Adobe Summit Diary: AI & Privacy
It is time for the Adobe Summit already. The flagship event of the company that takes place in Las Vegas sets the tone for Adobe's year ahead. Historically, the technology company has utilised the Summit to share its views on the industry's way forward, the new trends that it sees and hence embraces in its product and overall offer, and to connect with a large portion of its key customers.
The agenda for Summit 2018 does not seem to move away too much from this. However, it is the talking points of the Summit that should be interesting. At a time, when the world is trying to understand the Cambridge Analytica controversy and what it means for data and privacy, these topics will take centrestage in some of the sessions planned at the Summit.
In 2017, Adobe had embarked on the journey of being an 'experience' company, as a way to keep focussed on what will keep it future ready. Several aspects of this formed what the Adobe structure became, with all its offers or 'clouds' in creative for enterprise, analytics, advertising, marketing and document coming together to form the experience cloud.
This year, the Summit will play host to industry thought leaders, whom Adobe has dubbed the experience makers. Sir Richard Branson is among one of the key speakers this year, in addition to leaders from Tourism Australia and Coca-Cola among others.
A session has also been planned where Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn will take the stage, and chances are the privacy and data debate will form a large part of the conversation there.
While Adobe will have much to discuss and share over the next two days, one area to watch out for will be how it is identifying the underserved spaces, a strategy that had held it in good stead in the past. Its focus and investment on AI is evident with Adobe Sensei and collaboration is still an important tenet of its overall strategy. But in the technology world, staying ahead and growing will require a 360 degree view, and it would be interesting to see how Adobe is doing that.
