This congress of automation professionals gets a 6.8 out of 10!
That’s a decent score from me, 6.8. Since I’ve started doing these, it’s one of the highest scores I’ve given. The only one I think that would beat that score would be Web Summit. But I wasn’t doing reviews of events by that point as the last time I went was two years ago.
As I always say, this is simply my opinion. If you have attended an Intelligent Automation Workshop before, would love for you to share your opinion in the comments or let me know personally. It’s always great to compare experiences. This includes my commentary on situations faced at the conference, how I witnessed it through my own eyes, and the value that only I took away from it. Have heard from other attendees how they thought it was better than expected, got more value out of it than I did, and was not as good as they wanted.
As a quick shoutout, the 7th edition of the Intelligent Automation Workshop took place in India on the outskirts of the city of Hyderabad on the 8th and 9th of December. Have seen some social posts on it and going to be looking at how that one went and if it differs from the one that was run in Barcelona.
Let’s see if you agree, disagree, think I’m talking shit, or if it gives you areas to consider when running your conference, webinar, or customer meetups. Personally, I’m excited to see how this event series by the team gets better and better over the years by learning from mistakes and leaning into what made it a success.
Overview of Intelligent Automation Workshop, Barcelona
The workshop is put together by the Business Intelligent Automation Congress. This was the 6th edition of the workshops and this time was run in the beautiful city of Barcelona. Previous editions were run in Milan and I’m glad they changed the location to Barcelona. It was my 3rd trip to the city and I love it in Barcelona for some of the reasons explained below. There are of course other reasons which aren’t relevant to this review piece such as the beach, architecture, and short flight time from the UK.
The team behind the workshop and Intelligent Automation Congress are brilliant. All were super friendly, helpful, and kind throughout. Not a bad word about any single one of them in the core team. I think 4 people were running the conference if my memory is correct. From the start, the person who runs it, Vincenzo Marchica, was a great guy to speak with via phone, email, and then in person. Vincenzo was there on day 1 smiling welcoming people, approachable, and helpful with everyone that was in attendance.
There were 6 sponsors being Questit as a Diamond Sponsor, Pointee, Catalyst, and BotCity as Platinum Sponsors, and IAC and RPApp.io as Silver Sponsors. There were four global partners which were Intelligenza Artificiale Spiegata Semplice, Assintel, RPA Italy, and RPA Jargon Buster (think that’s Tolani’s company?).
The conference was set out over two days. It took place at a hotel called Catalonia Barcelona on the Southern side of the city, although seems like it’s west if you’re looking at the city from the beach view. The venue had a change within weeks of the conference taking place which I detail below.
This is the 6th edition of the conference. Would have loved to know more from Vincenzo on how he got started with the idea to create Intelligent Automation Congress. It has seemed to find a niche for people and businesses that are interested in learning more about specialised automation opportunities.
What I loved about Intelligent Automation Congress
There were several brilliant parts to the event. And equally, some parts that were not so good. Let’s start with all the positives. These are areas I’d personally recommend Vincenzo and the team lean into for the next events.
I can’t remember receiving any feedback survey or communications to talk about how my experience was at the conference. Something I’d recommend them do. I’ve heard similar feedback to all my points from other attendees and sponsors that I have connected with and spoken to since it ended.
The city of Barcelona
Barcelona is a brilliant city. The people are great. The food is great. The sangria is great. It’s not too big to get around. And for this event, it was a great city location. Although the venue wasn’t for me, which I go into more detail about, it is such a brilliant city to pick for events.
I think part of the reason is people can come to the city and have a bit of a break after. One of the attendees messaged me to say they had left early on day 2 because the weather was so good and the beach was calling their name. One of the potential downsides I guess. It’s probably a supporting reason why bigger conferences such as the Mobile World Congress by GSMA keep returning to Barcelona.
There was a drinks reception after day 1 on the rooftop bar of the hotel. Was nice and got some decent views as you can see in the picture below. Just a shame it started raining and got windy after maybe 45 minutes up there. I mean if it was a drinks reception in some shoddy terrace or room inside would have been a much worse experience.
Went for dinner after day 1 at El National, which is a terrific place and another supporting reason why they picked a great city. Had a couple of great beers and wine with Jamie Claret, Olivier Gomez, Tim Mosholt, Tom Reuner, Vannessa, and another lady whose name I honestly have gone blank on. It was Vannessa who chose the place for dinner and super glad she did.
