Landwirtschaftsverlag, Münster organises AI Week and looks to the future over three days

The entire Landwirtschaftsverlag Münster group of companies spent three days this week focussing intensively on the potential of artificial intelligence and its possible applications within their own group of companies. A total of more than 400 employees followed the presentations, discussed with the high-calibre speakers, learned about specific application examples in the journalistic and commercial areas and were able to try out various AI tools for themselves in various workshops.

‘The aim of our AI Week was to get to know the great potential, but also the limits of this new technology and to recognise the points of contact for our group of companies. This was a complete success,’ say Ludger Schulze Pals and Malte Schwerdtfeger, Managing Directors of Landwirtschaftsverlag.

Absolute highlights of the three-day event, which took place at the company's headquarters in Münster, included an insight from Patrick Swanson, co-founder of Verso and Journalism Fellow at Stanford University, who - speaking from San Francisco - showed how editors can use AI tools in their day-to-day journalistic work, from the initial idea to the publication of the finished article, in order to make their daily work easier and broaden the possibilities for utilising the article. Other presentations by Dr Mahmut Arica, Professor of Marketing and Digitalisation at FOM Münster, Sanjay Sauldie, consultant for AI strategy development from Mannheim, and Lorenz Matzat, journalist and software developer from Switzerland, focused primarily on the question of how relationships with customers and readers are changing and how companies can use AI to efficiently strengthen the connection. The second and third days of the AI Week focussed on specific use cases. The central question: Where and how can we use AI to optimise the creation of journalistic content or services and serve customer needs in the best possible way? Among others, Concetta Alba-Wrobel, Westfunk, Dr Tobias Fredebeul-Krein, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Tobias Kawohl from BASF and other AI experts, including from start-ups, provided insights into the activities of their companies.