Tech trends to keep on your radar

Amidst the rapid race in the technology free-for-all, it’s hard to keep your head above the water and stay focused on the trends that are going to take off, trends that are going to hide on the back-burner and also those trends that you need to be wary of.

Digital currencies

Digital currencies, cryptocurrencies and blockchain all sound pretty synonymous when describing  those slightly confusing concepts of anonymised payments. Sadly they are not, which only adds more confusion for us to get our heads around (which can be nicely settled here). The difference now however, is when we last focused on the topic of currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum they were soaring to the top of the market. Now however, they’ve taken a little of a hit. Why? The more popular these methods become, the more competition there is and a greater uncertainty about their use, so it’s hard to keep up with which currency is the safest. There’s no guide to gambling in the casino, and digital currencies certainty is quite the same, all we can guarantee is that if you are using it, keep your ears perked and your eyes pealed to track their progression. After all, knowledge is power.

NLP to shape your customer service

A firm favourite of mine to be introduced on the AI front; Parsey McParseface. The name of this language parser had me at Hello. But seriously,  the power of natural language processing is one of the finest ways to endorse your business. You’re probably familiar with the online chat rooms on websites “need any help?”. With the demand to keep your customers engaged and in the know, is the slight worry that customer service may become too reliant on technology and lose the personal touch of natural friendly interaction But the benefits of using NLP for customer service allow you to document responses and consumer interaction  in order to generate patterns and iron out frequently asked questions. If a large percentage of visitors searching your website are asking common questions about the same few products or services, you can then work on this to make the answers easier to find, and then focus on the next most popular topic.  NLP works across a number of social services, including chatrooms on your website or even Twitter and Facebook. Most of the time, the responses are that carefully generated, most people won’t even know the difference. But that’s not to say, for the more obscure questions that can’t be answered fruitfully from the likes of Parsey McParsface, can’t then be passed on to your ‘real’ customer service team or a truly original response.

Smart contracts

It’s interesting how adding to word ‘smart’ in front of a term these days instantly makes it sound fancy and exciting. Yes, even contracts. Who’d have thought it? Smart contracts  are protocols that intend to help implement and verify the performance of a contract, without third parties. The added security of a digital contract allow them to be trackable and irreversibly with the added bosun of them being encrypted and guarantees that they won’t be lost, or subtly ‘amended’ without any notice.

The perks of GDPR

Enough is enough. The run up to may 25th saw us being bombarded with ‘update your privacy settings’. Annoying at first, but hopefully in the long run, it will be beneficial and if anything a great point to update your lists of information. Amidst the flood of notifications and emails, i did notice that a few companies were indeed utilising the time the clear out their mailing lists to ensure they’re really targeting the people they want to allowing them to feed them the right content.  Having read about the shady audacity that major companies have when handling our data is a little un-nerving so it’s a breath of relief to know that there is some order in place.

It is quite overwhelming  knowing the rate at which technology is helping shape our every move, but like with anything, it’s good to keep tech trends on your radar so you’re not kept in the dark ages.

Coming up: Spaces Schiphol Airport

Spaces is landing at Schiphol Airport; taking off with a new inspiring way of working for our community with the rest of the world on our doorstep.

Spaces will combine strengths with Microsoft Netherlands and offer a place for everyone to share knowledge and tech skills, business and opportunities, talents and visions. It will be a breeding ground for the creativity and serendipity needed today to add value tomorrow.

• A new place where we invite people to be part of the energy and buzz of like-minded others.
• A new place where we join Microsoft in reimagining the empowerment of their staff, partners, clients and our community.
• A new place where growth is not limited by digital technology nor by expanding horizons.    

> Get your office and join us.