Last week I attended IBM (IBM) World of Watson as both a speaker and an attendee, and today as I sit in my neighborhood Starbucks (SBUX) thinking about everything, all I can say is WOW! This was one of the most interesting, inspiring and amazing events I have ever attended. And we are still in the very early stages of Watson, Cognitive and AI. I invite you to follow me as I learn more and write more about the wonderful world of Watson, all the companies that work with it and how it will change our industries, our businesses and our lives. As a wireless analyst and columnist, I come at this world of Watson from the wireless, telecom, internet and television angle.

Last week, IBM released a public beta of Watson Analytics, a platform for data exploration, visualization and predictive analytics. This product follows on Microsoft's Azure Machine Learning service, which provides cloud-based machine learning solutions. Interested to see how the offerings compare, I set up accounts with both services and set out to explore several datasets. For fairness, I should note that IBM's Watson analytics is in a public beta, while Microsoft's product is a significantly more mature offering. Besides relative maturity, the more striking difference between the products is the fundamentally different use cases they address.

People say there's a first for everything. A few weeks ago, I attended my first big tech conference, the IBM Watson Developer's Conference. For many, it may not be a big deal, but it sure was for me. I represented a real organization, got an attendee badge to prove it, and even missed a day of my senior year of high school. AOL #BUILTBYGIRLS, a platform encouraging girls to be builders and creators in our tech-enabled economy, offered me the opportunity to serve as its ambassador. My mission was to learn about up and coming IBM Watson technology, promote #BUILTBYGIRLS, and advocate for girls to take their place in the tech world.

IBM ibm says it is trying to make it a little easier for its American workers to find the best cancer treatments. Beginning in January 2017, IBM employees in the U.S. will be able to use Watson supercomputer technology to help find the most effective oncology drugs and clinical trials for their specific cancers, IBM announced. "For anyone receiving the diagnosis, or supporting a loved one through it, cancer can be overwhelming," Kyu Rhee, MD, chief health officer, IBM Watson Health, said in the release, adding, "With this first-ever U.S. rollout of the technology, the full breadth and depth of Watson's services can benefit an entire population of individuals who need them." It's unclear just how much of IBM's workforce will receive the benefits (the firm has 377,000 employees worldwide, although it doesn't specify how many are in the U.S.) but the company says that many of the services will be covered by several of its American health plans. IBM's push into health care has been defined by its data-driven approach, especially when it comes to cancer.

A recent spate of potent anti-tumor drugs, from ones that target cancers like smart bombs to ones that work with the body's immune system, have excited cancer doctors. But one fact has tempered their enthusiasm; given enough time, most cancers find a way to become resistant to the drugs, rendering them powerless and causing patients to relapse. The danger is that these doctors will have nothing more to throw at the disease. Researchers at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT are hoping to solve that problem by teaming up with IBM Watson Health to find answers that only reams of data can provide. The mission is to sequence the genomes of tumors from thousands of patients who have different kinds of cancer--first when they are diagnosed, then again when they stop responding to drugs that initially worked in controlling their disease. The data will allow scientists to find patterns of genetic changes in the tumors that might signal resistance and help them identify people who are at higher risk of developing resistance early on.

The utopia of driverless cars may still be out of reach, but General Motors wants to ensure that today's vehicles provide a unique or individual experience. The carmaker has partnered with IBM to develop what GM calls a "cognitive mobility platform" that will deliver personalized content while on the road. The partnership brings together GM's connected vehicle system OnStar with IBM's learning supercomputer Watson in the form of a platform called OnStar Go. According to a press release, OnStar Go is the auto industry's first such cognitive computing platform and will give drivers the opportunity to connect or interact with their favored brands while behind the wheel. Or to put it another way, the platform will make sure the driver makes the most of her or his time in the car. "Combining OnStar's industry leading vehicle connectivity and data capabilities with IBM Watson APIs will create experiences that allow drivers and passengers to achieve greater levels of efficiency and safety," said General Motors.

IBM captured our imaginations when it unveiled Watson, the artificial intelligence computer capable of playing--and winning--the "Jeopardy" game show. Since then, Big Blue has been introducing Watson's analytics and learning capabilities across various industries, including health care and information security. Cognitive security technology such as Watson for Cybersecurity can change how information security professionals defend against attacks by helping them digest vast amounts of data. IBM Security is currently in the middle of a year-long research project working with eight universities to help train Watson to tackle cybercrime. Watson has to learn the "language of cybersecurity" to understand what a threat is, what it does, and what indicators are related.

IBM's Watson IoT is aimed at bringing together artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as machine learning, deep learning, machine reasoning, natural language processing (NLP), and computer vision and applying them to industrial Internet of Things (IoT) applications. The platform collects data, analyzes it, and puts the data into a business context to solve specific problems that include asset performance, facility management, operations, product development, health and safety, and predictive maintenance, among others. One of the big differentiators for Watson IoT is the use of IBM's Blockchain platform for specific IoT applications, where IoT devices can send data to private blockchain ledgers that can be used for shared transactions with tamper-proof security. Rather than collecting, storing, and managing all of your IoT data centrally, the blockchain's distributed replication allows businesses to access and supply IoT data in a decentralized fashion. Centralized silos can be expensive and difficult to manage, especially when applied to a data-hungry and data-sensitive area like IoT. Therefore, a decentralized, blockchain-based approach is beneficial for IoT.

Official IBM Watson Analytics Twitter account managed by @HollyNielsen, @CatNickery & @ForsythMAlexand.

Mark 2016 as the year that researchers applied artificial intelligence (AI) to the challenges of cybersecurity. If machines can steer our cars and predict our shopping habits, then why not watch over our networks and servers too? IBM in May 2016 announced Watson for Cyber Security, in which the IT behemoth began teaching its pattern-recognition supercomputer to learn the difference between safe and risky data. That could ease the burden on overworked cybersecurity professionals, IBM hopes. Several universities involved with that project began having students train the system within the past several weeks, explained IBM Watson's Jeb Linton, chief security architect.