Upcoming event tmrw 24 March 2021 is the Cloud observability and app monitoring with Instana event, which will delve into the how it integrates with Kubernetes. Instana is an IBM Company and was acquired in late 2020, and is an APM solution designed for the challenges of managing microservice and cloud-native application
If Want to learn about cloud, kubernets or are you already knee deep in Kubernetes, Docker containers or writing your own operators, well the this meetup might well be for you. You join the meetup, and get notified of upcoming events.
If you want to learn more about Observability, APM and Montoring then you can checkout Sai Vennam from IBM Cloud, who can clear up what they means and they should not be used interchangeably.
The morning of Friday June 28th brought together IBMers from across IBM in Ireland divisions – those mostly based at IBM Dublin Campus in Damastown, and teams also travelled from our Belfast Office to attend at our Summer of Patents Event.
Ireland Technical Expertise Council ( ITEC) Initiative
The event was organised by ITEC members, the Irish affiliate to the IBM Academy of Technology. This is a community of selected IBM top technical leaders organized to advance the understanding of key technical areas & trends, enable attract & retain the technical community, and engage our clients in technical pursuits of mutual value.
Through ITEC, an initiative was created for this event lead by Mihai Criveti, Andrew Penrose and Clea Zolotow.
Andrew Penrose MC’d the event in the Hamilton Auditorium and began by running through of the process. The objective was to remain together for the first 30 minutes and then split into patent teams, each with a seasoned mentor, to work through ideation and the steps of patenting for first timers as well as those who have already gone through the process to an IDT board.
Andrew Penrose MC’ing the event in the Hamilton Auditorium.
Our executive sponsor for this event, which all Academy initiatives have, is Sean Brady, Vice President of the IBM Cloud Customer Hub (Europe, Latin America, Canada). Sean spoke about the importance of protecting IBM intellectual property and “that events like this are important not only locally but globally, bringing inventors from all parts of the business together”.
Clea Zolotow introduced the audience to patents in general, ideation tactics and the importance of ‘prior art searching’ before you go down the line of really getting into a disclosure’s detail. “If you don’t know, a disclosure or invention disclosure is the information you compile together to determine whether patent protection should be sought for the described invention.” The conversation flowed from GPS enabled dresses to VR motion rigs to ensuring that inventions are relevant and are white boxes rather than black boxes.
Clea Zolotow presenting on Ideation and Patents.
Mihai Criveti re-introduced the work of the Ireland Technical Expertise Council, and detailed the work of the IBM Academy of Technology and it’s place within the IBM ecosystem of communities and influencers.
Team Formation, Patents, Prior Art and Novelty
At this point, we broke out into teams of four with a mentor in each group and moved into the IBM ThinkSpace, to get into the patent workshop proper. This involved the following format which worked out quite well:
30 minutes of ideation in order to brainstorm idea’s within each of the teams. There are many techniques for this, but more often than not, it’s the work that is done in each of the different areas and by different people that you will find the gold seam.
30 minutes on “Prior Art” and the importance of doing this up front.
30 minutes on “Patent Background, Novelty and Value Proposition” for IBM
30 minutes on “Invention Summary” and “Invention Detail”
We closed out the day event with a group photo below. Over the month of July inventors will meet in their teams and in August we will have a submission event where we will submit our inventions for scrutiny and if successful will move forward to work with patent lawyers.
¯ Summer Of Patents 2019 Inventors
Introducing The Inventing Teams
Faisal Ghaffar, Mark Levins, Sean Brady
Our executive sponsor Sean Brady joined Mark Levins, STSM and Ireland IDT board member, Faisal Ghaffar and Kruno Plecko to ideate and talk go through the workshop. Mark coming from Talent Management Solutions, Faisal a Data Scientist & Applied Researcher from the Innovation Exchange and Kruno an Applied Research Engineer all in the IBM Cognitive Applications division.
Yuri Barssi, Panpan Lin and Mark Wallace
Mark Wallace (mentor), Ruben Kos, Panpan Lin, Yuri Barssi and thought about IBM Assess, an application for pre-hire and employee assessment testing. The followed their scrum planning techniques with sharpies and post-its to brainstorm and explored ideas to solve some of the pain points associated with assessment testing while looking for some novel applications of the capabilities IBM has in this area.
Andrew Penrose, Nerijus, Ivan Gualandi, Massimiliano Gallo
Andrew Penrose worked with Nerijus Verseckas, Ivan Gualandi and Massimiliano (Max) Gallo, who all work day to day on the IBM Watson Decision Platform for Agriculture. We thought about ideas spanning crop yields and analytics, to satellite imagery, smart farming devices and climate change. Our division is part of The Weather Company and as such we have access to the largest amount of weather data on the planet. Along with this, we are involved with IBM Pairs, a platform, specifically designed for massive geospatial-temporal data (maps, satellite, weather, drone, IoT), query and analytics services.
Maire Regan, Gerard Cregan, Seamus Brady
Sonya Purcell ( not pictured ), Pragya Singh ( not pictured) , Maire Regan, Seamus Brady and Gerard Cregan got together and talked about support queries and their validity in certain cases.
