News and press releases

Nine core themes have been established for IoTSWC 2018 as cornerstones for the more than 125 scheduled seminars: product manufacturing, healthcare, energy and utilities, connected transport, construction and infrastructures, open industry, enabling technologies, blockchain and artificial intelligence, the latter two feature their own subject-specific forums.

Roger Bou, Director of IoTSWC, highlights the work of the programme committee: “working to bring together innovative success stories to analyse IoT deployment in multiple industries and identifying the trends to plot the convergence of technologies, standards and new applications.” The program committee is led by the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) and made up of almost thirty representatives of leading firms and entities.

The Congress will discuss topics such as the IoT-driven transformation of the labour environment, the impact of industrial automation on employment, the digital connection of the entire value chain of a product, the safety of autonomous vehicles and smart infrastructures in cities.

The energy and utilities theme will address issues related to improving the efficiency of processes by means of cognitive computing, and the implementation of the “digital twins” model to predict behaviours and prescribe actions in different sectors will be analysed.

Speakers will debatethe new doctor-patient relationship introduced by the new technologies and the use of data for the personalization of healthcare, telemedicine via the IoT and specific security systems for the new eHealth.

The dedicated Artificial Intelligence Forum will discuss the ethics and social responsibilities involved in the implementation of AI solutions in the real world. The Blockchain Forum will showcase success stories highlighting the application of this technology in the logistics industry, catering franchises and the resolution of copyright-related issues in music.

Other names in the first preview of the Congress schedule include: Sven Schreck, Chief Architect of IoT Security at Intel; Said Tabet, Senior Technology Strategist at Dell Technologies; Leila Dillon, Vice-President of Global Marketing & NA Distribution at Bigbelly; Jonathan Moulton, ‎co-founder and managing partner at Momenta Partners; Willem Sundblad, ‎CEO and founder of ‎Oden Technologies Ltd; Mark Cotteleer, research manager at Deloitte; Helena Lisachuk, IoT Global Initiative Lead at Deloitte; Hyleco Nauta, Director of e-Health Innovation at the University Medical Centre in Utrecht; John Denning, Director of Wholesale Change; Michael Godoy, Director of Telemedicine and Scalable Therapeutics at the UCSF Medical Center; Eric Harper, Senior Software Architect at ABB; Brad Klenz, IoT Analytics Architect at SAS; Martijn Siebrand, specialist in Blockchain, Logistics and Finance at TKI Dinalog; Andy Zondervan, CEO of Settled!, and Pascal Haider, CEO of GarfieldEATS.

Five months before the event begins, 70 percent of the total number of expected companies have already confirmed their attendance, including leading firms in the IoT ecosystem such as ABB, Deloitte, Huawei, Google Cloud, Intel, Microsoft, Sas, Telit, Vodafone, Wipro, Dassault Systèmes, Fiware, Kaspersky, Libelium, Software AG, Orange, Telefonica and Thingstream. It’s expected more than 300 companies will take part in the exhibition area, including information technology companies, software platform developers, security companies, service and telecommunications providers, industrial automation firms, consultancies, hardware manufacturers, technological and R&D centres, business incubators, associations and entities related to the IoT, as well as international group participants and governments of various countries. In addition, the testbeds area will once again showcase real-world IoT applications.

IoTSWC forms part of Barcelona Industry Week, a brand which also encompasses two other trade shows, In(3D)ustry From Needs to Solutions, dedicated to additive manufacturing, and Healthio, specializing in health and healthcare technologies. All three events, which create synergies and provide a platform for commerce and knowledge in a wide range of industrial sectors, will take place from 16-18 October at Fira de Barcelona.