Recommend it if you’re in the city as a brilliant vibe with various restaurants around a bar in the middle. Went for the Paella as you do and it was great! That was a great night and definitely somewhere i’ll be going back to. Maybe for round two if the conference happens in Barcelona again.
The attendees
Nearly everyone attending was brilliant, kind, and had a genuine interest in talking to you without selling anything. Massively refreshing compared to some of the conferences where the conversations are focused on selling to anyone who is there in attendance.
A great example of this is the AI Summit. You’re literally in a massive room of vendors selling to other vendors. You do get sponsors and attendees that are from the enterprise or a business that would buy tech solutions from a vendor, but I think Pareto’s Law comes into effect which is the 80-20 rule. 80% vendors, 20% enterprises.
To be fair to that conference I didn’t attend this year but heard from people who did go it was the same and it was dead on day 2 according to a company that sponsored who I spoke with shortly after it.
Anyway, back to this review. Everyone was chatty at the lunches, networking breaks, and in the roundtable discussions. People generally wanted to hear about your story, what you’re involved in, and understand your point of view. Which was bloody fantastic for me.
Sometimes you go to conferences and you are bombarded with people standing there at their sponsor slot just weighing up can get money out of this person or not rather than just seeing if it is a fun, nice person to get to know and understand their take on the tech world.
For the conference, I was at a table and sat next to the awesome Ivana Nikolik. From the moment sat down she was super kind and helpful. We got talking about her role at IW Connect, what The AI Journal does, different conferences we’d been to, and what knowledge we were getting from the different keynotes/panels. This was a similar sort of situation that happened with most people I was meeting at the conference.
And everyone else I came across at the conference was for the most part super friendly. And have made connections with a lot of them since leaving the conference. In fact doing a podcast with Pedro Martins was a brilliant way for us to recap on the event and go into much more lengthy conversations on topics on a bigger conversation about the future of tech, what the trends are with certain technology adoption, and much more. Think we had a 90 minute Google Meet call just to chat to each other before the podcast. Always a good sign.
On that note, you can listen to the podcast on Spotify now:
Only aspect which was a shame was that some of the experts who are part of the advisory board weren’t in attendance. Have some big names such as Pascal Bornet, Ian Barkin, Shail Khailandra, Tolani Jaiye-Tikolo that I could have sworn as being attendees but were not there. Maybe next time.
Topics
People who spoke were for the most part all decent. There were a number of brilliant conversations, topics, roundtables for the event. A lot of them got a lot of engagement with several of the sessions turning into more of a conversation as there was only 50 odd people in attendance. Maybe closer to 40 on day 2.
And this is a good thing. The more conversations I have the more I hear about the power of having smaller, much more engaged conversations. Its similar to how businesses doing lead gen will happily pour more money into roundtables to spend a full day with their exact ideal customer rather than on ads hitting people across various different areas. And I think for this one it was more being round the relevant thinkers to learn how to improve a business product.
There was a nice mix between topics that gave success stories of automation projects and ones that looked at the technical considerations for how to run automation strategies in your business. This ranged from what software to use, the bottlenecks that are stopping businesses adopting RPA and AI, and then how to communicate what you are doing to enterprises who might not understand the automation scene.
There’s definitely areas to make better. Thought one of the fireside chats were a bit poor. And keynotes need to be captivating. Tim Mosholts from SmartRPA was probably my favourite session from the conference, closely followed by Lorhan Capronis from BotCity.
Engagement
Everyone spoke to each other. Amazing right? This was because of the great job that Vincenzo, Olivier, and Hana did by making sure it was workshop and collaborative-focused. From making everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, that was still with us at the end of the day, give the highlights of what was the biggest lesson learned to putting small workshops of 4-6 people with a problem and coming up with solutions.
Glad Vincenzo and the team built those exercises for the schedule. Nice small steps to building confidence for the attendees alongside all the learning and thinking maybe I should go speak to that person after.
Makes me think about how public speaking can put someone into a completely different frame or state of mind. When we were doing the workshops on day 2. We also did a similar exercise on day 1 but I wasn’t selected to speak that time although the gentleman who was speaking might have thought similarly.
We were given the task of spotting a problem and then creating a solution for our given industry. Our table was given manufacturing. And you’ve got smart 35-60-year-olds around the table who know their stuff much better than me and none of them wanted to get up and talk, bizarre. I was jointly picked by the team as if they were doing me a favor because they all seemed too nervous and anxious to talk. Didn’t help I was still slightly hungover from the beers the night before.