John Delaney, Christopher Chavez Lopez, Gabriella Bacelli, Sean Keogh
John Delaney along with Christopher Chavez Lopez, Gabriella Bacelli and Sean Keogh delved in the area of productivity and tooling around translation, particularly automated.
Sinead McMcahon, Mark McGloin, Eoin McCann, Krishnaveni Mayuri
William Chatham , Liam Harpur, Lin Zhao, Dario Chimisso
Mark McGloin worked with Sinead McMahon, Eoin McCann and Krishnaveni Mayuri an investigated ideas in the area of agriculture. They also explored ideas to help patients in the medical sector and in for children in the insurance sector.
Liam Harpur and team comprising of William Chatham, Lin Zhao and Dario Chimisso used random work brainstorming to ideate to start with. Dario came up with a random work “Surfboard” … that lead to 15 characteristics of surfboards…. “sleek for speed”, “leach for safety” . From the derived characteristics they came up with 15 patent ideas ! They had plenty of fun converting the ideas .. mental gymnastics. They they selected on derived idea to start working on. Ideas are everywhere.
John Leonard, Cathal Dineen, Peter Poliwoda, Ju Park, Clea Zolotow
Clea’s Team or as Clea likes to call it the A-Team, was comprised of Peter Poliwoda, Cathal Dineen, John Leonard and Ju Park. Comprised mostly of Watson division employees, and Clea being from Global Technical Services.
“The team is amazing with their depth and breadth of knowledge. The ideas generated are not only good for IBM but also will make fantastic apps as well!”
– Clea Zolotow, Distinguished Engineer & Master Inventor working in Technology Innovation and Automation
Paul Dermody, Brian Daly, Shane McCarthy, DJ McCloskey
DJ’s team Paul Dermody, Brian Daly and Shane McCarthy also opened dug deep during ideation and came up with ideas in the areas of AI in healthcare, Wellness, Genomic Data Analysis and Leverage, Climate Crisis/Green Tech, AI in Human Communications and Workflows.
Martin Stephenson, Sigmund Vestergaard, Paul Brennan, Marta Mazur
Martin Stephenson and his team of Sigmund Vestergaard, Paul Brennan and Marta Mazur also had a wide-ranging discussion that included Martin’s area of expertise in Natural Language Processing but also in the area of Smart Agriculture and areas where Machine Learning algorithms can apply value.
Stanley Dunne, Axel Louchie, Brendan McGreen, Angelo Moore
Stanley Dunne, the chair of the Ireland IDT Patent Board, worked with Brendan McGreen, Axel Louchie and Angelo Moore ( not pictured). Currently, all involved in the area of IBM Global Business Services they talked about quality analytics and ideas around it, an area with large data sets.
“Patenting is encouraged for everybody in IBM. You don’t have to be a technical guru. If you are solving problems, you are creating solutions that might well have value, are novel and are worth patent protection”
– Stanley Dunne, STSM Architect GBS Process Method & Tools Global Business Services. Chair, Ireland IDT Board.
Stephen Kelly, Michael MacLynn, Ryan Goldblatt, Olgierd Pieczul
Olgierd Pieczul’s team travelled from IBM Belfast on Friday morning to the event in Dublin. Ryan Goldblatt, Michael MacLynn and Stephen Kelly work in the IBM Security division. Good teaming, as Olgierd works as a Security Architect, they focussed on network security management.
Ziheng Cheng, Gilles Devillard, Mutaz Alsallal, Bill Looby
Last but not least, Bill Looby worked with Ziheng Cheng, Gilles Devillary and Mutaz Alsallal. Mutaz like the members of Olgierds team also travelled from the IBM Belfast office. Like the other teams, they had a wealth of ideas that crossed over many different areas. They focused in on crowdsourced data and the area of transportation.
I had the pleasure of attending the 1st National Workshop on Smart Farming and Data Analytics in Ireland (SFDAI 2019) at Maynooth University hosted Dr Peter Mooney and Dr Liadh Kelly this week ( 12 June 2019).
My role as a Software Architect for the IBM Watson Decision Platform for Agriculture meant I was well placed to join the workshop and help explore the opportunities for closer and more productive linkages between the farming and agricultural community in Ireland and the academic/research sector particularly in the areas of Data Analytics and Data Science.
We started in the morning with an overview of Smart Farming with both Darragh McCullough (Farmer, TV Presenter and full of passion for agriculture ) and Prof. Thia Hennessy ( Dean of School and Chair of Agri-Food Economics at Cork University Business School ) outlining their thoughts.
Meat-less Burgers and Automated Micro-dosing Weeder Robots.
Prof Hennessy emphasised how the “appropriate” use of technology has a role to play.
The question around what we eat, how its produced, where its produced, who produces it and how it is consumed all make up that decision process. Ever see the Beyond Meat plant-based burger patties. The initial one cost 30K US Dollars to produce, which is now down to 10 dollars or so. What will we eat in the future, and how will that inform how we produce it and how we manage the data that is involved in that!
The disruptive technologies in this area include robots, drones, 3d printing, sensors, Internet of Things, AI, Blockchain, Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality to name a few!
