Year round learning for product, design and engineering professionals

New AI Conference Early Bird Closes Friday

We’re very grateful for the positive reaction so far to our new Web Directions AI conference in Sydney on 28 September, both in registrations (almost 50% sold out) and direct feedback.

Clearly, many of you agree it’s the right time to be looking at artificial intelligence, machine learning, cognitive computing and related areas from a design and development perspective.

Now, before we go any further, let me just say:

  • • Standard ticket to AI = $699
  • • Register by 1 September (Friday), get $100 off = $599

There is also a pretty stunning offer to register by 1 September for AI plus our end of year Summit extravaganza for $1,399. That is $500 off the overall combined standard price.

So, with that clear, let me tell you why you should go to AI.

AI

A couple of things to get straight

AI is not future tech. It’s right now, and a lot more coming. AI has been applied in various small ways for years but it thrives on data, and that is becoming available like never before.

You, personally, don’t have to be – or even have access to – a computer scientist to use AI. One word: APIs.

Who should go to this?

We’ve scheduled a day of presentations and discussions that will be useful and relevant for designers, developers, UX specialists, product managers, engineers, service designers, team leaders and a bunch of others working in the web and digital space.

How does it work?

It’s a big day: nine sessions in all with presentations, round-table lightning discussions and speaker Q&As for each session, all within three broad themes – the Technology, the Design and the Business of AI.

Technology

The AI and Machine Learning Landscape
Alasdair Hamilton, Remi AI
The 5,000 ft view, to help us understand the foundations of the technologies we’ll discuss throughout the day.

The State of AI Language Platforms
Justin Anderson, Ansarada
Insights from recent research into the capabilities, strengths and challenges of some of the most widely available AI APIs.

Off the Shelf or Build Your Own? An AI decision tree
Andy Huang, Servian
Those APIs – how do you know they’ll work for you? And what if they don’t? How do you even make decisions about that?

Design

A Headline Bot Generated This Talk Title, and You Won’t Believe What Happened Next
Anna Harrison, Ephox
Some insightful observations gleaned in creating a content generation tool that uses machine learning.

The (Typically Terrible) UX of Chatbots
Jennifer Wilson, Mobile Experience
Voice driven interaction is obviously a rich field for AI. It’s just talking, so that should be easy, right?

Designing Chat Interfaces: You Don’t Have to Pass the Turing Test
Henry Cho, Upwire
Even more than voice, text is a predominant form of human interaction. This looks at designing text-based chat interfaces.

Business

Building a Data Value Prop When It’s Not Your Data
Chris Bayley, Cover Genius
Sure, AI is based on massive amounts of data, but where does that data come from, and how do you get it?

Robochat: Navigating the Home Loan Journey with Australia’s First Virtual Home Loan Agent
Peter O’Malley, UBank Digital
Ubank’s Robochat works alongside its existing live chat interface, reducing loan application time for users. This is how they did it.

NB There is one more session to be announced in the Business track – we’re just waiting to confirm the speaker.

So, that is a huge day focused on some key aspects of how we can and will work with AI in our jobs. We know this format can work really well (we had outstanding feedback when we used it for our Code Leaders conference a few weeks ago). All it takes is a room full of interested, engaged active participants.

That’s where you come in (literally)!

We’d love to have you join us at this first Web Directions AI conference. And we’re making it as easy as possible for you to be there.

Pricing

The Early Bird price for this new one-day conference is $599. After 1 September (which is this Friday), it goes up to $699.

That’s a great deal. As noted, there is also on offer another pretty amazing deal that combines registration for AI plus Summit (our big 2 day, 2 track conference in Sydney in November). Take up that deal before midnight on Friday and you can save $500 off the overall combined standard price. (If you’ve already registered for Summit and you’d like to come to AI, email us – we’ll work it out.)

Want to know more? Keen to register? The full program is at the AI conference site. Note that numbers are strictly limited, and we are 50% sold out now.

If, like me, you are increasingly excited at the implications of AI for the digital and web tech industry – and especially for our work as designers and developers – you will not want to miss this significant new conference.

Hope I see you there!

delivering year round learning for front end and full stack professionals

Learn more about us

Going to #wds18 has given me inspiration to attend more conferences. Meeting tech folks like myself and learning from each other is pretty amazing!

Hinesh Patel Ruby and React Developer