GET TO KNOW...
On the lighter side of things, we ask the
industry experts what makes them tick. . . .
Chris Bingham,
CTO of Crimson Hexagon
What would you describe as your
most memorable achievement?
Apart from my family, building Crimson
Hexagon has been fantastic. We started
over 10 years ago with just an academic
algorithm and an idea. We've built the
infrastructure and product to effectively
derive consumer insights from 1.2 trillion
pieces of public content from over a billion
people, for some of the largest and most
innovative brands in the world.
What first made you think of a
career in technology?
My mum passed away recently – back in
the early 60s she worked in the insurance
industry and became one of the very
first wave of people using computers for
business. Throughout my childhood she had
technical jobs involving programming and
system design. We'd visit her at work quite
often and she frequently worked from home,
meaning I was exposed to that career from
a young age.
What style of management
philosophy do you employ with your
current position?
People are more important than technology
and people problems are harder than
technical problems. I have a running joke
with my team to say that something is ‘a
simple matter of computer programming’.
The joke is that it's usually far from simple,
www.intelligentcio.com
but the truth behind the joke is that if
all that’s required to solve a problem
is programming, then it's solvable. The
harder things are determining priorities,
communicating, resolving disputes and
getting consensus, and helping people to
learn and grow.
What do you think has emerged as
the biggest technology trend of 2018
and why?
you want it to mean. But really, throughout
its history, AI has always meant technology
that surprises us with its capabilities to do
things we didn't think a computer could do.
Once it becomes commonplace, we no longer
think of it as AI. As the pace of technological
advancement continues to accelerate, we'll
increasingly be surprised by what's now
possible and therefore there will be even more
things that we'll call ‘AI’.
Artificial Intelligence has certainly been having
a big year. That's in part because it's a vague
enough term that you can make it mean what
“
PEOPLE
ARE MORE
IMPORTANT THAN
TECHNOLOGY
AND PEOPLE
PROBLEMS ARE
HARDER THAN
TECHNICAL
PROBLEMS.
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