Student work applauded at another successful IoT Waikato event
Artificial intelligence (AI), the reality of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the unquestionable importance of data were the big topics at the June IoT Waikato meet-up.
More than 80 people braved the winter chill to hear from the AI Forum NZ, Spark NZ and Stats NZ at the mid-year IoT Waikato event and vote for the best student work on display.
The event included poster presentations from Graduate Diploma in Applied IT and Bachelor of IT students from Wintec’s Centre for Information Technology and the first semester cohort of Diploma in Website Development and Design students from Vision College.
The students took the opportunity to network with industry guests when the event started and discuss their work before the audience cast their votes for the Best Poster awards.
Wintec Centre for Information Technology, Industry Relationship Manager Alison Marshall opened the event, and highlighted the opportunity for organisations to have students work with industry on projects and on placement, and the importance of that experience and exposure for graduates entering the work force.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is starting to deliver meaningful results for New Zealand organisations, and speaker Ben Reid, Executive Director of the AI Forum NZ, provided some context around the work of the AI Forum use cases, ranging from a Google Duplex demo to applications in the health sector, and what we can do to accelerate adoption.
"It's important that we look at AI not just as a set of technologies to improve business performance and productivity, but also as a tool to help with broader wellbeing and sustainability outcomes as well.”
Michael Stribling, Tribe Lead Managed Services at Spark, presented IoT use cases from asset tracking to smart cities illustrating Spark’s commitment to helping kiwi businesses take full advantage of the technology.
“We’re seeing IoT becoming real for New Zealand businesses, with a number of New Zealand businesses now scaling IoT solutions to solve real business problems. Transport and logistics, and utility companies are scaling IoT fast, and there’s great progress in Smart Cities.”
The event concluded with Paul Stone from the New Zealand Open Government Data Programme at Stats NZ with a presentation on “Open data … in the wild”. Paul covered insights into what exactly we mean by open data, what role it has in the wider data arena, and why clear data provenance is so important now.
The Wintec student winners on the night were Juan Cabello, (Bachelor of Applied IT) for Outstanding Poster, and Daoren Yang (Post Graduate and Master of Applied IT) who won The Industry Choice Award for Outstanding Poster.
Winner of the Industry Choice Award for Outstanding Poster from amongst the Vision College Diploma in Website Development and Design students was won by Bevan Cooke.
IoT Waikato is a group for innovators, thought leaders and organisations interested in developing the Internet of Things (IoT) and digital technology in the Waikato.
The IoT Waikato Future Tech Meetup is a Wintec initiative and bi-monthly events draw a range of speakers from community and industry.
Find out more about IoT Waikato Future Tech Meetups.
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