“The MCiT Forum provided an excellent atmosphere open to discussing not only the potential of AI in the future but also the challenges that come along with it” - Catherine Laflamme
“The Forum is very important to have a bridge to companies and business challenges and connecting universities with businesses” - Barbara Wittmann
The MCiT Forum 2019 welcomed around 150 attendees from different backgrounds to a day evolving around Artificial Intelligence and its influence on the labour market and the way of working. Celebrated on the 19th of June, the event took place in Villa Blanka, featuring an astonishing view over the city of Innsbruck and the mountains, graced during this day with sun and good weather.
The event commenced with an introduction regarding the Forum from our moderator, Christian Voigt, and a welcome speech by the Director of the program Management, Communication & IT, Prof. Dr. Peter J. Mirski. The keynote speaker, Barbara Wittmann (LinkedIn), was next, bringing her expertise to the stage and engaging the audience in a speech about “Augmenting the HR world through the power of Artificial Intelligence”.
Following the schedule, four Master students presented their Master Thesis to the audience. Nikola Bergmann was the one to start, with her thesis revolving around “The Gray Space in the Morality of Automated AI”. Next was Robert Singer, with “What impact will Big Data have on knowledge work in the near future?”, Dominic Reiter, presenting “Design and evaluation of an operating model for the use of robotic process automation” and, finally, Tobias Riepl with “Job-recommendation system in the environment of Karriere.at”.
After the refreshing lunch break, the event continued with more valuable insights from MCI alumni and experts on the field. Luisa Brinkschulte talked about “Working in an AI environment”, providing insights from her experiences in Google and her current position in IBM. Julian Endres continued with the speech “Let’s get real – successful AI for everyone”, followed by Christina Bauer, from Deloitte, who introduced “HR and research studies by Deloitte”. The last speaker to grace the stage was Catherine Laflamme, with “Taking advantage of the complete spectrum of data science methods”.
Once the speeches were over and after a small break, the panel discussion started featuring Luisa Brinkschulte, Julian Endres, Markus Frischhut and Stefan Engl, moderated by Annika Reiff and Christian Voigt. The lively discussion evolved around the way AI is impacting the lives of people and the way they work, and it raised many questions from a very participative and engaged audience.
Overall, the MCiT Forum posed a great opportunity to learn about the current topic as AI, as well as an outstanding chance for networking, powered by the networking games organized that lead to interesting connections and conversations. The final survey reported an overall very satisfied audience that showed its enthusiasm and engagement throughout the MCiT Forum 2019.
As a final remark, to demonstrate our appreciation, a special thanks to the sponsors NTS, Karriere.at, Werkstätte Wattens, Hilti, Deloitte and PDA group and to the MCI for making it possible.
