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IDC Saudi Arabia CIO Summit 2022 Will Explore KSA’s Digital Transformation
The two-day event will explore the Kingdom’s accelerated pace of innovation, its evolving technology landscape, and present-day strategies.
Saudi Arabia is undergoing a remarkable digital transformation guided by its Saudi Vision 2030 strategic framework, whose overarching goal is to lessen the country’s dependence on oil by diversifying its economy and enhancing innovation. The IDC Saudi Arabia CIO Summit 2022 edition will explore the Kingdom’s digital transformation over the course of two days filled with discussions, panel sessions, and keynote presentations from regional and global technology experts alike.
“This event will explore the Kingdom’s accelerated pace of innovation, its evolving technology landscape, and present-day strategies that the country’s organizations are implementing to transform into digitally resilient future enterprises,” states International Data Corporation (IDC) on its website.
The in-person event will be hosted on September 19 & 20, 2022 at the Fairmont Hotel Riyadh, a luxurious five-star hotel located in the Business Gate Complex, and those who would like to attend it can register free of charge to learn how the Kingdom’s CIOs and their international partners are building resilient digital infrastructures to make Saudi Arabia a leading ICT nation within the next decade.
Hamza Naqshbandi, Associate Vice President (Saudi Arabia & Bahrain) at IDC, will kick off the event with a welcome address, and his speech will be followed by a talk about tech strategies for a digital-first world given by Steven Frantzen, IDC’s Senior Vice President & Regional Managing Director (EMEA).
The long list of confirmed speakers who will share their valuable experience with the attendees of the IDC Saudi Arabia CIO Summit 2022 edition includes experts in the field, respected practitioners, and leaders from the industry, including:
- Jason Roos, CIO of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).
- Phil Andrews, Regional Vice President of Northern and Eastern Europe for Red Hat.
- Stephane Monboisset, Business Development Manager at Fortinet.
- Zaid Ghattas, Senior Commercial Lead at AMD.
- Turki Aldahmash, Executive Director of Business Technology (CTO) at National Center for Performance Measurement (Adaa).
- Neil Harbisson, the world’s first officially recognized human cyborg.
In addition to its main agenda, the IDC Saudi Arabia CIO Summit 2022 edition will also play host to the IDC Excellence Awards to recognize the efforts of the country’s leading technology executives across 3 categories (CISO of the Year, CIO of the Year, and Women in Technology & Business), with a winner and 10 finalists named in each. A live awards ceremony will be held on Day 2 and hosted on a virtual platform.
As a premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology sector, IDC is deeply familiar with the impact of technology on the world around us. Its worldwide network of 1,300 analysts spans 110 countries, helping public and private sector decision-makers alike make fact-based technology decisions to achieve their key business objectives.
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Google Releases Veo 2 AI Video Tool To MENA Users
The state-of-the-art video generation model is now available in Gemini, offering realistic AI-generated videos with better physics, motion, and detail.
Starting today, users of Gemini Advanced in the MENA region — and globally — can tap into Veo 2, Google’s next-generation video model.
Originally unveiled in 2024, Veo 2 has now been fully integrated into Gemini, supporting multiple languages including Arabic and English. The rollout now brings Google’s most advanced video AI directly into the hands of everyday users.
Veo 2 builds on the foundations of its predecessor with a more sophisticated understanding of the physical world. It’s designed to produce high-fidelity video content with cinematic detail, realistic motion, and greater visual consistency across a wide range of subjects and styles. Whether recreating natural landscapes, human interactions, or stylized environments, the model is capable of interpreting and translating written prompts into eight-second 720p videos that feel almost handcrafted.
Users can generate content directly through the Gemini platform — either via the web or mobile apps. The experience is pretty straightforward: users enter a text-based prompt, and Veo 2 returns a video in 16:9 landscape format, delivered as an MP4 file. These aren’t just generic clips — they can reflect creative, abstract, or highly specific scenarios, making the tool especially useful for content creators, marketers, or anyone experimenting with visual storytelling.
Also Read: Getting Started With Google Gemini: A Beginner’s Guide
To ensure transparency, each video is embedded with SynthID — a digital watermark developed by Google’s DeepMind. The watermark is invisible to the human eye but persists across editing, compression, and sharing. It identifies the video as AI-generated, addressing concerns around misinformation and media authenticity.
While Veo 2 is still in its early phases of public rollout, the technology is part of a broader push by Google to democratize advanced AI tools. With text-to-image, code generation, and now video creation integrated into Gemini, Google is positioning the platform as a full-spectrum creative assistant.
Access to Veo 2 starts today and will continue expanding in the coming weeks. Interested users can try it out at gemini.google.com or through the Gemini app on Android and iOS.
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