices for ubiquitous ecommerce, autonomous, self-driving vehicles running AI on the vehicle, and more.

DAY 5 – JULY 16

The Big Picture in AI & Data

Day 5 of Transform will include an overview of the four summits including AI/ML Automation, Data, Analytics, Intelligent Automation, Conversational AI, Intelligent Assistants, Edge AI, and IoT and Computer Vision. There will be featured recaps, overviews, and networking sessions throughout the day.

Register now to join your peers at Transform 2021, the AI event of the year for enterprise execs looking to maintain their competitive edge in an AI and data driven world, July 12 – 15, 2021.