Users still kicking the tires on IBM's cognitive applications

About 17,000 people attended this week's IBM World of Watson conference. Many of them were trying to figure out what exactly to do with the cognitive computing engine. After an initial Watson-specific conference drew just over 1,000 people to Brooklyn, N.Y., in May 2015, IBM this year combined that event into its much larger IBM Insight analytics conference and changed the name to World of Watson. But the growing interest shown in Watson by attendees is a testament to how hot all things related to artificial intelligence are right now. At the same time, many businesses are just starting to think about how they can use cognitive applications like Watson.