I genuinely feel upset that people who are so intelligent and smart on a topic and its not heard because they can’t get up and talk about it with the passion and confidence they can when in a small group because of the fear of public speaking. Because in that situation, I shouldn’t have been the one speaking as teammates were coming up with so many better ideas than I did.
Nice little confidence exercise for myself. Good thing I enjoy public speaking and used to work at an engineering and automation company specialised in manufacturing, eh?! And again, it’s great Vincenzo and the team built that angle into the conference. Something I hope they keep building into the next editions and can see on a larger scale as they grow to a bigger audience.
What I didn’t love about Intelligent Automation Congress
Not much really. Besides, the things mentioned below are a personal opinion of what I didn’t love and more of a recommendation for the next time in my selfish ideal world.
Some of the agenda was a bit off. Part of that had to do with the hiccup I found myself in with a speaking session that led to a last-minute agenda change. There was an awards ceremony that was supposed to happen which didn’t seem to go ahead or I can’t remember any awards being handed out.
Not a big issue though that wouldn’t have been bothered about either way but that’s not to say some of the attendees, sponsors, or speakers weren’t upset by them not going ahead.
Venue
Was slightly upset that it was advertised up until maybe the week or month before that it was going to be at the Bernabeu stadium. Ya know, where Barcelona call home for their football matches. But ended up in a 4-star lower-floor conference room around the side. A bit underwhelming at the venue that was eventually picked compared to what it could have been.
However, I think this conference is only going to get increasingly popular so do think that venue choice will become a reality fairly soon. Providing Barcelona gets chosen again in 2024. And hopefully with a seated lunch overlooking a legendary football stadium.
The hotel was called Catalonia Barcelona Plaza. And its nothing special. Was pushed away in a corner on the underground room hire section. And the room made the event seem more crammed and smaller than it is. Because you got to think you have the banners from the sponsors in there and in a small room it starts taking up the space.
Lunch networking break
For me the experience of food and drink were shit. Look, I get it. At conferences, summits, meetups, roundtables, whatever sort of title you put on a physical event, this is a part that is likely a bit of a headache. Mainly because it’s probably not an event organiser’s main priority. But it is part of the experience and it does unfortunately have more impact on peoples experience of the conference than organisers would probably like.
For this event, it should have either been a sit-down lunch or a situation where you sort yourself out at restaurants nearby. If it were me and budget allowed it would have rented out a private space at a venue that is known for its food. It’s Barcelona and you have some truly amazing places to eat, take in the view, and relax. Would have probably led to even deeper conversations and relationships than were formed through the event.
Instead, we had an al a carte finger food style buffet in a room that was shut away with no windows in the underground foyer room. The food was ok at best, the croquettes were probably the best part and I probably had my face stuffed like a hampster at one point. But you’re trying to speak to people with no seats in the room, plastic plates, balance your food on a plate, say hello to people for the first time with food in your mouth, and shake their hand simultaniously while trying to talk about somewhat technical topics with someone you’ve just met.
Did have the option to sit at a table but you have to go to the room the conference is in and sit on your own like a recluse or in the lobby round the corner looking like you don’t want to speak to anyone. Just a bit too much to process for a lunch to be honest.
That being one of the main networking breaks was poor. The main thing for nearly everyone I speak to at conferences is about meeting the people who are there. You want to learn from them, get a new deal, find a new service to solve your problem, or find new talent to bring into your business.
Will I be attending in 2024?
I plan and hope to. There’s nothing that would immediately stop me from going again. This is a really exciting conference to be attending, especially with the need for automation increasing thanks to wider and bigger investments in digital transformation initiatives by companies of all sizes.
Although I was questioning the score at one point thinking it was too low, it’s really not. Leaves room for improvement that is needed and think is more than achievable. This has the opportunity to be a conference that can easily grow to 500-1000 people fairly easily. Wouldn’t be suprised if this year for 2024 it grows to double the size. That will open up a whole new avenue of recommendations and reviews for the team.
There’s a lot of areas I would include whether from the welcoming reception or through to the follow up from sponsors and the event organisers. That makes me think, I didn’t get any communications from the sponsors after the event. Which seems a bit of a waste. Saying that have connected with all the sponsors
Overall, well done to Vincenzo and the team for putting it on. Look forward to seeing what they do for this years editions.
You can keep up to date with everything Intelligent Automation Congress are doing and their events by visiting the website and subscribing on LinkedIn.
