2027 at the IT/OT Academy: Deep Dives & Data Architectures

David: What is the IT/OT Academy? Willem: It's not a e learning where you're just going through videos. It's us talking to you and you talking to us. David: Four sessions included, two and a half hours each, and we also have a private session with me where you can ask questions. Willem: It's about how can we set up structures to cooperate better? Understanding IT and OT. What do we need to start scaling up applications? How do you set up architecture? How do you set up your project? How do you make your business case to the board? These kind of questions are gonna come up. David: You hear the solutions from the other groups and they are not the same. Willem: In these use cases there's no best solution, but I think that the value sits in finding out David: Well let's get right to the point, what is the IT/OT Academy? Willem: It's a whole lot of fun, David. Nah. The Academy is, let's say, a continuation of whatever you do. We write on the blog, we write in our book, we talk about in our postcasts, the videos, but in a more structured way and like ten thousand times more interactive. David: Yeah, because in the book there is zero interactions. Willem: Exactly. No. We we guide you through everything, but I think a big part of it is also that we engineer, we make sure that you not only hear us talking, it's not a e learning where you're just going through videos, it's us talking to you and you talking to us, but also you working with other people through the same problems. David: Yeah, absolutely. it's a highly structured learning path. so yes, of course, you can read some of our articles. but what we actually do is in the academy, yeah, we go deep in the content. we ask questions, you ask questions. and to make sure that the sessions are, I would say, as valuable as possible, we're actually even sending you some of our articles in advance. so you can you can read a couple of our articles before the session starts. So you come in prepared. It's not required, but Willem: Definitely. David: Helps. It definitely helps. so all right, let's discuss the content, Willem. so in each of our pricing tiers we have four sessions included, two and a half hours each. and we also have a private session with me where you can ask questions which you might not want to discuss in the in the groups. Willem: We have four sessions of two and a half hours, David. That's intentionally. Yeah. We've been through day long remote learnings. You cannot keep your focus, your attention that long sitting behind a screen. No. we know that. So we engineered it around it. So it's four sessions, two and a half hours. That's long enough, but not too long to go over all the content. David: So let's go over those four group sessions. Session number one. Willem: it's going through the key content I think that we're going to discuss. It's taking the the concepts from the book, like understanding IT and OT. It's about how can we set up structures to cooperate better. And finally also what do we need to start scaling up applications and use cases across industry. David: You know the interesting thing, Willem, is that when I talk to people after the academy and I and I ask them like what what did you learn? the feedback is always like different. So everybody learns something else. So from whatever perspective they come in, but we really believe that those foundational concepts are are super super important. That's session number one. Session number two is very, very handsome, I should say. Willem: The the architecture one, right? David: Hm, yeah. Willem: That that's one of my favorites. I think one of lots of people's favorites because it's nice to talk about cooperation and scaling, but we do like to make it concrete. What does it mean in terms of systems? How does this look like in practice? And for that we go over a couple of typicals, which are like reference architectures you could say, for different types of industry. Because a refinery is not like industrial bakery. David: Thing is, and that's what makes it really, really fun. is that we ask for your questions in advance. So, what are your problems? What are the things you are facing right now? and both from an architectural point of view, maybe questions you got from your customers or questions you got from your colleagues. how does this tool fit in that? so that's something we also discussed. And we also take architectural diagrams from different vendors and we talk them through. But we also map them to our capability map, so to really understand, like, okay, where does this vendor fit into the overall data ops or industrial AI landscape? So that's session number two. brings us to session number three, where our students do the work. Willem: Perfect. We just sit back and relax. now. So we have use cases. the use case is centered around sweet harmony treats, a bakery in distress. And it's up to you to either save sweet harmony treats or to sell them the solution that will save them data. let's take the first one. So it's two perspectives to the same problem, which makes it already fun. First perspective is mainly for people who do work in manufacturing. In those sites in IT/OT for those companies. And it's going to be like, how do you set up your architecture? How do you set up your project? How do you make your business case to the board? These kind of questions are going to come up. You might have to talk to the CIO, the CEO, those kind of people to see if you can get it done or not. So that's very interactive and interesting. David: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and then from the vendor perspective, in this is it's something which we added in our in our latest academies upon popular demands. It's really like, okay, when you enter the discussion from a from yeah, from the other side, from the other side of the table, you also want to understand, like, okay, who are your different buyers? How do I interact with them? What are what are potential blockers? But not just that, you also wanna understand how can I sell this in a scalable way. How does my solution fit into a broader architectural picture? Et cetera, et cetera. So that is exactly what we'll do, I would say, from in that exercise, from the vendor perspective. And then in the final part of that session, we do a debrief. And that's also extremely valuable because there you you hear the solutions from the other groups and they are not the same. Willem: No, we we we give a lot of dilemmas in these use cases and there's no best solution or no price to win, but I think the value sits in finding out how different people made different trade offs. David: Absolutely. Then we go to session four. Session four is our practitioner panel and also a QA session. In the practitioner panel, we invite very interesting external speakers to share their point of view. By the way, you also get access to all previous recordings because we already had multiple super interesting talks. Maybe some highlights. Willem: Yes. We of course have people talking about IT and OT in an organizational sense. Like how do you merge those? Very interesting. UNS, of course, is being discussed. What does it look like in practice? in in very concrete examples. How do you implement MES systems at scale? What does it mean to start to implement AI on top of those systems? These are all the kind of practitioner discussions that we we had. David: We we we had a water company, we had a candy factory, we had somebody for working in a dairy plant, we had somebody working in a bakery, and more. We had somebody working at a harbor, you know. All super interesting. All right, but there is more. It is not just the group, it's not just the cohort then of four sessions. we launched something new which we call the IT/OT Academy Deep Dives. Why did we launch those? Willem: we kept getting the same feedback, David. And that was is there a way to keep in touch after the academy? Yeah. Because I got to know a lot of interesting people. I like the discussion. It's something I cannot have everywhere. Is there a way to keep this going? And the deep dives is our answer to that, David. It's like a look behind the scenes. It's once a month. Just us together with you in an interactive session where we discuss one topic in detail. David: Yeah, absolutely. and it's about what is hot and trending at that moment or what we are working on at that moment. So we'll we'll have AI topics and UNS topics and knowledge graphs and live builds and all fun stuff. So yeah, maybe final question. who is the Academy for, Willem? Willem: I think everybody who works in that area between IT and OT. So if you're working in manufacturing, I think it's a no brainer. You're working on digitalization, this is the academy for you. If you are a vendor of this kind of software, understanding the problems that we face from a different perspective, absolutely incredibly valuable. And for the integrators, of course, I think this is also a no brainer. This is the place where they get to learn these concepts with a bit of a a bigger view. David: Yeah, and and don't underestimate the net the network aspect here as well, Because if you are a vendor, you come in the group, you see all the discussion going on, you see the questions being raised. Yeah, that is really gonna help you in your job. All right, awesome. So, all information, agenda, next cohorts, order, request a PO if you don't if you need a PO. go to itot.academy and that's where you'll find everything. And hope to see you in our next cohort. Until then, take care. Bye bye.