Belgium 25-9-25 Invitation Only Physical english
As AI shapes our future, the time is now to address and correct its inherent biases. Join leading female voices in tech as we explore how to undo past mistakes, champion neutrality, and feed AI systems with inclusive, unbiased data. This conference is a call to action for female leaders in AI and tech to ensure the next generation of intelligent systems reflects fairness, diversity, and equity. Together, let’s set things right and redefine the future of AI.
Read MoreBelgium 25-9-25 Invitation Only Physical english
On 25th September, during the Red Hat Summit: Connect 2025 in Brussels, CIONET is hosting an exclusive, invitation-only round table for leading CIOs, CTOs, and digital leaders. While the Summit offers a broad programme, this CIONET session is a separate, distinct event, conducted in its own dedicated room with private catering, ensuring a focused and confidential peer-to-peer discussion. This round table will delve into why certain cloud-native techniques offer undeniable benefits, irrespective of where your applications are deployed, be it on-premise, in a hyperscale cloud, or a hybrid environment. Even outside public clouds, these modern, modular architectures consistently deliver increased agility, enhanced scalability, and quicker time-to-market. The real power behind these advantages lies in automation. When done properly, automation significantly boosts team efficiency, improves system quality, and drastically cuts risks from slow systems or downtime. However, achieving truly effective automation comes with its own set of challenges, which we'll address head-on. Key Discussion Points Include: "No-Regret" Cloud-Native Pillars: We'll try to pinpoint essential techniques every organisation should adopt, such as microservices architecture, containerisation (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes), API-first design, stateless application design, and immutable infrastructure. Why are these crucial for modern applications, no matter the deployment location? Strategic Vendor Lock-in: How to judiciously manage vendor lock-in. For new innovations and applications with a relatively short life expectancy, leveraging the latest unique features of a hyperscale cloud might be beneficial. For long-lived applications (expected to be live for decades), the focus might shift to limiting exposure by utilising generally available technologies. Automation Anywhere: How can organisations effectively implement automation strategies to unlock the full potential of cloud-native initiatives across diverse infrastructures? What are the biggest hurdles, and how are leaders overcoming them? This CIONET round table offers a unique and intimate setting for digital leaders to gain critical insights, exchange perspectives, and shape the strategic path towards application modernisation that truly offers no regrets.
Read MoreBelgium 30-9-25 Squad Only Virtual english
Everyone has technical debt. The question is what to do with it. Refactor now? Wait for the next feature? Build on it and hope it holds? If you’re tired of debating whether to clean up or move on, this session helps you frame the debt conversation in a way that supports both speed and stability.
Read MoreSeptember 30, 2025 Squad Session Squad Only Virtual english
Everyone has technical debt. The question is what to do with it. Refactor now? Wait for the next feature? Build on it and hope it holds? If you’re tired of debating whether to clean up or move on, this session helps you frame the debt conversation in a way that supports both speed and stability.
Read MoreOctober 2, 2025 Squad Session Squad Only Virtual english
Architecture doesn’t happen in diagrams. It happens in minds, seasoned, curious, sharp minds that understand how the pieces fit. But who’s shaping these minds? Who’s growing the next generation of digital architects? If you’re responsible for complex systems, and for the people designing them, this session is for you.
Read MoreOctober 14, 2025 Squad Session Squad Only Virtual english
Agile delivery often collides with inflexible infrastructures. One team wants to release weekly. Another is waiting six months for a new test environment. Sounds familiar? If your infra team is tired of being the bottleneck, and your devs are tired of waiting, this session opens a path forward.
Read MoreAddAI.Life: Simplifying Customer Interactions with Contextual AI Assistants
AddAI.Life is bringing AI to the forefront of customer service. Their AI assistants can be integrated into a wide range of channels, from websites to messaging apps. By providing consistent and personalized support across multiple touchpoints, AddAI.Life is helping businesses build stronger customer relationships.
AddAI.Life (AddAI) (link resides outside of ibm.com) is a Czech-based startup, and an IBM Business Partner, established in 2019 with a vision to help companies improve their customer experience and efficiency by implementing AI assistants that are available 24x7 to answer a wide range of questions promptly and accurately. “When developing virtual assistants for our customers, our goal is to ensure each assistant sounds very natural and brings the customer and its end-users an amazing experience,” explains Jindrich Chromy, CEO and co-founder of AddAI.Life.
When it comes to generative AI, trust and transparency, as well as accuracy, are critical for AddAI and its customers. Each assistant needs to be specifically tailored to each customer and its unique use-cases: whether it will be answering billing questions for a user in telecommunications or resetting a digital account password for a banking customer. “Our customers include some of the top Czech companies as well as telecommunication corporations and banks. It’s important for our assistants to be able to deliver accurate and consistent answers. Moreover, the answers need to be curated or generated automatically on verified data. We also need to comply with bank-level security, which includes granted data exclusivity for the customer. We also need to be able to opt-out the training of the AI model on our user’s conversations,” adds Chromy.
In order to continue delivering an exceptional customer experience while also shortening the time it takes to implement a new AI assistant, AddAI has begun using the IBM® watsonx.ai™, IBM watsonx™ Assistant and IBM Watson® Discovery solutions.
