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Startup Competition
Startup Competition Finals
Join the three finalists of our startup competition as they take the main stage to present their innovative products and teams. The winner will be selected by the judges of the startup competition and announced by the Theo Blackwell, the Chief Digital Officer of the Greater London Authority
Oct 12
16:00 - 16:15
Main Stage
Theo Blackwell
Chief Digital Officer, Greater London Authority
Appointed in 2017 as London's first Chief Digital Officer, Theo leads on London-wide digital transformation, data and smart city initiatives at City Hall.
His role involves:
* strategic leadership on the digital transformation agenda for London's public services, across the GLA group and the wider public sector
* convening on behalf of the Mayor, across London local government to support the take-up of innovative, technology, and data-led approaches to service delivery and public engagement
* developing and promoting partnership between the public, private and community sectors to enable and support the development of new public service-oriented technology and innovation.
Alexander Schmitt
Head of Speech Technology #HeyMercedes, Mercedes-Benz
Alexander Schmitt has over 15 years experience in the field of Voice Assistants, Voice AI-related research and -Product Development. Alex began his Voice AI career at University of Ulm where he joined Germany’s first spoken dialog system research lab in 2007 pursuing his PhD on AI-driven approaches for Speech Dialog Systems in cooperation with New York-based SpeechCycle Inc. In 2012 he joined Mercedes-Benz where he was working in research, advanced engineering, and product development on next generation in-car voice assistants and emotion AI. Throughout his career Alex has authored and co-authored more than 60 international publications on conferences and journals in voice assistant-related fields and is today driving next-gen #HeyMercedes Voice Assistant with an outstanding team of software developers, data scientists and product owners.
Arjun Patel
Director of Product
Experienced product leader from London but currently based in Barcelona (having arrived via Hong Kong and Berlin!). Has worked across several industries: Banking, Insurance, Telco, Travel and Gaming in predominantly high volume B2C digital roles.
Currently managing Banking Foundations at N26 which covers all customer identity topics, customer support and internal tools for operations staff.
Michael Fertik
Founder & Managing Partner, Heroic Ventures
Michael Fertik is an entrepreneur and business leader, currently recognized as the founder and partner of Heroic Ventures (Heroic VC). Heroic VC is a venture capital firm that invests in early-stage companies with innovative technologies and transformative potential. Michael’s expertise in online reputation management and data privacy has shaped his career and made him a sought-after advisor and investor. Prior to Heroic VC, he co-founded Reputation.com, a company specializing in digital reputation management.
Leonid Mishkind
SVP Content Developer
Leonid is the technical product owner for Chatbots and Voice Assistants working for Vodafone Group. During his time working with Vodafone, he was responsible for launching Vodafone services with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. His team was responsible for the launch of the first Google Assistant integration for a telecommunication company in the world – a great achievement and collaboration with Google. Leonid is a great enthusiast and believer in the AI technologies and thinks AI is revolutionizing our world and already now starts to have a significant impact on every aspect of our lives.
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