Guess what? Digital images are almost everywhere you look now. New innovations and trends evolve and flourish in the fields of marketing and computer science daily; if not each moment! So why is this important to YOU? One of the less addressed trends and fields are computer vision, machine learning and AI--and how they are DISRUPTING business and society in a pivotal way--considering 90% of the data our brain analyses is visual. So, when over 80 international speakers from companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, Flickr, Samsung, Wired and others come together in one place and explore how visual technologies and AI are revolutionizing how humans communicate and do business--it’s a must attend event for any tech guru, marketer, or entrepreneur.
For the fourth year in row, investor, serial entrepreneur, professional photographer and digital media expert, Evan Nisselson, has presented the LDV Vision Summit. The summit is a premier annual visual technology event with the main focus of bringing together top technologists, visionaries, startups, investors, executives, and just human beings in general, who share an interest and/or insight on exploring, understanding and shaping the future of imaging and video in human communication. Dashmote, was of course, amongst the attendees ready to sink into some learning, networking, and even competing.
Nisselson, claims that one of the main purposes of the summit is to get up-and-coming, as well as newly developed startups the recognition that they desire and thrive for. The LDV Vision Summit featured two competitions; a Startup Competition as well as an Entrepreneurial Computer Vision Challenge. Entering these competitions is not simply a “for fun” concept, entering (and winning) increases your odds of being recruited, raising capital, or selling for over $100M since your work and products become visible to such a large audience of people. If you want specifics, over 500 people from all over the world packed the SVA Theatre in New York City on May 24th and 25th!
So, what is there to be said about the event? In short--computer vision is the trend watch for. Spreading like wildfire to a multitude of industries in the business sector such as medicine, marketing, healthcare, transportation, etc.--computer vision and visual technology is being applied to everything you can land your eyes on, most literally. The LDV Vision Summit allowed for attendees to get a two day submersion into current technologies and applications as well as insight on what can and will be the future of technology.
The first day focused primarily on computer vision strategy, AI, AR, and basically everything related to visual content from companies such as Google, Pinterest, Facebook and Nvidia. One particular focus was autonomous driving, self driving cars and the future of AI integrated with cameras and visual tech. A presentation by Dr. Jianxiong Xiao, CEO of AutoX claimed his aim to disrupt autonomous driving by leveraging cheap cameras, computer vision and AI--rather, that one day we may be utilizing our mobile phones to control and drive our cars. The autonomous driving presentations and discussions were particularly intriguing to the Dashmote team as transportation is the biggest application in computer vision and robotics--it changes everyday life! The self-driving industry was once the initial and sole domain of Google’s research, but now it has flourished and caught the attention of several other large companies.
One key concept that really stuck with you was Evan Nisselson’s speech on How Will Visual Technologies Disrupt & Empower Businesses & Society. In 2003, Evan wrote an article about camera-phones replacing point-shoot cameras. In 2016, Evan predicted that the “Internet of Eyes” will enable inanimate objects to see and recently, Amazon Echo Look validated this thesis. In his speech, he explains that by leveraging computer vision and AI, products and merchandise and stores and many other sectors can be designed to build emotional connections with consumers in a dynamic way. That personalization is what takes it to the next level. In an article written on the release of the Amazon Echo Look, it’s to be expected that with the addition of the camera, Amazon has just added a massive source of data. The camera allows for you to voice-command it and takes selfies of you in your outfits to send the photos to consulting style experts for advice. Amazon can begin to collect data about what it is that a consumer likes to wear and thus informs them of what they need to sell. This hybrid that Amazon has paired voice with vision has the potential to make the system infinitely more powerful by supercharging it with data from a new source, adding even more context. "Leveraging computer vision and artificial intelligence a camera will hopefully help proactively shop for me without needing me to physically search online or in stores", says Nisselson. "Ideally, Amazon Alexa would send me an email saying “looks like your favorite red pants are wearing out because you wear them all of the time. We noticed a hole on your back pocket and thought you would like to know that we have two of those pants in the same color and size in stock. Would you like me to order you one or two of them?”
With a large array of more presentations, keynote speakers, and discussions--it’s impossible to summarize all of the techy goodness in one article. The LDV Summit is an event you must attend to fully grasp the concepts, knowledge, connections, and future developments of the visual technology sphere. Computer vision is truly affecting each aspect of our lives and the LDV Summit provided a burst of various knowledge, strategies, future insight, and discussions of the impact on its market sectors. One of the advantages of the summit was the wide range and diversity in attendees. Ranging from engineers, to developers, founders, CEO’s, investors, researchers, journalists, etc. this allowed anyone with a general interest in visual tech to mingle and discuss trends and thoughts with people of various backgrounds--with one common interest. According to Dashmote and many other attendees, the atmosphere on--as well as off the stage, was centered entirely around inspiration, learning, and sharing of knowledge. Being somewhat of a hybrid version of a two day academic seminar/workshop as well as a venture capital roundtable, as Serge Belongie, Professor of Computer Vision at Cornell Tech described it, the LDV Vision Summit is not to be missed next year!
“We are seeing visual technologies, especially combined with AI and machine learning, disrupt a broad array of existing markets and create new ones. From the role they are playing in autonomous vehicles, to transforming marketing technologies, to the roles they are playing in physical and cyber security - and of course the role they are playing around consumer electronics and robotics. It is comforting to know everyone is just as excited as I am about computer vision and AI, and to see how big the opportunity is and how early in the cycle we are as well.” -Rudina Seseri, Founder & Managing Partner of Glasswing Ventures