Watsonx.ai proved to be very useful. In our research, we liked how it helped our customers (and our development team) to simplify tasks and extend the assistant knowledge without the need to pre-set the whole dialog in advance. It is a next level for us and our customers. ”
In collaboration with the IBM Client Engineering and Technical Sales teams from the Czech Republic, AddAI built an AI assistant for a customer in the banking sector that they then piloted. The assistant utilized the retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) methodology, coupled with watsonx.ai, to deliver relevant and precise responses in the Czech language for frequently asked questions (FAQs) on topics ranging from account access to payments, pricing and account services. Through intensive optimization efforts, the implementation team ensured that the answers generated by large language models (LLMs) met a high standard of accuracy and language fluency. To optimize end-user experience, the team integrated watsonx.ai with watsonx Assistant, and was able to deliver instant replies on a user-friendly front end.
“We use watsonx.ai to access selected open-source large language models like Llama 2 to enhance and contextualize information from our databases and present it to the end customer through the watsonx Assistant chatbot in an accurate and conversational manner. In our case watsonx.ai generates its answers to users’ questions through RAG,” explains Klaudia Miezgova, watsonx developer at AddAI.Life.
Additionally, Add.AI included IBM Watson Discovery in this pilot for its banking customer. The team used publicly available bank documents such as contracts, terms and conditions and price lists and tuned Watson Discovery to understand domain-specific questions and expressions. “We were able to obtain very accurate answers, including snippets from the document used as a reference or basis of the answer. This happened automatically, without the need to build and set the dialog manually,” notes Chromy.
“We always track, measure and test new ideas to see how they work in real-life situations. That way, we can improve them quickly,” explains Chromy. “In this case, we took a set of testing queries, for which we had the correct answers pre-defined in our hand-built AI assistant which was powered by watsonx Assistant. We then fed those queries to the new assistant which was powered by both watsonx Assistant and watsonx.ai. That one had no pre-built dialogues and had to come up with the answers by itself, using the provided documentation and skill it had as a large language model. It responded with 85% accuracy compared with the pre-defined answers of the former version. With much less work input. So now we know that it is on a good track.”
Through this new assistant, AddAI also helped its customer achieve a 50% reduction in unanswered customer queries. Moreover, when answering customer questions, an AI assistant powered by watsonx.ai is designed to provide a more detailed and actionable answer than was previously possible.
“We have been able to tune the model to query complex data sets and then summarize the data it collected in a much more effective way. For example, the previously mentioned banking customer uses the assistant to deliver fee information to its customers. Rather than serving up raw data that requires the user to analyze the output and infer the next step, the assistant can deliver a clearly summarized answer with helpful next steps for the user to consider. This was not possible before watsonx.ai,” explains Miezgova.
This is just the beginning. Going forward, AddAI is confident it can reduce the implementation time on any new AI assistant by up to 30% given they can now use generative AI to help prepare the assistant to be questioned by end-users. The team expects this to significantly shorten the amount of time it takes to test and optimize an assistant before it is ready to be shared with end-users. AddAI also expects it can provide next-level, more knowledgeable assistants, even without the need of developing each dialogue (response) manually, using this new approach with watsonx.ai and watsonx Assistant.
AddAI.Life (AddAI) (link resides outside of ibm.com) is a Czech-based startup, and an IBM Business Partner, established in 2019 and headquartered in the natural surroundings of Řevnice, a town close to the capital, Prague. The firm focuses on the development of AI Virtual assistants that have natural-sounding dialogues and work with context of the conversation. They can integrate into various channels (web, mobile app with voice, customer support line, Messenger, WhatsApp, Google Assistant, and others).
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Digital Transformation is redefining the future of health care and health delivery. All stakeholders are convinced that these innovations will create value for patients, healthcare practitioners, hospitals, and governments along the patient pathway. The benefits are starting from prevention and awareness to diagnosis, treatment, short- and long-term follow-up, and ultimately survival. But how do you make sure that your working towards an architecturally sound, secure and interoperable health IT ecosystem for your hospital and avoid implementing a hodgepodge of spot solutions? How does your IT department work together with the other stakeholders, such as the doctors and other healthcare practitioners, Life Sciences companies, Tech companies, regulators and your internal governance and administrative bodies?
Read MoreThe Telenet Business Leadership Circle powered by CIONET, offers a platform where IT executives and thought leaders can meet to inspire each other and share best practices. We want to be a facilitator who helps you optimise the performance of your IT function and your business by embracing the endless opportunities that digital change brings.
Read MoreDécouvrez la dynamique du leadership numérique aux Rencontres de CIONET, le programme francophone exclusif de CIONET pour les leaders numériques en Belgique, rendu possible grâce au soutien et à l'engagement de nos partenaires de programme : Deloitte, Denodo et Red Hat. Rejoignez trois événements inspirants par an à Liège, Namur et en Brabant Wallon, où des CIOs et des experts numériques francophones de premier plan partagent leurs perspectives et expériences sur des thèmes d'affaires et de IT actuels. Laissez-vous inspirer et apprenez des meilleurs du secteur lors de sessions captivantes conçues spécialement pour soutenir et enrichir votre rôle en tant que CIO pair. Ne manquez pas cette opportunité de faire partie d'un réseau exceptionnel d'innovateurs numériques !
Read MoreCIONET is committed to highlighting and celebrating female role models in IT, Tech & Digital, creating a leadership programme that empowers and elevates women within the tech industry. This initiative is dedicated to showcasing the achievements and successes of leading women, fostering an environment where female role models are recognised, and their contributions can ignite progress and inspire the next generation of women in IT. Our mission is to shine the spotlight a little brighter on female role models in IT, Tech & Digital, and to empower each other through this inner network community.
Read MoreWould you like to know more about CIONET Belgium, membership or partnership opportunities? Do you have feedback or any other question? Send us a message!
You can either send us a registered handwritten letter explaining why you'd like to become a member or you can simply talk to us right here!