Karakun @ Voxxed Days Ticino
The eighth edition of Voxxed Days Ticino will take place on 20 January 2023 at Palazzo die Congressi in Lugano. The hybrid software conference offers a broad spectrum of interesting talks from local and international speakers. With Markus Schlichting and Iryna Dohndorf, two Karakun experts are also part of the schedule.
Singularity by mistake – why my AI is wiping out humanity

In movies, we are often led to believe that an artificial intelligence has the ability to autonomously rise up against humanity and usher in the end of the world. Given the current state of technology, however, this nightmare idea is nothing more than a mere fantasy.
But why are technology giants such as Elon Musk nevertheless “afraid” of the AI future? Is our AI really going against humanity or is it actually just doing exactly what we have asked it to do?
In this lecture, Iryna Dohndorf looks at the failed attempts of machine learning algorithms and their resulting outcomes, some of which are significantly more amusing than you would expect.
Pushing documentation (so it doesn’t hurt anymore)

As developers, we love solving problems with technology. It helps us make our users’ lives – or at least their jobs – easier. But what happens when technology suddenly causes more problems than it solves?
Both we as developers and the admins of our solutions appreciate good documentation in such cases. But what is “good” documentation? How much documentation is sufficient and what does it take? How can documentation be created and maintained without getting too far away from the code? Or to put it another way: how do you integrate a dev toolchain with documentation tools?
After this talk, you will know which tools we use to make it easier for us to create, maintain and use documentation in our everyday development work. We will take a look at setups and approaches to solutions in current projects with small and large “helpers” from the open source world – from AsciiDoc with Gradle to DocToolChain and Antora.
Do you wish to learn more about us and our topics? We look forward to welcoming you at our booth. Alternatively, you are of course welcome to contact us by e-mail or phone.
ASAM International Conference 2022
The 5th ASAM International Conference continues the biennial series of ASAM International Conferences that address aspects of ADAS / AD development, with a focus on standardization. In 2022, after a one-year delay due to Corona, we are bringing together decision makers and technical experts again to share their experience and discuss possible next steps.
For more information please visit the ASAM Website.
At our booth, we will present our product family EXOKNOX for efficient management of engineering data to the public.

In the context of a typical development process, EXOKNOXhub and EXOKNOXfree contribute significant efficiencies at the beginning of a development loop, right through to the construction of digital and real prototypes.
EXOKNOXlyzium comes into play when these prototypes produce results, such as raw timing data or bus data, which need to be managed, analyzed and compared with previous results.
Want to get to know EXOKNOX in detail?
Software for efficient data protection
The revised Swiss Data Protection Act (DSG) will become effective on September 1, 2023. By this date, companies must have implemented technical and organizational measures to protect personal data following the new legal requirements. Violations could result in severe penalties.
In addition, there is an increasing risk of cyber attacks in which unprotected or inaccurately stored customer and employee data are exploited. That leads to reputational damage and, in the worst case, to the loss of annoyed customers.
Together with our partner krm, we wrote the following article about why software solutions are essential for effectively and efficiently implementing data protection measures. This article was published in issue 11/2022 of Swiss IT Magazine.
Identifying personal data in heterogeneous IT environments
One such application for automating manual processes is our award-winning PID Cockpit. The „PID Cockpit“ is a joint development between Karakun and the Swiss Information Governance Competence Centre (krm.swiss).
This AI-based software solution lets users efficiently identify personal data in heterogeneous IT environments. For this purpose, the PID Cockpit can search all data sources whose files can be accessed (directly or via API). It is irrelevant whether the data is structured or unstructured. The system recognizes industry- and company-specific text types when set up correctly. It can be run on local servers or in the cloud, as required.
The benefits for users are simplicity and the associated time and cost savings. Automated, transparent AI processes also minimize errors and make search results reproducible and consistent.
Would you like to learn more about the PID Cockpit? We would be happy to advise you. You can get a first overview in our product flyer.
Take One, Action!
Its 6pm on a Wednesday night in November. The office is dark and empty. Everybody went home to their loved ones. Everybody? Wait, there is still light in the meeting room. Bowls of chips, chilled bottles of beer, laptops, colored pens and 6 heads in a discussion? What is going on in the Karakun Office?
You just witnessed the start of the very first DesignGarten taking place. The DesignGarten is a new meeting format similar to the Developers Hackergarten. A group of passionate people meet to discuss design topics, work on projects, test out new ideas- all related to the area of User Experience Design. We started by collecting the topics everybody brought and then started discussing about User Experience Design and collaboration. How to collaborate within the company, with developers, with the customer? Everybody shared their insights and thoughts, and we ended up having a very vivid discussion which continued way into our tasty pizza dinner. After dinner we tackled a more practical issue by looking into the details of a design project: An “Open Space Allocator”- a concept for an app which will help planning and scheduling sessions for open space conferences and events. We talked about potential users, functionalities, risks, and implementation ideas.
Take Two. Aaand – Action!
All the participants enjoyed the first DesignGarten and are looking forward to the next one, which will take place in the beginning of 2023. Simply join the DesignGarten meetup group at https://www.meetup.com/de-DE/designgarten-basel/ and get notified. Or follow us on Twitter or LinkedIn. We look forward to meeting you next time!
AI-SDV 2022
AI-SDV is the place to be for everyone involved in advanced search and data applications, text mining and visualization technologies. AI-SDV 2022 took place on Oct 10-11, 2022, in Vienna (Austria).
Karakun expert Dr. Holger Keibel presented a talk about information extraction from tabular documents.
Abstract & Slides
In our customer projects involving automated document processing, we often encounter document types providing crucial data in the form of tables. While established text analytics algorithms are usually optimized to operate on running text, they tend to produce rather poor results on tables as they do not capture the non-sequential relations inside them (e.g. interpret the content of a table cell relative to its column title, interpret line breaks inside a cell differently from line breaks between cells or rows).
While there are elaborate information extraction products in the market for a few highly specific types of tabular documents, there is no general approach out there. The main cause for this is the fact that table structures can be encoded by a heterogenous range of layout means (e.g. column boundaries can be signaled by lines vs. aligned text vs. white space).
In this talk, we will illustrate several solutions that we have developed for a range of challenges occurring in this context, both for scanned and digitally generated documents.
Want to learn more about how language analytics and information extraction can boost you business?
PID Cockpit wins 2nd place
After being nominated for the sol.IT-Award, we were happy to have another highlight a couple of days later:
At the official award ceremony at the Bits + Currywurst, we won second place with our PID Cockpit.

