WIAD 2018 – chatbots, technology, case studies and inspiration

Romanita Oprea Creativity, Digital & Media

After an edition in Iasi, WIAD came back to Bucharest, re-becoming the capital of the information architecture in Romania. The conference, organized locally by Grapefruit and found at the seventh edition in Romania, took place at the same time in 56 locations, 25 countries, on 5 continents.

The event was under the umbrella „Information Architecture for Good”, reaching subjects very much in trend at the moment, from chatbots, artificial intelligence, advanced analytics and up to storytelling and outside-the-box thinking. To the presentations added case studies with the subject “A detailed analysis of the conversational form”, created by Grapefruit’s representatives: Alecsandru Grigoriu, Victor Keller, Andrei Balanica.

This edition of WIAD was marked by a central subject. Without prior coordinating ourselves several speakers, including the colleagues from Grapefruit, approached the same subject: chatbots. It is clear that the interest for this technology is rising and the informational architecture lays at the basis of any future <<digital conversation>>,” said Georgiana Dragomir, Managing Director Grapefruit.

The events’ speakers were: Cosmin Nastasa-Managing Director Edge2Performant, Catalin Stanciu-Lead UX Architect Deutsche Bank, Horia Velicu-Head of Innovation Lab BRD, Dragos Manac-Capitalist Entrepreneur and Vlad Tausance, Strategist Argo.

If some of the presentations were exclusively based around the idea of information architecture, meant to give valuable insights, Dragos Manac focused his presentation on what defines the good and how it can translate in today’s technology. Vlad Tausance closed the event with a presentation about the language used by chatbots, putting the accent on the importance of a well written and natural text that should be created by linguistic specialists and young people with creative qualities and abilities especially developed in the area of writing a special, different message, with well chosen and well used words. A manifest for the writing, speaking and addressing into a beautiful, non-mechanical language.

WIAD 2018 took place simultaneously in locations such as: Johannesburg (South Africa), Bangalore (India), Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo (Japan) and in Europa in cities such as: Barcelona (Spain); Bristol and Manchester (Great Britain), Kiev (Ukraine); Ljubljana (Slovenia); Toulouse (France); Bari, Genova, Palermo, Roma and Trento (Italia); Saint Petersburg (Russia), Berlin and Munich (Germania) and Zurich (Switzerland).