6th Passau Data Summit:Business and science spotlight the transformative power of AI and data products

Passau, 15th April 2024 – The Passau Data Summit (PasDaS) took place for the 6th time at the University of Passau on 11th and 12th April 2024 under the motto ‘Deliver Business Value with Data Products’. The data conference with more than 25 speakers and 200 participants from business and scientific research takes place annually as a collaboration between One Data GmbH and the Chair of Data Science at the University of Passau.

Today’s data strategy defines tomorrow’s economic success

Representatives from leading international companies – including thyssenkrupp Steel Europe AG, E.ON Digital Technology GmbH, OTTO GmbH & Co. KG, Airbus Helicopters and SCHOTT AG – discussed the transformative power of AI and data products with renowned scientists at this year’s PasDaS. The experts also explored the question of how today’s data strategy will determine tomorrow’s economic success. In addition, Emily Gorcenski, Principal Data Scientist & Data and AI Service Line Lead Thoughtworks, highlighted the upcoming EU Data Protection Regulation and what data products can do for regulated data sharing across organisations in her presentation ‘Data Mesh and the EU Data Act: how Data products share Data between Organizations’: ‘The EU Data Act will accelerate the trend towards data sharing in companies, which will increase the pressure on data platforms to share data securely and receive and process it efficiently. Data products are the ideal solution to both of these challenges.’

In his presentation ‘How to become a Data Governance Champion’, Lukas Gernoth, Data Governance Lead at Datalytics GmbH, focussed primarily on the aspect of how to become a data intelligence company with the help of data products: ‘Data governance is more than just a boring set of rules. It is the key to a 360-degree view of data, end-to-end compliance and clear data management. The creation of data products ensures that data governance is successfully implemented and that everyone in the company is empowered to actively use data and generate real added value. Important to-dos here include ensuring management support, empowering all stakeholders to understand and use data and democratising data.’

From the scientific side, Prof. Dr. Michael Granitzer, holder of the Chair of Data Science at the University of Passau, gave a presentation on the recently launched OpenWebSearch.eu initiative, which aims to develop an open web index to promote an open search engine ecosystem and offer users real choice.

Combining AI with high-quality company data

‘The next big leap in productivity can only come from making better use of our data. After all, the following applies to all AI models: the results are only as good as the underlying data. This year’s PasDaS has impressively demonstrated that we can only unlock the true value of AI when we combine it with high-quality company data,’ emphasizes Dr. Andreas Böhm, founder and CEO of One Data GmbH, and continues: “Ever since data has been described as ”the new oil’, all companies have been dreaming of acting in a data-driven way as quickly as possible. At the same time, the use of AI applications has a profound impact on the access and management of data. And this is precisely our focus: we transform siloed data into reliable, valuable data products, enabling companies to establish consistent data governance that ensures secure access to data assets and data products. I was therefore particularly impressed at this year’s PasDaS that many companies explained their path from the beginnings of digital transformation to the application of AI to improve the usability and accessibility of data products in a practical way and also explicitly emphasised the importance of acceptance and change management within the company.’ As far as the future of data products is concerned, Andreas Böhm referred to the methodologies and capabilities of large language models (LLM), which bring a high increase in productivity for business users: ‘I believe that large language models can be an extreme support when it comes to quickly obtaining the data relevant to me in order to make smart decisions on this basis. The use of large language models is a real game changer.’ Andreas Böhm sees future developments in the democratisation of data and decisions, as large language models will enable specialist departments to do things that they could not do before: ‘This represents a significant change in how people will deal with data.’

From a scientific perspective, Prof Dr Michael Granitzer sums up the event as follows: ‘The discussions about synergies between AI and data and the possibility of using AI to generate benefits from data more quickly and efficiently were particularly exciting.’

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Dr. Andreas Böhm founded PasDaS in 2016 together with Prof Dr Michael Granitzer.
For more information, please visit the event website: https://pasdas.de/