This year, DrupalCon Rotterdam tried something new. The day before the conference officially kicked off was set aside for specialised summits aimed at enterprises. I attended the Enterprise AI Summit, which was conceived and co-organised by my colleague Frederik Wouters.
An event for leaders building their AI business case
The idea behind the summit is simple: it's an event for digital leaders who are building their AI business case. It explained AI deployments at enterprise scale for companies using Drupal, and presented production cases from enterprises and public organisations across Europe.
It all took place aboard the historic SS Rotterdam, which turned out to be a fantastic venue.
Real organisations, real results
The line-up was packed with practical, real-world examples. Speakers came from organisations such as:
- The European Personnel Selection Office
- Aalto University
- The American Diabetes Society
- World Cancer Day
They presented the problems they solve through innovative use of the AI capabilities in the Drupal platform, which has come a very long way in the last couple of years.
The idea that stuck with me: zero cost thinking
The keynote by Peter Hinssen, technology thought leader and entrepreneur, made a crucial point that made me think long and hard about the implications and opportunities of AI for European businesses.
I came up with a name for it: zero cost thinking.
It rests on one simple observation: with AI, the cost of doing drops to almost zero, while the cost of waiting skyrockets.
For companies finding their way in this new reality, that comes down to two things:
- Figure out what needs to be done.
- Be able to act on it.
If you can do anything, where do you start?
Zero cost thinking raises an obvious question. If doing things costs next to nothing, and you could implement almost anything, where do you begin? What creates the most value? What comes first, and what comes second?
To seize the opportunities AI offers, European businesses first need to understand what is valuable to them, and then what is important.
AI makes it possible to tackle work that has been avoided in the past, such as:
- Integrating legacy systems
- Building middleware APIs that enable self-service
- Relaunching design systems to improve the customer experience
These are tasks whose value came in the long term, while their costs in the short term were very high.
Who will help you navigate?
Interestingly, before companies can build AI into their strategy, they first need to understand the technology and the opportunities it opens up. So who do you turn to for that?
You could go to one of the big consulting firms. Chances are you'll get a hefty quote before the first real conversation, and the work will end up with a junior consultant armed with a ChatGPT subscription.
Or you could work with an agile European partner that is already running AI-enabled systems in production. That gets you access to true experts.
And that is exactly where Dropsolid AI shines.
Ready to put zero cost thinking into practice?
The cost of waiting keeps rising. If you're building your AI business case and want to know what to tackle first, talk to the Dropsolid AI team. We'll help you work out what is valuable for your organisation, what is important, and how to act on it with Drupal, using AI models served from within the EU.
Request a demo or get in touch with our experts