SMU, BT organise seminar on digital transformation

Singapore

A ONE-day seminar on digital transformation will be held next month, organised by the Singapore Management University (SMU) and The Business Times.

Five keynote speakers are slated to present a range of topics on the subject.

The seminar will kick off with Steven Miller, SMU vice-provost (research), discussing how the boundaries are blurring across the physical world and cyber world, as well as human intelligence and machine intelligence.

Prof Miller will provide insights into these shifting boundaries by explaining how the world is being reshaped by bringing together minds and machines, and share his view on how these developments in technological capabilities will be driving change in our lives.

Following that, Janos Barberis, Asia lead for the Digital Finance Institute and founder & CEO of SuperCharge will speak on harnessing the full power of digital and delivering new value.

Mr Barberis will provide an overview of the evolution of fintech over the last 150 years and how it has adapted and brought values and relevant regulatory framework to the industry.

Patrick Thng, director of innovation management at the School of Information Systems and co-director of IIE SMU, will then discuss topics from big data and analytics to artificial intelligence.

He will touch on how digital innovation would disrupt and transform many industries and jobs at an accelerated speed with the convergence of big data and artificial intelligence.

Jennifer Qin, Asia Pacific investment management leader of Deloitte Asia Pacific, will speak next. She will talk about blockchain as the new world order. This session will provide an overview of the blockchain technology and its applications, and discuss how it has the transformative potential to redraw the structure of financial institutions and back-end services and completely change the way we think about money, social organisation and trust.

The final keynote speaker, Samuel Cammiss, director of Deloitte Innovation SEA, will focus on artificial intelligence. He will explore how smart robots are, and how robotics and cognitive technologies are beginning to flood the workplace, taking on a range of complex tasks previously thought to be the sole reserve of human workers.

Mr Cammiss will map and illustrate key technologies - detailing what can be achieved today, what may be possible in the future, and where the pitfalls lie.

Concurrent workshops will also be held on transformational innovation, as well as on blockchain that provide an overview of the experiments in the blockchain space.

The seminar will make use of an app called Gnowbe, which is a mobile digital learning platform. Participants will be able to pose questions or comments synchronously, take video clips of key moments or snapshots of the presentations to share with one another during the talks.

"The Gnowbe platform is the most versatile mobile learning platform we have come across as it allows us to do a range of learning activities rather than just going through text, videos or quizzes," said Lim Lai Cheng, executive director of SMU Academy.

"Participants are prompted to take notes, do reflections, and share their views at relevant segments of a talk. It follows closely andragogical principles, and a research-based approach for adult learning."

The seminar is open to 100 participants, and will be held at Parkroyal on Pickering on Aug 18.

For details and to sign up, log in at https://eventreg.asiaone.com/register/smubtseminar