,Today I was invited to join the digital marketing university, an IBM hosted event in Amsterdam.
Small but core venue of CRM and marketing automation minded people. Together with some companies looking for marketing automation intelligence there was also a lot of interest from the CRM vendors (SugarCRM was highly present).

There was the obliged Silverpop product pitch (well brought as a user case), but the day was mostly covered by Jeremy Wait. What a great speaker and personality that was. Jeremy has a history at Adobe and SalesForce, what made his open vision of the industry even more interesting.

A great inspirational overview of new technology, data mining, artificial intelligence and day to day tactics. I’m glad that slides will be shared, because I’ll certainly will be doing some brain picking on those.

Funny enough I was chosen as a volunteer for the Twitter Watson profile analysis, what I was familiar with since I wrote an article on it not so long ago.

As a final bonus I can tell you that you will have to keep an eye on Watson, since there will be an announcement in Vegas later this month. It seems that the Watson Artificial Intelligence will be made public and affordable for companies pretty soon.

Watson (IBM) is using his artificial intelligence power to detect your personality profile based on your recent twitter feeds. On the "Tweet Me Watson" page you can run the test for yourself! Be extremely amazed by the outcome.

Since a while now, artificial intelligence is being used for profile recognition and social listening. But AI is becoming more and more powerful. After SAS Institute worked on an intelligent algorithm together with the FBI to detect sarcasm and hidden messages on social media, now IBM is going for the brute data force with project Watson.

What used to be a futuristic scientific program has now evolved in a very accurate BI and AI product. Watson is already used on commercial digital projects to create very powerful  predictive modeling.

I'm eager to see how Watson will be used in other projects and not only on a CRM level. Think about the advantages this could bring to the medical world for instance or the fight against terrorism.

Enjoy and share your Watson personality insight!

Snapchat, re-branded as Snap is entering the world of hardware producers. 
Spectacles is supposed to be the next big thing. A connected funky pair of glasses will let you record and upload you video's in a snap (see what I did there).

With the incredible cheap market cost (hemhem) of $130, the user experience should increase (yeah right, whatever).

Pretty strange move of Snap, if you look back to the Google glass case (and this one had even a in-built) screen. The stylish (owkee) Google glasses were discontinued in 2015 after failed results. 

I've been working in agencies for over more than 15 years now. It became obvious to me that the agency world is in a constant change. The traditional agency & client model is coming to an end by now.

Gone are the days that a client came to the agency, gave them a mission and a budget and expected the agency to deliver a finished product. The agency was considered as a professional company outsider.

In the current market situation and ever changing digital world, the client is expecting more. More insights in the organisation, in the people, the company's DNA and budgets are continuously challenged.

As water working his way through the rocks, in a constant move to get to the end goal. It adapts itself to any given obstacle and situation, to get to the best results as possible. This is the attitude that any modern agency will have to adopt to survive the system.

In the "liquid agency model", agencies are training people to fit in the clients company's DNA. It will outsource talent at the client premises, even if this is a threat losing them. The agency will gladly work together with other agencies to acquire better knowledge or deliver shorter deadlines.

In this new agency ecosystem there are no allround agencies. No one is that good to master great branding, posses uber digital geeks and have the most creative graphical designers. In the "liquid agency model" the main role of the agency is to bring the best possible teams together,  faced the challenges they expect on the project.  They are excellent planners, coaches and business facilitators. Only than will they be able to deliver the quality and the fluid handover the client is expecting.

Over the years, the agency world is consolidating, freelancers and outplacement is becoming mainstream and networks and being forged. This is without any doubt the result of natural selection and evolution. The agency of the fittest is the one ready to adapt, focusing on core teams and specialties, coaching talent to explore new horizons.

This liquid agency is an incubator for great people, ready to explore the world to fulfill their job with passion. 

The 3 main German car builders are joining forces to create what will be the first vehicle-sourced data service.  Here Real-Time, Here Hazard Warnings, Here Road Signs and Here On-Street-Parking will be made accessible to other car builders, app-builders and smartphone players by the beginning of 2017.

In the spirit of Waze this network will collect and share data across the net and help drivers in creating a better and safer driving experience. The main difference with Waze is that all the information will be captured via car sensors and therefore doesn't need human interaction.

It's obvious that the internet of things is rapidly increasing in all kinds of markets and since the rise of Tesla we notice a exponential increase in the automotive market.

A trend to follow closely. Imagine the incredible source of data and opportunities if we start combining direct engine and road information with personal information. Could this be the start of safer driving, less traffic and air pollution? But what if your driver personality start reflecting itself in flexible pricing models on insurances or even restrictions on the freedom to drive.

Together with all the benefits we could also open pandora's box. Time will tell, but it will definitely be one of the major game changers in the automotive industry.

Specific chatbot coding facilitates customer support questions, FAQ's and e-commerce by using a pre-programmed library of possible scenarios. Even direct payment can be part of a chatbot shopping experience.

Simply combining the chatbot application with your CRM system information enables your to bring a highly personalized experience to the end-user. You become in essence the professional shopping assistent or support agent of a virtual unlimited number of direct contacts.

I'm therefore extremely excited to see what this new trend will have to offer in the overall user experience. My first personal tests look extremely promising and I must say, I was very impressed by the easy of use  of the chatbot wysiwyg editors.