Claudine Zillmann and Markus Schlichting were on site for us at the Signal-Iduna-Park in Dortmund and were finally able to receive one of the coveted certificates.

We congratulate Frederik Dürr and the team of MyShoeFitter GmbH on the first place and are already looking forward to the next edition of this exciting competition..
PID Cockpit simplifies data protection tasks
According to national and international data protection laws, every person has the right to know what data is stored about him or her, in order to have it deleted or corrected. Since this information is nowadays stored in a wide variety of data pools, requests for information and deletion can make identifying personal data a real challenge. Data protection officers, governance & compliance specialists, and HR departments in SMEs and large enterprises need a simple yet effective solution.
In contrast to traditional approaches, the k2 PID Cockpit allows direct access to the data sets in question and the connection of a wide variety of data sources. It offers transparency in the identification of a wide variety of structured as well as unstructured data sources containing personal data.
Karakun nominated for sol.IT-Award
Since 2013, the IT Club Dortmund has been awarding solutions with the sol.IT-Award. The sol.IT-Award honors products that excel through outstanding customer benefits.
Our submission with the k2 PID Cockpit has made it to the final round. Which of the companies finally wins the award will be revealed at the official ceremony at the closing event of #Diwodo22 during the Bits + Currywurst.
About k2 PID Cockpit
According to national and international data protection laws, every person has the right to know what data is stored about him or her, in order to have it deleted or corrected. Since this information is nowadays stored in a wide variety of data pools, requests for information and deletion can make identifying personal data a real challenge. Data protection officers, governance & compliance specialists, and HR departments in SMEs and large enterprises need a simple yet effective solution.
In contrast to traditional approaches, the k2 PID Cockpit allows direct access to the data sets in question and the connection of a wide variety of data sources. It offers transparency in the identification of a wide variety of structured as well as unstructured data sources containing personal data.
Digitale Woche Dortmund 2022
The #diwodo is all about one thing: digitalisation. From Sep 26-30, 2022, the focus will be on searching and finding, learning and getting to know, trying and understanding. What brings everyone together is the interest in digital offerings and solutions.
The entire spectrum of the world of digitalisation and innovation will be presented in over 200 events in numerous Dortmund locations. Everyone can take what he or she is interested in. Uncomplicated, open and free of charge.
Our experts have prepared the following presentations for the #diwodo:
We are offering all talks online, some of them even hybrid. For more details, please click on the respective tile or visit https://diwodo.de/veranstaltungsprogramm and enter “Karakun” as search term.
Hungry for more?
Bits+Currywurst in the unique atmosphere of Germany’s largest football stadium in Dortmund offers impulses from top-class keynote speakers and industry experts on all aspects of digitalisation and is the ideal platform for networking and exchanging information on the latest trends and technologies.
On 29 September 2022, from 2:25 p.m., you will have another chance to satisfy your hunger for knowledge with the talk “Arbeite agil, hamse gesacht…” by and with our experts Claudine Zillmann and Stephan Classen in a typical conference atmosphere.
IAA TRANSPORTATION 2022
From 20-25 September 2022, we will be presenting our products EXOKNOX and Lyzium out of our business unit Digital Engineering Solutions to the expert audience at our booth C2017 in hall 13.
Accelerated development processes, shorter time-to-market
In the development of complex mechatronic products, such as commercial vehicles, large amounts of data are continuously generated and used in all phases of the engineering process. Our software solutions provide crucial building blocks for fully digitalised product development with a focus on data quality, data context and efficient data management and processing.

