Last Thursday and Friday, I had the honor of attending the inaugural edition of ColorCloud Hamburg, a conference dedicated to Microsoft Business Applications, held on April 18 and 19 in Hamburg, Germany. The event is compared to artists wielding a vast array of colors, intended to ignite creativity, inspiration, and learning. Participants were treated to two days of diverse content spanning six tracks, featuring a day of workshops followed by a day brimming with sessions. The conference was crafted for everyone, from novices to seasoned professionals, to learn, exchange ideas, and devise solutions. And I have to say: The organisation team put together an incredible inclusive and outstanding program for speakers, volunteers, Hackathon- and conference attendees as you might get from the following image collection.
Not only did I (also known as Will) had the chance to demonstrate the remarkable RAG (retrieval augmented generation) blackbox – a component of Copilot, with my friend Chris Huntingford (also known as Do-It), and steal the show as Will & Do-It, but I was also chosen to be part of the jury for the Hack the prism: The AI hackathon, a pre-day event hosted by William Dorrington, Chris Huntingford, Scott Durow, and Carl Cookson.
I had the privilege of observing the convergence of humans and artificial intelligence. Attendees were reminded that the crux of the work lies in representing the ‚why‘ and ‚how‘ — convincing a group of C-level (the wonderful judges: Sara Lagerquist, Scott Durow, Christiane Stieler and myself) that AI can play a crucial role in addressing the greatest challenge for company leaders: demonstrating and proving the business impact of their use-case, which is basically proving out ROI and getting support of such initiatives internally afterwards.
While the competition among the various use-cases presented was close, it served as a reminder that every company leader should be able to articulate their AI ambitions. Following analysts like Forrester, their research indicates that only 15% of companies report being very effective at demonstrating the business impact of an AI solution. Conversely, 58% acknowledge that they are not effective in this regard.
Gartner´s Analyst Mary Mesaglio, recently sharing at their ThinkCast Podcast series insights about how we both trust and distrust digital technology through what she calls digital disinhibition and algorithmic aversion. Interestingly enough, the example she brought up for digital disinhibition relates to the winning team use case of the Hack the Prism AI challenge – a human feels more comfortable telling their deepest, sometimes darkest truths to a machine, rather than to a human. The use of AI in mental health is a trending topic. Although it may not have been the original intention of the innovators, it’s clear that with the aid of generative AI, we are on the brink of something significant, tasked to transform our personal lifestyles.
As we conclude this fantastic conference, I would like to present the components of Retrieval Augmented Generation that Chris (also known as Do-It) and I (also known as Will) have showcased in a non-technical manner.
When playing around with those ingredients, it is also important to understand the workflow behind this, or what would be practically known as a good recipe to mix those ingredients for best results.
The best method to discover great recipes is to either experiment independently or learn from the community, similar to how we prepared for this unique explanation of RAG. If you’ve been part of this, I hope you appreciated the alternative approach by Will and Do-It. For those who missed it, our session deck is available for download.
Hope to see yours soon at one of the upcoming community events. Until then,…
The Power Platform Talks 