On April 24 and 25, curious people and visionaries from business, science, politics and society will meet at the first Navigator Festival in Düsseldorf to discuss our working lives in the age of AI.
How will we work in the future? What impact will digitalization have on our professional lives? How will a technology such as AI influence what we do and what skills do managers and employees need to make meaningful use of this transformation? Answers to questions like these will be provided by the first Navigator Festival, which will take place in Düsseldorf on April 24 and 25 and aims to give all participants guidance in the jungle of digital topics. The festival is being organized by Düsseldorf Congress, with Messe Düsseldorf participating as a partner.
AI playground for everyone
The event, which is explicitly aimed not only at technology sectors but at all professional fields, will focus on the topics of AI and digital transformation. Guests from all over Germany are expected to attend, including employees from large corporations and SMEs. For Annette Walz, Head of Innovation & Community Engagement at Düsseldorf Congress, this encounter is particularly important: “For us, it is clear that the more digital work becomes, the more important the human momentum is. With the Navigator Festival, we want to break down barriers to make technology tangible.”
In order to underline the development as tangibly as possible, prominent speakers from science/research and business have been invited to give exciting keynote speeches, including Prof. Dr. Yasmin Weiß, Professor at Technische Hochschule Nürnberg and expert on the future of work and future skills. Opportunities and risks of digitalization will be discussed on panels and in discussion rounds, and various companies will talk about their digital projects and share their knowledge and experience with AI tools such as Microsoft’s Co-Pilot. Numerous workshops and masterclasses will also be held and there will be a “playground” where various digital tools and applications can be tried out.
Messe Düsseldorf as AI pioneer
The topic of AI is also of great importance to Messe Düsseldorf, which is a partner of the event. Not least because it has been working intensively and practically on the topic of AI for some time now. In June last year, for example, it launched a pilot project to explore the benefits and potential of ChatGPT and to use the chatbot to solve everyday work tasks. A group of volunteers from the MarCom and IT departments – in close cooperation with the works council – wanted to find out how helpful, time-saving and production-enhancing the use of ChatGPT can actually be if ChatGPT is sufficiently briefed and given qualified and detailed tasks.
The results so far are impressive: after just a few months, it became apparent that ideally 30 to 60 minutes per task could be saved – especially in the repetitive routine area. This ultimately leaves individual employees with more time and space for creative and challenging work. Based on this positive result, other departments will try out the use of ChatGPT, even now that the test phase has ended. These initial experiences make it abundantly clear that AI is here to stay. This also applies to Messe Düsseldorf.
And the Navigator Festival is also going into the next round – the continuation is already a done deal. It has not yet been decided whether the focus will be on AI or another digital topic in 2025. What is certain, however, is that the second edition of the event will also be about taking people with you – after all, they are the ones who will be working with the technology in the coming decades.
