That moment where innovation comes to life – GFT takes part in the new.New Festival 2018
As in the past, the CODE_n new.New Festival in October turned the spotlight on innovative flair in the state of Baden-Württemberg. The festival goes back to 2016, when it was first staged in Karlsruhe, and after moving to Stuttgart it now takes place in the Schleyerhalle event centre. One factor that has remained constant during this time is GFT’s central role as one of the main partners of the festival. This year we had a stand at the event for three days to show our customers how we deliver everything from innovation to in-house implementation from a single source – and beyond, even taking care of efficient operation.
We’ve been helping banks and financial institutions succeed with implementation of their digitalisation strategies for years, so now we’ve simply extended this essential service to include manufacturing companies working on digital transformation. One of our aims at the festival was to reach out to small and medium-sized enterprises and highlight the huge potential open to firms when they’re digitalising their business processes – potential offered by a number of new forms of tech such as artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain technology. To bring this to life, a whole host of our international colleagues were also at the event – fitting, as the solutions we presented at the festival were developed by our colleagues from a variety of GFT foreign subsidiaries…
One such team travelled a long way to get to the festival – just under 1,000 kilometres! Our colleagues from Poland decided to drive the whole stretch from Lodz to Stuttgart in the GFT IoT Car. The idea was to give visitors to the festival an opportunity to see this ‘car with a difference’ for themselves. It was also a good chance to demonstrate one of the highlights of its IT architecture, which was specially developed by GFT. The system allows data to be gathered and analysed while the car is underway. By using blockchain technology, all data is processed securely (so it can’t be altered) before being stored in the cloud. Data generated by the system can be leveraged to create new business models. For example, insurance companies could use the data to adapt premiums to the individual driving habits of their customers.
International team work
We also took part in a variety of presentations, workshops and live design sprints at the new.New Festival to show visitors that we’re not part of the innovative end of the technology spectrum, such as blockchain technology or AI. We also have a solid grasp of the entire software development process, from A to Z. One section of our trade show stand was designed like a glass workshop cubicle to allow people to peer over our shoulders and watch the processes of developing software – from understanding the original problem to final implementation. These kinds of processes normally take place behind closed doors, so we used our stand to bring everything out into the open. Customers such as LBBW joined us at a design sprint workshop to look at a hands-on design challenge and walk through the first steps of the development process for a software solution. The results were handed on to our GFT colleagues who took the software development process one stage further. They even presented their first prototypes live on the stand. This involved close coordination between our colleagues from Germany, Spain and Italy, and it worked! It was just like a real project back at the labs.
Staging the live development workshops once again underscored how important it is to work with clients as a partner of equals, so we’re all pulling in the same direction and can the software development process along quickly – as intended! To work, you need experts with the skills and knowledge to deliver professional support. Which is exactly why we’re there.
