Opening
On May 29th, at Thuishaven in Amsterdam, I opened the first day of kickstart.ai’s TechDays in the following way:
“I’d like to take you back to a period of time about 6 years ago, the end of 2018.
Frans Muller, CEO of Ahold Delhaize,
and Ralph Hamers, the former CEO of ING,
meet during a roundtable session at the office, ‘t Torentje,
of then Prime Minister Mark Rutte.
Although we’ll never know everything that was discussed in that meeting..
We do know one topic that was definitely on the agenda: AI.
A technology capable of radically transforming industries.
And a technology, the two CEOs know, in which we are at risk of falling behind.
Despite the Netherlands being a leading innovative economy,
ranked 7th globally,
our country was lagging in AI adoption,
which is an issue, they realise, that needs urgent attention.
It’s that sense of urgency
ánd a sense of duty to the Netherlands,
that leads them to invite a group of Oerhollandse (quintessentially Dutch) companies
to come together.
All unique Dutch brands with deep ties to the Netherlands;
with millions of customers and hundreds of thousands of people working for them:
KLM, the Dutch Railways, Ahold Delhaize and ING.
The CEO’s of these 4 companies meet regularly, and bring along their heads responsible for AI.
The discussions leads to three main conclusions for what needs to happen:
- We need to invest in startups.
- We need to ensure a robust talent pool in the Netherlands
- We need to create numerous examples of AI applications.
Because the best solution is to simply start using AI.
And if anyone can encourage the adoption of AI, it’s them.
The team gets to work:
- The collaboration is launched
- attractive jobs are created to draw foreign professors to the Netherlands
- the creation of a National AI course is supported (and available during KLM flights).
- When covid hit, they collaboratively contribute to RIVM’s corona dashboard
- And of course, something many of you here will be very familiar with:
data scientists and software engineers of the partners’ companies are brought together to solve each other’s problems.
Eventually, in 2022, kickstart.ai is officially launched.
A non profit that believes data science will shape our collective future.
A coalition of do’ers dedicated to AI adoption
that brings people together to share knowledge.
You are part of a community that right now includes 4500 data scientists and software engineers, who meet each other during almost 50 meetups throughout the year.
Of which today is the biggest one:)
Welcome to TechDays 2024.
A day entirely dedicated to exchange knowledge, to meet each other and most of all: to learn from each other.”
Vinted, NS, Albert Heijn and KLM on stage
During the day, really great examples of applications of AI and Data Science were shared.
The first presentation was from a company that had over 100 million registered users in 2023
And has over 30 million daily active users.
Vinted
With over 30 million daily active users, Vinted faces a constant fight against fraud. A continuous ‘cat and mouse battle’, said Jokūbas Krasauskas and Martynas Jasinskas.
They showed how data science and AI helps the platform recognize suspicious behavior and how data-driven approaches tackle organized crime.
The next speaker was an experienced AI professional and neuroscientist with a career spanning both academia and industry.
Branka is from New Zealand, where she obtained her PhD in cognitive neuroscience.
3 years ago, she joined NS as a Senior Data Scientist. In her talk, she explained how data science has helped NS sustainabilize its train stations.
How? By optimization models, which were first used to assess different combinations of energy saving measures; then to test the outcomes of different implementation scenarios.
Using data science helped the process and deployment of energy-saving solutions go much faster.
Albert Heijn
Did you know Albert Heijn makes over 1,000,000,000 (one billion!) forecasts per day? It does. The goal is to make sure AH replenishes its supermarkets with enough — but not too much — stock.
Ruben van de Geer and Simon Grest presented 2 data science products:
One with which the data team makes hourly forecasts for hundreds of products within thousands of AH bakeries, and one with which they translate these forecasts into a planning for production. A planning that’s being updated continuously throughout the day.
This has resulted in an immense decrease of food waste in the bakeries throughout all the Albert Heijns in the Netherlands.
KLM
What costs more?
Planning for too many meals on a KLM-flight so that you have to throw food away? Or planning for too few meals so that you… force a flight attendant to order more meals at the very last minute? Or maybe end up with an angry customer?
Both scenarios have a different cost. Hence, there’s an “asymmetry in business costs”.
Bradley de Leeuw showed how KLM incorporated this asymmetry into a Machine Learning model and talked about the pros, cons, and practical applications of how the model is used within KLM Operations.
Client
Kickstart.ai is a non profit that believes data science will shape our collective future. It was initiated by ING, Ahold Delhaize, KLM and NS around 6 years ago and officially launched in 2022.
It hosts 50+ physical meetups throughout the year for data scientists and software engineers. There’s also a really active Slack channel so that community is accessible more easily.
Reference
Irene: Again, thank you so much for being an awesome moderator! ❤️🔥 For anyone who needs to see this; Irene is highly recommended!
I really loved hosting this event. It was super cool event, with SUCH good speakers.
I am always amazed by how effortlessly people who are this passionate about their profession are able to present on stage. Really really cool and super enjoyable to witness.
