Also Q&A with Yianni Gamvros, SVP, Sales and Marketing at QCWare
Next week will see one of more exciting annual events in the quantum world coming together. Organized by QCWare, Q2B, touted as the largest conference in the quantum computing community will take place (in-person) at the Santa Clara Convention Center on December 6-8, 2022 (registration details here).
Jointly sponsored by Quantinuum, AWS, ColdQuanta, IBM, Quantum Delta, UK National Quantum Technologies Programme among others, this year’s featured speakers will include:
- John Preskill – Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics and Director, Institute for Quantum Information and Matter at California Institute of Technology
- Major General Heather L. Pringle – Commander, Air Force Research Laboratory and Technology Executive Officer, U.S. Air Force and U.S. Space Force
- Scott Aaronson – David J. Bruton Centennial Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Quantum Information Center, University of Texas at Austin
- K. Birgitta Whaley – Director, Berkeley Quantum Information and Computation Center, Professor of Chemical Physics, University of California, Berkeley
Q&A with Yianni Gamvros, SVP, Sales and Marketing at QCWare
Yianni Gamvros, SVP, Sales and Marketing at QCWare
How would you characterize the Q2B Conference?
Credit for starting this conference goes to Matt Johnson, Co-founder and CEO of QCWare. Quantum computing as a subject is typically discussed in heavily technical conferences like physics or computer science events. When Matt started Q2B in 2017, his vision was to basically create a conference for the business audience, which wants to have some technical information.
Our conference provides content and perspective for people to make basically business decisions, whether they should invest in the technology or not. What’s the scale? Potential? What are the business applications? What are the use cases? What will the impact look like when it finally arrives?
A lot of the industry users here are also coming in to talk about why they are engaging right now. And the use cases that are driving, essentially the funding and budget.
Our conference is also one of the key ways to get the entire ecosystem together basically in the same room, industry, government, academia and have a formal health check on the on the state of the industry.
What is new at the conference this year?
This year, we’re creating dedicated industry tracks. We think there’s a critical mass in several industries and we have invited industry leaders to come in and present their quantum computing programs, what they’re doing currently, what are the use cases, how they’ve convinced the rest of their organization to basically fund these programs? And the interesting results they’ve uncovered so far.
We have seven industry specific tracks this year – Aerospace, Finance, Chemicals and Materials, Healthcare, Pharma, Automotive, and Energy and Utilities.
How has the attendance numbers grown over the years? What does that say about the industry?
This year, we expect to have around 800 attendees. We have been running this conference for 6 years. I think year over year, we have had a 30 to 40% increase in attendance. In 2020, we moved to a virtual event because of COVID. Because of the virtual mode, we had the highest attendance numbers.
And yeah, the conference is illustrative of how the industry has been growing. And you can also see by the number of companies being represented on the program and the number of speakers we’ve had. I think this year we’re going to be well over 150 speakers.
This is also something interesting in the quantum computing industry at this point in its evolution. Conferences such Q2B, as you put it, “help grow the community.” Can you expand on that?
Right, so first of all, one of our mission statements is to grow interest for quantum computing at large. There’s still so much whitespace and opportunity out there and fundamental problems to solve. So, that’s why we believe that it should be a community effort. We all should try to help each other.
And as the old saying goes, rising tide lifts all ships.
Actually, QCWare itself has very few sessions in the conference. What makes for an interesting conference is that the entire community comes together and presents different perspectives.
Conference and Registration Details
When: December 6 – 8, 2022 – Q2B 2022 Silicon Valley – Practical Quantum Computing
Location: Santa Clara Convention Center, California
Registration: https://q2b.qcware.com/2022-conferences/silicon-valley/registration/
Written by Venkatesh Gomatam, GooglyTech and Qubit/TIDBIT
November 2022