Cheri Bergeron, IBM | IBM InterConnect 2016
Channel: SiliconANGLE theCUBE
Date: 2016-02-24

IBM rocks the world’s largest music festival with Watson | #IBMInterConnect
by Marlene Den Bleyker | Feb 24, 2016

Cognitive systems like IBM Watson are changing the way the world responds to real-time data. Whether the enterprise is seeking a new way to reach the customer or a musical festival in Roskilde, Denmark. is trying to anticipate crowd participation, IBM is reaching out to businesses and academia to help predict consumer behavior.

Cheri Bergeron, leader of client engagement and advocacy at IBM, spoke with John Furrier, host of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, about IBM’s partnership with the Copenhagen Business School and Roskilde Festival, the largest North European culture and music festival, to provide real-time insight into behavior patterns at the event.

Big names and Big Data

“The music festival is the largest in the world, and every year 130,000 people descend on this small town in Denmark and host artists like Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones, etc.,” according to Bergeron.

She continued: “The festival really knows how to put on a great event, but they don’t know a great deal about technology. So they engaged with the Copenhagen Business School to understand how they can get insights from their data to maximize the experience of the festival goers.”

Measuring movement

The Copenhagen Business School enlisted 25 business students who used IBM Watson analytics in a cloud environment. Bergeron explained how IBM helped the business school set up a real-time data lab to manage flow through heat maps produced by a mobile phone app. She noted that the lab received 91 rows of data per minute to help determine how to optimize service, artist order and safety.

During the interview, Bergeron highlighted some of the key learnings the students uncovered from how weather influences food consumption and which artists draw and maintain a crowd.

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