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The IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (IEEE WCCI) is the largest event that gathers computational intelligence intellectuals on a bi-annual basis. Its last edition was on 2016, therefore 2018 is getting ready for this year’s congress.

The WCCI is planned to take place in South America, in the beautiful, colorful, joyful and warm Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The 6-day congress will initiate on June 8^th and will have its last day on June 13^th 2018.

This giant reunion of computational knowledge offers conferences, tutorials, workshops, competitions, project presentation, and some special sessions, too.

This year’s congress will focus on three main conferences and subjects, taken directly from the official webpage:

1. IJCNN 2018. The International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN) covers a wide range of topics in the field of neural networks, from biological neural networks to artificial neural computation.
2. IEEE CEC 2018. The IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (IEEE CEC) covers all topics in evolutionary computation from theory to real-world applications.
3. FUZZ-IEEE 2018. The IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems (FUZZ-IEEE) covers all topics in fuzzy systems from theory to real-world applications.

The event’s sponsors include important names and organizations in the field, such as: The International Neural Center, The Evolutionary Programming Society, Budapest Semester in Cognitive Science, Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico and the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society, amongst others.

People from all over the world are invited to this bi-annual gathering to share their knowledge, investigation, experiments and expectations with all those that serve in related fields.

Any person that would like to participate in the congress by giving a lecture, conference, proposing a competition, or giving a workshop may contact the organizers through the information given on their webpage.

To understand a little better the magnitude if the 2018 WCCI, we can analyze a few details about the speakers and their respective subjects from the 2016 edition.

1. David B. Fogel attended the 2016 WCCI and he presented a public lecture titled: “Fun and games with artificial intelligence”. Fogel shared his insight in the common use of artificial intelligence, which is to be able to make machines solve different types of tasks and problems, without being told how to do it. He spoke about the basics of artificial intelligence, and gave examples with some his own experiments made throughout investigation.

Fogel described to the public how he managed to get computers to learn to play checkers and chess. Not only that, but he also explained that some animations of videogame characters have learned to improve their behavior over time within the games, with the use of this science and technology.

1. Bin He was another amazing speaker in 2016. He participated in the IJCNN section with “Dynamic mapping and interfacing with the human brain”. Computational intelligence in this case is applied to the understanding of the human brain. It is used to aid in the clinical diagnosis and management of brain disorders. Human brain activity is being mapped and imaged thanks to this type of technology, and has been in amazing progress.
2. Graham Kendall shared with the congress attendees the subject titled: “Is evolutionary computing evolving fast enough?”  During his presentation he talked about the difference throughout time that this type of technology has had, and contrasted it with others like 3D printing, immersive reality and ubiquitous computing. He defined the different applications, acceptance and progress that evolutionary computing has offered. The conference also gave details in the promises that this technology has made and it made an analysis to see where those promises have really gotten to date, the future struggles that it may present and the strategies that could be applied in order to overcome them and make a much more notable progress.

As we can see, those who have the opportunity to attend this event come out with a broader understanding on many subjects that fall within what they dedicate their lives to.

There are professionals working, investigating, experimenting, and making enormous progress in all branches of computational intelligence to support all areas of life as we know them and make them better.

Their science and hard work will reflect on tomorrow’s education, economy, health, neurology, biology and medicine. And each one of them has an invitation to access this reunion from the 8^th to the 13^th of June 2018, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

The Web Summit is an annual reunion for technology; but it isn’t just any annual reunion; it is the largest tech conference in the world. This gigantic tech gathering was created in 2009 and was originally held in Dublin, Ireland. But, since 2016 it has been taking place in Lisbon, Portugal.

This year’s Web Summit is programmed for the 5^th to the 8^th of November 2018. The most important people and companies attend this event yearly, and share with others their progresses with internet technology and its related subjects.

There are 23 different conferences programmed for the Web Summit 2018, which are:

AutoTech, binate.io, Content Makers, Corporate Innovation Summit, creatiff, Forum, FullSTK, Growth Summit, HealthConf, PandaConf, Modum, MoneyConf, MusicNotes, Planet: tech, Q + A, SaaS Monster, Talk Robot, SportsTrade, Startup University, Surf Summit, Pub Summit, Sunset Summit and Night Summit.

CEOs, founders, presidents, entrepreneurs, investigators, developers, startupers; everyone from every type of area and stage of their tech journey, from all over the globe, gather here, at the Web Summit.

Some of the international-known companies that feature in the event are some of the biggest names in technology; Google, IBM, Facebook, Microsoft, Booking.com, Paypal, Mercedez-Benz, BMW, Brightline Initiative, Mckinsey&Company, and Netjets, amongst others.

For the 2017 edition, the numbers were historical, with more than 70,000 attendees, 12,000 + speakers and 2,600 + journalists, all from more than 170 countries.

Within that amazing amount of over 1,200 speakers at last year’s Web Summit, were the following tech celebrities:

Elon Musk.

Founder of Tesla and SpaceX (just to name a couple), considered the real-life Iron Man, due to the similarity he shares with the character: science, technology, power and money. Musk is an investor and businessman who is constantly and consistently developing technology in a variety of areas and industries, for example, the automotive industry, finance and money transfer (PayPal), spaceships, and others.

Travis Kalanick.

Maybe his name doesn’t resonate with many of us, but the name of his co-founded company does immediately: Uber. A company that started small, as a startup, and spent time seeking for investment, because too many investors thought Uber’s business model was a terrible idea. Today, Uber is a major hit internationally, thank to its innovation, added value and accessibility.

Ed Catmull.

Co-founder of Pixar and now the president of Pixar Animation Studios and Walt Disney Animation Studios also attended last year’s event. He is a computer scientist and he’s in charge of the most famous and successful Pixar-Disney films that have been honored with academy awards.

Will.i.am.

He is famous and mostly known for being one of the founders of the great hip hop group, The Black Eyed Peas. But, Will.i.am. is not only a remarkable musician, he is a record producer, actor, entrepreneur and philanthropist as well.

Joseph Tsai.

A Taiwanese-Canadian businessman, co-founder and vice president of the Alibaba Group, one of the largest e-commerce businesses in the world. He works alongside with the famous Jack Ma, who is the executive president of the company.

Reed Hastings.

You’ve probably heard his name before, but in case you don’t recall, he is the founder of that internet streaming platform you use too often; Netflix. Hastings is a businessman and philanthropist while also being the executive director of Netflix. But that’s not all. He is a board member of Facebook, KIPP and DreamBox, too.

Another speaker of the past Web Summit, and probably the most memorable, was Professor Stephen Hawking.

The beloved and sometimes controversial theoretical physicist from the United Kingdom, who served for many years of his lifetime to the prestigious Cambridge University. He sadly passed away just a few days ago, on March 14^th.

That is just an extremely small list of the total amount of speakers that gathered in Lisbon in 2017. The information, statistics, experiments, data, progress, theories and contacts that are available at the Web Summit is impressive.

Imagine four complete days of immersing yourself in all this knowledge handed by these tech role models. A young tech entrepreneur could attend the Web Summit 2018 for the first time, and who knows, maybe by 2020 that same entrepreneur could be a speaker at the conference, thanks to the acquired knowledge.

It is most definitely an enormous and incomparable boost that any tech professional could use to his or her advantage in today’s competitiveness and rapid progress in this industry.