As a development foundation, EXOKNOXhub is the central place for specifying, organising, managing and analysing all the data that influences the behaviour of systems and components and defines the DNA of your product. On the results data side, EXOKNOX Lyzium is the home for all test, simulation and ECU data generated during the development process.
In summary, EXOKNOX software is the key to accelerating core development processes by more than 75% and thus shortening time-to-market.
Simplify your product development
We would be happy to show you live in Hanover how you can benefit from using EXOKNOX and Lyzium. Simply send us an e-mail and arrange your personal appointment.
PID Cockpit launched
Together with the consulting company Kompetenzzentrum Records Management (krm), we launched the PID Cockpit for identifying and cleansing personal data in heterogeneous IT landscapes. The solution based on the text analysis platform HIBU uses automated AI-based processes for identifying and extracting personal data.
On September 1, 2023, the new Swiss data privacy law will take effect. Individuals will then have the right to know what personal identifiable data (PID) companies store about it. Upon request, companies have to delete or correct this data. Thus, data protection officers, governance & compliance specialists, and HR departments in SMEs and large companies should be well prepared.
Today’s heterogeneous data storage with different data pools can make requests for information, deletion, and the identification and accessibility of personal data, a real challenge. That’s where the PID Cockpit helps:
Unlike traditional approaches, it allows direct access to affected data pools and the integration of various data sources. It offers transparency in identifying a wide range of structured and unstructured data sources that contain personal data.
By automatically locating documents and records containing sensitive personal data, companies benefit from massive time and cost savings and comply with requests for information and deletion. (Elisabeth Maier, CEO Karakun)
The PID Cockpit builds on our text analysis platform HIBU, can easily be adapted to individual customer needs and can be integrated into a wide variety of IT infrastructures. The solution searches for personal data in standard and proprietary “home-grown” solutions as long as there is an application programming interface (API) to access the data sources. The system can recognize both company and industry-specific text types and language patterns. It can be hosted on-premises and in the cloud. Finally, the PID Cockpit can also build a basis for assessing whether data storage complies with legal requirements.
The benefits of the PID Cockpit are its consistency and reproducibility.
Automated AI-based processes replace monotonous and error-prone manual work. And the identification and extraction of information are objectified. The results of the PID Cockpit are insofar resilient, reproducible and consistent. (Bruno Wildhaber, CEO of krm)
We are happy to discuss your individual requirements. Give us a call at +41 61 551 36 00 or send us an email to hibu@karakun.com. Or download our product brochure for a first impression.
prostep ivip Symposium 2022
“Innovations for Systems Creation” is the motto of this year’s prostep ivip Symposium. The event will take place on June 8 and 9, 2022 at the ICS Stuttgart. Central topics are Digital Transformation, Autonomous Driving, Internet of Things, Systems Engineering, Industry 4.0, Digital Twin and many more!
At its anniversary edition – the prostep ivip Symposium celebrates its 25th anniversary – participants from science and industry, opinion leaders and trendsetters, pioneers and innovaters will meet on site and online.
At our booth, we will present our products in the area of Digital Engineering Solutions: our measurement and simulation data management platform Lyzium and EXOKNOX, our solution for functional data management (FDM).