In June, IBM invited ecosystem partners in Europe, the Middle East and Africa to participate in an IBM watsonx™ Challenge, a hands-on experience designed to bring the watsonx platform capabilities to some of the most important members of the IBM ecosystem.

These ecosystem partners, who sell, build or service IBM technologies, enthusiastically embraced the challenge. Participants formed teams and focused on quickly crafting a solution to one of three selected challenges.  

The challenges included using prompt engineering to analyze customer experience by using IBM® watsonx.ai™, automating repetitive manual tasks to improve productivity by using IBM watsonx™ Orchestrate, and building a generative AI-powered virtual assistant by using IBM watsonx™ Assistant and IBM watsonx™ Discovery.

This experience enabled passionate learners to experience exciting new generative AI technologies firsthand and it led to innovation and creativity.

Bringing excitement for AI to life

Over 350 employees from our ecosystem partners in 44 different countries jumped at the opportunity to work with watsonx to complete challenges and win prizes. An overwhelming majority shared that they gained a better understanding of how artificial intelligence (AI) can be applied to business needs based on a postevent survey.

The interactive, hands-on challenges enabled the participants to move beyond abstract generative AI concepts to design generative AI-infused solutions for realistic customer problems.

Our partners are inspired to learn everything they can about AI and apply that knowledge to solve the most difficult real-world client challenges. Nearly all participants capitalized on the preevent training on watsonx, and they experienced breakthroughs as the challenge brought AI to life.

One participant noted that he finally understood what it took to make his F1 score improve. As he experimented with different prompts and inputs, he could see the score rise and fall in response. The event left a lasting impact on our business partners who have been seeking to bolster their watsonx knowledge, and the number of practitioners that earned watsonx badges doubled following the challenge.

Many of our ecosystem partners have already established or are in the process of establishing generative AI centers of excellence (CoE) with IBM. These centers personify the ideal blend of education and real-world innovation, bringing together practical experience and research in areas, including AI and hybrid cloud.

We work together to build new solutions and to support skills development and client engagements with proofs of concept and technologies implementations. The watsonx Challenge stimulates creativity and innovation in these centers as they focus on some of the industry’s most compelling use cases for generative AI.

Scaling the impact of AI

This challenge provided a glimpse into what watsonx can do. It’s only the beginning of a journey that we’re on with our ecosystem partners. Together, we aim to scale and accelerate the impact of AI by infusing intelligence into business operations. This maximizes business value, improves accuracy and drives gains in productivity for clients.

Whether it’s human resources, customer care or application modernization, our industry-leading solutions infused with generative AI are up to the challenge. With the only end-to-end AI governance solution, clients can rest assured that the AI they’re using is trustworthy and reliable.

The feedback from the IBM watsonx Challenge participants was overwhelmingly positive, and the event further increased collaboration across the IBM ecosystem. If you didn’t get an opportunity to take part or simply want a chance to collaborate and innovate with your colleagues, keep your eyes open for the next watsonx Challenge.