RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK – The Triangle plays host to the sixth IoT SLAM with an agenda full of leading experts sharing best practices, actionable tips, and industry knowledge for 250 guests at RTP Foundation headquarters in Research Triangle Park and more than 10,000 virtual attendees from around the globe on Thursday and Friday.

It’s the second year the international organization, which is based in the United Kingdom and includes members from every continent, is running the event in the Triangle. The four previous events were all virtual without an in-person location.

“The Triangle has a really good IoT community,” said David Hill, founder and executive director of the IoT Community. “It’s a global IoT center of excellence.”

David Hill

Many of the world’s leading IoT organizations operate facilities in the Triangle, said Hill, and IoT has a significant and substantial footprint in the Research Triangle.

The organization has spent the past six months refining five areas of focus: women in IoT; security, privacy, and trust; mobility and connectivity; retail and supply chain; and healthcare IoT. The IoT Community is investing in each of these five areas, which Hill refers to as the community’s centers of excellence. The IoT Community will launch them later this year, with the 2018 IoT SLAM as a midway point for the organization to source issues and opportunities within these centers of excellence by working with IoT practitioners and developing real, meaningful outcomes, said Hill.

“We as a community are very focused on North Carolina, and the Triangle in particular,” said Hill, “As we will be localizing the centers of excellence and basing them in specific geographic areas.” The Triangle is considered a leading candidate to house one or more of these localized centers of excellence, said Hill.

For example, the Triangle is home to RIoT, the Regional Internet of Things users group, that has quickly grown to include several thousand members and has opened its own offices with an accelerator program in Raleigh.

Important conference sessions

“Knowledge is power,” said Hill. “Having real and useful insights as a practitioner is the most important outcome from the IoT SLAM.”  The 250 guests–the event is sold out, though virtual tickets are still available, and are for the first time free–will enjoy meeting experts in the industry, but the real value is in the potential to learn actionable tips.

“Participants will gain real world insights they can actually apply in their business, in their city, or in their company,” said Hill. “We have fantastic speakers covering really forward topics of interest and importance to the IoT ecosystem.”

The agenda includes sessions focused on how 5G will revolutionize IoT, issues of privacy and security, and choosing the proper IoT architectural pattern.

“Our first two sessions will blow everyone away,” said Hill.

Chris O’Connor, vice president of sales – Internet of Things at IBM, will open the conference discussing real world use cases for applications of IoT technology for better outcomes.

“The advent of artificial intelligence is going to lead to a new understanding of how autonomous outcomes and machine-learning outputs will increase productivity and efficiency,” said Hill, and the conference’s second session from Oliver Schabenberger, executive vice president, COO, and CTO at SAS, will cover the intersection of IoT and AI.

“The intersection of AI and IoT,” said Hill, “will revolutionize every industry.”

SLAM is an acronym

IoT SLAM

IoT event highlights

The event is not a competition, said Hill. The purpose is to gather the IoT community together in person and virtually in a way that is open and accessible to all. The goal is to deliver content that is objective from informed leaders in the IoT community, across industries, geographies, and disciplines.

“We have a very diverse spectrum of people represented in the IoT community,” said Hill, with important leaders of different nationalities, religions, ethnic origins, races, and gender.  Diversity is critically important for the community, said Hill, noting that practitioners and leaders can come from any background and any community.

By the end of the event, said Hill, he expects people will feel slammed with information. In a good way. The acronym SLAM stands for strategy, leadership, advisory, and methodology.

“There will be a lot of exciting content in a short amount of time,” said Hill, “with meaningful outcomes.”

Virtual registration is still available, free, for a limited time online. To register, you must first join the IoT Community. All registrants will receive access to online content for three months following the event.