This Friday we'll have two talks followed by drinks. Our industrial speaker is Daan Odijk, the lead data scientist at RTL. He will talk about searching to be entertained at RTL. Our academic speaker is Thijs Scheepers, recent MSc. AI graduate from the University of Amsterdam. He will talk about improving word embedding compositionality using lexicographic definitions.

Program:

16:00-16:30 Daan Odijk

16:30-17:00 Thijs Scheepers

17:00-18:00 Drinks and snacks

Details:

Daan Odijk - Searching to be entertained

As the largest commercial broadcaster in a declining Dutch TV market, RTL is making a transition from a traditional TV company to a consumer-focused media company. RTL is embracing a closer relationship and more direct interaction with its viewers, followers and visitors, via every conceivable means. The new growth strategy is centered around consumers’ needs and motivations and brings investments in data analytics, technology and creation. RTL intends to genuinely touch and inspire people both on and off screen and thereby develop the loyal fan base for its brands. In this talk, I will share how we are using search technology to help our users find the right content for them, ranging from the 1M daily visitors on our news website to the over 2B video plays we had in 2017, most of these on our rapidly growing video-on-demand platform Videoland.

Bio: Daan Odijk is the lead data scientist at RTL. In 2016, he obtained his PhD from the University of Amsterdam, researching search algorithms for news. Subsequently, he joined journalism start-up Blendle to lead the personalization team. At RTL since 2018, Daan leads a team of a dozen data scientists and engineers, delivering data-powered products across RTL, including personalization for RTL Nieuws and Videoland.