Building upon the huge success that was last year’s edition, Everything IoT Summit 2016 is back, and it’s bigger. Keynotes, panels on Cyber Security in IoT, 11 early stage IoT startup pitches (Ocean’s 11), a Hackathon (with 2 brilliant ideas in IoT), philanthropic activities and tons of enthusiasm from organisers made the event special for all IoT enthusiasts and participants. Over 500 representatives from the industry, government, universities, investors and entrepreneurial community participated in the event. Eitan Bienstock, founder of of Everything IoT supported by Stuart Waite, Mark Pesce and Ian Gardiner, put massive efforts to bring IoT innovation to Sydney are worth mentioning. Everything IoT was supported by KPMG, BlueChilli, Commonwealth Bank, Microsoft, AWS, Telstra among other partners.
Interesting fact: Everything IoT 2016 was organised to be an event without pen and paper. IoT in action.
Everything IoT started with welcome remarks from Minister for Innovation Victor Dominelli. Minister spoke about the opportunities to innovate in Sydney and the support ecosystem provided to IoT startups collaboratively by the government and other ecosystem players. Victor Dominelli enthusiastically interacted with startups showcasing in the summit.
Eitan Bienstock opened and closed Everything IoT in time. He aims to make Internet of Everything an Internet of Impact. He seems to have huge plans for Everything IoT 2016.
Genevieve Bell, Intel Corporation started the summit with Internet of Living things and highlighted the importance of neural analogy in IoT. Bell surprised the crowd by showing examples of human-animal-technology interconnections. She talked about the case of cows milking themselves using IoT in dairy farms and it being far more productive than usual processes of humans milking cows. She talked about Project Snow Owl, Rhinos, Bengal tigers and other things that are transforming animal IoT technology. She also cautioned the IoT players to bear in mind that the closer we bring technology to animals, more vulnerable we make them.
Matthew James Bailey, IoT Pioneer spoke about the necessity of purpose and unification in IoT. He demonstrated the need for purpose driven IoT due to increased populations and climate change. He provided an analogy from nature that emphasises on unification. He also talked about LPWAN and its ROI and sustainability.
Jason Jameson from IBM Watson IoT talked about IoT analytics and provided insights on how IoT is becoming the C-Suite priority. His examples based on Science Fiction were a hit and he did a thorough job educating the participants about the need for analytics and AI in IoT. Jason apparently uses over 40 IoT devices in his home.
John Chambers, Telstra Corporation started his session in a very interesting way. He said “Hey Siri” and “Hey Google” and many phones in the hall started beeping. He instantly got the crowd’s attention to explain the need for Cyber Security in IoT. He demonstrated Telstra’s strategy on building secure and smart IoT for homes. He mentioned that Smart Security will be a $600M market in Australia by 2020. It is evident that HomeIoT is the future and Telstra is looking at it very seriously.
Nicki Page, MOQdigital was introduced by Microsoft team with a 5 min introduction on what Microsoft is doing in IoT. Watch out for predictive analytics focus in B2B from Microsoft. Nicki Page started the session with examples of how impact is achieved through IoT and MOQDigital. IoT currently shields oysters farmers from contamination; and protects workers from heatstroke during summer.
Scott Wharton, Commonwealth Bank spoke about Commonwealth Bank’s contribution to IoT and the transformation of the world. Scott talked about the opportunities to transform the world through IoT.
Jill Slay, Australian Centre for Cyber Security at UNSW Canberra @ ADFA talked about the need of Cyber Security in IoT. She asked the right questions like “What are we going to do about the security of 30 billion connected devices?”, “What can bad guys do to a billion devices?” She spoke about UNSW’s contribution in hacking every device including smart fridges and ovens. She educated the crowd, mentioning that Cyber Security is not just about Network Security and Penetration testing. In her experience with enterprises, that’s a major source of concern for everyone. She emphasised the need for Application Security and encryption in IoT. She talked about the challenges in IoT Security. She also mentioned that more than 80% of SMEs in Australia are vulnerable. Many were shocked but more educated about security.
Piers Hogarth-Scott, KPMG Australia talked about standards and interoperability required in IoT. He spoke about Hypercat, BSI and W3C standards in IoT and the best practices followed by successful IoT companies. He also talked about Hypercat’s partnership with KPMG and announced that Hypercat will be launched in Australia this month.
Andrea Beattie, City of Sydney talked about City of Sydney initiatives in IoT and smart cities. City of Sydney has 3 mantras – Green, Global and Connected! City of Sydney is aiming to make Sydney sustainable and 70% smart by 2030. She shared her vision of an IoT city. She was followed by Eitan Bienstock who spoke about his work in STEM education.
Everything IoT StarUp 2016 pitch competition was kicked off by Ian Gardiner with Panel Judges Dr Elizabeth Eastland, Bill Bartee, Craig Blair, Nicki Page and Eitan Bienstock. The competition looked at the “P”s of a startup like Product (Impact + Scalability), Pricing (Revenue strategies) and People (Team) as judging parameters. 11 startups in IoT from Australia pitched to the panel and audience for the Best IoT Startup of the Year award. People’s Choice award was another award category based on the votes taken from the audience.
The 11 shortlisted startups: Levaux, Reekoh, Smartsensor, Space Connect, Sky Grid, Agersens Pty Ltd, Morse Micro, Elenation, The Safety Compass, Briometrix, Myriota. Know about the startups here.
Each startup pitched for 3 mins and was grilled by the panel with all the right questions.
Winners: Morse Micro came third. Briometrix won the second place. Elenation won both “Everything IoT startup of 2016” and the “People’s Choice” award. All the winners has won Amazon Echo and a chance to visit Israel to explore opportunities. Also, KPMG will assess the winners to help them in acceleration and incubation.
Stuart Waite introduced “Everything IoT HackLab 2016”- a hackathon challenge organised at the KPMG office in Sydney. It’s a 2 day hackathon monitored by Stuart Waite to scout the best ideas that could impact the society. More than 30 teams participated in the hackathon, 3 of which were selected to pitch to IoT legends in the auditorium. Team Wastewarriors, Team Gronade, Team Iconic were selected to pitch. Nervous teams did their best in the time bound hackathon and Team TheIconic won the Best Idea award for their app on helping differently abled citizens to use public transport. TeamIconic received numerous accolades and Amazon Echo for making a working mobile app in a day.
Post a tea break, Future of IoT innovation was discussed in a round table discussion with Prof Roy Green, Dean of Business School, University of Technology Sydney; Tim Harvey, GM Regional and Agribusiness Banking for NSW, Commonwealth Bank; Charnelle Mondy, Manager, City of Sydney; Prof Jane Burns, CEO, Young and Well Digital and Sebastien Eckersley-Maslin, Founder and CEO, Blue Chilli. They discussed about initiatives required to create an ecosystem that stimulates innovation in IoT. They also discussed about the standards and infrastructure support required by the ecosystem to build globally scalable products.