IT
Busy schedule of IT events in Northern Ireland
T
here’s a lot happening in IT at the moment, and a leading organisation is running local events to support
that.
The Northern Ireland branch of the British Computer Society (BCS) – the Chartered Institute for IT – is committed to making IT good for society and ensuring that people have positive experiences with technology.
The main purpose of these sessions, which are hosted by Farset Labs in Belfast, is to bring together people with a broad range of interests.
Matt travels the world helping business people to understand and adopt blockchain technologies. After the event, he delivered his talk to HND students at Belfast Met.
‘Exploring Augmented Reality in the Tourism Industry’ This event was held in October last year in the Montalto Estate, Ballynahinch. We wanted to show the local tourism industry how AR could enhance their businesses.
‘The Ethics of AI’ Artificial intelligence is another key technology that is already shaping our world.
Huge advances are being made in areas including augmented reality (AR), artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain technology – but there are massive challenges as well. Nearly every day you hear about online abuse, cyber crime and the misuse of social media.
The main speaker was Dr Nick Whitelegg, a university lecturer who has developed a unique AR system for hill walkers called HIKAR. Nick configured HIKAR so that attendees could walk round the estate and see AR in action.
It’s an exciting time to be involved in IT, and BCS is on a mission to strengthen that. It’s helping to promote ethics, facilitate collaborations and keep standards high in the industry. Here are some examples of what BCS organises.
The event was run in association with DigitalNMD, an initiative by Newry Mourne and Down Council and local regional colleges. At the event, Tourism NI announced a £200,000 fund to help develop Immersive Technologies.
‘Explain Like I’m Five’ These are regular events that have led to a number of successful collaborations. In each event, speakers take a concept of their choice and deliver it to an audience of non-experts.
‘Understanding Blockchain for Business: Beyond Crypto Currencies’ Blockchain is about much more than just crypto currencies, and it presents many opportunities.
Each speaker has a maximum of seven minutes to explain the subject, followed by a short Q&A. No slides are allowed, but the use of visual aids is heavily encouraged, while beer, soft drinks, pizza and fresh fruit help the process along.
BCS supported Belfast Met to run this event which was aimed at the local business community and involved a number of expert speakers. They included Matt Lucas of the IBM Global Blockchain Team and Professor Chris Speed of the University of Edinburgh.
In January, BCS president Chris Rees discussed the main ethical issues involved in AI, including the consequences of not addressing them. Now is the time for the conversation and Chris’s talk was the perfect introduction for our next event. ‘The 2019 Turing Talk – Why we need to train unbiased AI’ In Northern Ireland we have a very active Artificial Intelligence community and this event in February was part of the NI Science Festival in conjunction with IET. Dr Krishna Gummadi of the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems delivered the main talk. AI involves learning-based algorithms, and they are already being used by organisations to make decisions about how they serve us. This has raised concerns about the potential for bias and unfairness in the algorithms. The talk addressed some of the key issues and how we might deal with them ‘Improving Outcomes in Medicine’ Another recent event involved putting doctors and developers together, and letting them generate ideas to use technology in medicine. Two interesting concepts emerged that involve AI. The next stage is to meet up in a few months to check on progress. ‘Ethics in IT – Why safeguarding should be a pillar in our profession’ This event in March featured Jim Gamble QPM who is a former police officer and chief executive of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre and now managing director of INEQE.
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