Meet Chris Konarski, Vice President, Client Engineering, IBM.

Chris leads the Client Engineering team at IBM, renowned for forming a global team that partners closely with clients to develop cutting-edge tech solutions. He's a master at sparking new business ideas and guiding teams towards success. Off the clock, Chris loves to immerse himself in nature, watching wildlife or casting a line far out at sea.

In this episode, we discussed:

• How IBM Builds Teams: We delved into how IBM assembles teams to support clients with complex challenges. These teams typically include designers, architects, business technology leaders, AI engineers, and platform engineers, often delivering a basic working product within 30 days.
• AI in Action: Chris shared insights from over 5000 AI projects, highlighting that most clients use AI to boost employee productivity, generate code, and enhance customer support. We also explored AI's growing role in manufacturing.
• Hackathons at IBM: Our chat revealed insights into IBM’s tailored hackathons, whether for a single client or multiple clients. Chris highlighted how these events focus on real business challenges that capture the attention of top executives. Together, IBM and clients form teams, really showing their partnership. We also covered IBM’s massive internal hackathon, which involved 170,000 employees—that’s 70% of their workforce! This event not only deepens employees' understanding of their products but also drives home the ability to sell them effectively, and generates a long list of potential improvements identified by AI.

Here are some links Chris provided:

• TechZone
• IBM Client Engineering
• Watsonx – IBM AI Platform
• Client and Partner Stories