Four cities and a lot of Sichuan

An event with DIT is always an exciting prospect and the recent mission to China was no exception and truly delivered beyond expectation. We visted Guangzho, Shenzen, Chengdu, Guiyang in the space of a week and it is amazing to see the pace of technology innovation in China and how they are pushing their 2020 innovation agenda.

The first day in Shenzen was a day dedicated to meeting Huawei with an interesting presentation from Huawei and their technology team, which proceeded with an interesting chat with the Huawei innovation team where we discussed the Speechmatics real-time ASR capabilities.

We then headed to Chengdu – the home of Sichuan food and hotpots! We spent the morning meeting several interesting companies and the afternoon at the UK-CHINA BIG DATA COLLABORATION SEMINAR. The big data seminar was opportunity to meet many more interesting Chinese companies. We then spent the evening with Mr & Mrs Li who treated us to local cuisine and shows which were astounding.

Guiyang was next on the agenda which is a fascinating city and is one of the core focus areas for Chinese innovation and they are in the midst of building a large research park. We attended the Big Data Expo event where we met with Chinese press and iFlyTek who showcased their real-time captioning system and education system and also discussed their translation device. We also met with some of the biggest Chinese companies Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent. We experienced great warmth and humour throughout the duration of the visit and are excited for future prospects working with Chinese companies and can’t wait to visit again soon. DIT and CBBC were a great support, running a seamless event that encapsulated why the UK and China should be in collaboration. We’re excited for London Technology Week 2017 next week with more DIT run events strengthening collaborations with the UK and the rest of the world. Benedikt von Thüngen, Speechmatics