Prof Hennessy talked about how the Netherlands has an emphasis on the digital ecosystem that is making it a leader in the EU Context. European policy as a whole has a greater emphasis on research and innovation rather than adoption. There is a need for Smart Agri-hubs. The aim to build a pan-European network of digital innovation hubs.
Huge opportunities exist! The ability to generate more data exists in the industry as a whole, the questions are how to make better decisions about how we use that data. In the Irish context, the demography and scale of farming is a barrier to widespread adoption in comparison to other geographies.
Darragh McCullough ( From RTÉ’s Ear to the Ground to a full-time farmer now) gave a passionate talk about his experience as a farmer ( http://elmgrovefarm.ie ), from growing up with it to now been heavily involved in flower production as well as livestock. Humorously self-deprecating at times, an example being his desire to invest in a basic fertiliser spreader, only to visit the Netherlands to find their use of solar-powered micro-dosing autonomous weeder robots. As Darragh alluded to, these days we all need to up our game!
A particular interest to the Irish farming community, which has a large emphasis on cattle is the work done by the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation ( ICBF) which maintains genetic data on millions of cattle regarding breeding, disease and much more. Darragh, a cattle farmer himself, talked about texting cows that have devices attached that indicate how they are doing, as well as the state of the art in milking machines. If it were not for Peter having to call time, Darragh would have continued on into the evening, and we wouldn’t have minded too much.
I joined Dr Simone van de Burg in her workshop. Dr van de Burg works in the area of Ethics and responsible research and innovation in the Wageningen Economic Research Area of the university. These workshops are being done around Europe and are based on interviews with farmers and agri-workers in both Holland and Belgium. The question we had to discuss was how we should deal with farm data regarding data governance and privacy. Dr van de Burg asked what models are most appropriate in our opinions.
The “I choose” model
Data owners choose what happens with their data. Copa Cogeca ( Copa, European Famers * Cogeca, European Co-operatives), was setup as a united voice of farmers and their co-operatives in the European Union
Data as a Digital Library (Hub)
Where the management of the library develops the sharing policy. But who pays for it?
Data governance should be settled by the market.
Farmers and other businesses will share data when it brings them to benefit.
The issues being competition, and the inequality of knowledge along with the big data divide.
Data should be shared in the value chain
Farmers shape their collaboration with the supply chain and the supermarkets. ( reduce waste, agree on the price )
Which one would you choose, if you were pushed to choose one? Personally, I think its a mix of them all and very dependent on the type of data involved and its eventual usage.
Using Military Grade Drones for Crop Management.
In the afternoon, Mr Aidan Magee from the National Center for Geocomputation, Maynooth University talked about drone technology and its use in agriculture. From UAVs to SUAs to LUAs, Aidan talked about the increasing restrictions on the use of drone technology in Ireland by the Irish Aviation Authority which is mirrored globally.
To name a few, any drone over 1kg has to be registered with the IAA, and cannot be out of your line of sight or extending past 300 metres. If you want to be able to do more, then you need to attend ground school training in order to prove that you have a need and the ability to use your drones for your business.
This training gives you a special access permit essentially and would allow you, for example, to send your drone on a route to get data on your crops that exceeds the normal distances.
The sensors that are available on these drone range from RGB cameras, multispectral sensors, hyperspectral sensors, thermal and infrared sensors and LIDAR.
To help plan your routes around your crops or count your herd as well as processing your images to create visuals, software exists like Pix4D, Photoscan and OpenDroneMap.
Stuff in Space, and how that “stuff” is changing how we work.
Dr Conor Cahalane from the Dept. of Geography in Maynooth University referred us to the website stuffin.space while giving his lecture on “Exploring Copernicus”. Stuff in space really is an appropriate term considering how much is actually up there and the range of its utility.
Harnessing the power of Weather: IBM and The Weather Company
As part of The Weather Company division and our decision platform, I am familiar with satellite imagery and the myriad of the challenges it poses. Dr Cahalane illustrated the difference between the weather satellites like Meteosat and the Galileo and Sentinel satellites that orbit our planet.
It is the near earth Copernicus Sentinel satellites that orbit close to the earth.
Sentinel-1 provides all-weather, day and night radar imagery for land and ocean services.
It is Sentinel-2 that gives us high-resolution optical imagery for land services. It provides, for example, the imagery of vegetation, soil and water cover, inland waterways and coastal areas.
Sentinel-3 provides high-accuracy optical, radar and altimetry data for marine and land services.
Sentinel-4 will provide data for atmospheric composition monitoring, and is due to launch in 2019, with Sentinel-5 also going to be dedicated to atmospheric composition monitoring.
You can use the Sentinel EO Browser at Sentinel hub to get images from of the planet. It’s good fun to play with.
Overall a great event with lots of interesting speakers, not all of them mentioned in detail here. Thanks for the team in Maynooth for putting this all together.
Dublin City University were the hosts – thanks!. We had over 500 under grad and post grad students visit us to hear about our Smarter Planet research and development, talk about jobs, internships and PhD sponsorships and talk about technology in general – some great discussions.
I had the pleasure of attending the 
