For those who do not know this famous Goya´s painting: 'Saturn Devouring a Son', it belongs to the series of Black Paintings of the artist. It's the best comparison I can make after returning from the TechXLR8 --- IoT World Europe Summit in London.
In the painting we see the god Cronos, who immutable governs the course of time, devouring a son. The act of eating your child has been seen, from the point of view of psychoanalysis as a figuration of impotence.
Saturn is the Artificial Intelligence (aka AI) and his impotent son is the Internet of Things (IoT). There are other brothers waiting their turn to be devoured by this hungry father. Soon it will be the Augmented Reality / Virtual Reality (AR/VR), the Blockchain and Digital Twins. Not even the 5G will be spared.
If you are still waiting for the IoT boom, this event is confirmation that the IoT is badly wounded at least in Europe. The few IoT companies that exhibited their products and services at Excel London showed nothing that could overshadow the big winner, the ubiquitous father AI. Although the Augmented Reality / Virtual Reality (AR/VR) does present itself a great rival for the other brothers.
Every time I find it more difficult to justify coming to these events. Neither being a speaker or moderator has allowed me to win a project. I keep doing it to maintain my influence and keep informed my followers on social networks, but I already tell you that physical and economic effort is not justifiable.
The organization this year has sought speakers that mix vendors presentations with success stories of clients. But this year neither of them was able to raise this event.
The few large IT firms present such as Microsoft, SAP or Oracle are on the side of the father "AI" although they show demos IoT many times repeated.
The discussions of the first years of the IoT boom revolved around connectivity, security, IoT platforms, even business models. Now, nobody is interested in these matters anymore. I am sorry for my many friends and myself advising in these areas, but all the fish has sold in West Europe.
Nor have the great integrators been present here. Those who should have implemented IoT solutions for years but never risked investing and continue to squeeze clients with digitalization projects, cloud migration projects, products updates and customized developments. I believe most of them have done a disservice to the acceleration of the IoT.
There was no great IoT news during the event. Perhaps the most important announcement was given by Marc Overton who took advantage of his presentation to announce the recent collaboration agreement between Sierra Wireless and Microsoft to claim industry’s first full-stack IoT offerings. Something that happened far away from here.
As for my sessions, they mixed IoT and Blockchain, something that would have guaranteed success for attendees two years ago or last year but that did not arouse great enthusiasm this year. It is evident that they are becoming a commodity. Something that is not bad, since we would stop speculating about possible use cases and we could be using transparent in our lives and businesses.
Do not worry, the life of IoT events continues, and so this week there are three more:
- Living bits and Things https://www.livingbitsandthings.com/ in Bled (Eslovenia), during 17th and 18th June 2019.
- IoT Tech Expo Europe - https://www.iottechexpo.com/europe/ in Amsterdam (Netherland) during 19th and 20th June 2019
- IoT Week – in Aarhus (Denmark) during 17th-21th June 2019.
I believe that Organizers and exhibitors need to try to reinvent the IoT events to make more attractive to visitors and generate qualified leads. We need to see an IoT event where IoT is present in every corner of the floor, in every stage, in every service (cafeteria, rest rooms, transportation, etc). We need to breath IoT every minute.
Otherwise the IoT events will continue driving away visitors and exhibitors and 'Saturn (AI) Devouring a Son (IoT).'
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