Google, ML6 and… smart cities?

As most of you may know, right now I'm enrolled in Vlerick's Full Time MBA program. So far? So good! Last week was a Oh-wow-week, because we had the course Business Value with (Big) Data and Artificial Intelligence, in which our professor Philippe Baecke showed us in a nutshell what this trend is all about and how is going to affect different business models.

This overwhelming reality check just left you thinking: "How's this is going to really affect my previous background?". In my case I just kept wondering how all this data-driven technologies and trends can affect topics such as real estate development and urbanism.

So I thought: Are Urbanism, Transportation, and Real Estate Development going to be able to keep up the pace for the imminent digital data revolution? According to the United Nations 68% of the world population projected to live in urban areas by 2050. That means another 2.5 billion people in urban areas.

Cities have to evolve. And this evolution is happening through technology and data: Smart cities are those who have the ability to use technology to take advantage of data, which offers a solid and dynamic environment that can adapt to the changes.

And just as the cherry on top, at the end of last week, me and my MBA classmates had the incredible opportunity to visit Google's offices here in Brussels to get a lecture from them and ML6 about Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and the ethics behind it.

Of course it was amazing to grasp a little bit of what Google is all about: their business model, their offices, their culture. It's impressive how the creativity can be this helpful in a tech driven company.

About ML6, it was just mindblowing to witness how all this automation, prescriptive and predictive analytics, deep learning and machine learning, are not just things for sci-fi movies, but are tools for the business nowadays.

It is just inspiring to be a witness of this kind of things. I don't know where my career path will take me, but sure I'm excited to see how all of this trends are going to affect my future duties.

-Charlie!