At IT.CON, we spoke with Saarland’s IT community, state administration and representatives from healthcare and inclusion. Our topics: AI personas for better citizen services, accessible public administration, data governance and gamification in medical technology.
Introduction
Who’s who in Saarland’s IT community? At IT.CON, we quickly found out. We were there with our Centigrade booth and had plenty of conversations. The trade fair for IT, cybersecurity and AI took place on September 29, 2026, at the Saarlandhalle in Saarbrücken, organised by CYBR360 together with Congress-Centrum Saar and other partners.
The state administration visits our booth
One particularly exciting moment came when the entire state administration suddenly stood in front of us, including State Secretary and CIO Elena Yorgova-Ramanauskas. She was accompanied by, among others, Uwe Conradt, Lord Mayor of Saarbrücken, and Peter Gillo, former director of the Saarbrücken Regional Association. Pitching to this audience was challenging, but that was exactly what made it so interesting for our CEO Thomas Immich.
AI personas for better citizen services
The focus was on virtual AI personas and how they can help improve citizen services. Saarland’s public broadcaster SR had already covered what this could look like during a visit by the SPD to our office: Watch the SR report (in German)
Our approach: we collect qualitative and quantitative data through conversations with real people and make their perspectives accessible to product teams at any time through AI personas. This helps teams find the right solutions to the right problems, even when the people affected cannot be involved in every release. Participatory design remains the starting point; personas do not replace conversations with real people. Dr. Frank Nägele also spoke in the report: he advocates a human-centred transformation in Saarland and wants AI to contribute to the thinking process, but critically and not simply as a means to an end.
Inclusion and accessibility in public administration
The question of who we are actually building digital services for becomes very concrete in public administration. One conversation that particularly stayed with us was about inclusion and accessibility, using parental allowance applications as an example: how can forms and processes be designed so that everyone can use them? The response from the political delegation and the visit by Miteinander Leben Lernen gGmbH (MLL) to our booth showed just how relevant better digital public administration is in practice.
Data governance and digital sovereignty
Two other topics kept us busy. One was data governance, which we discussed with a cloud provider from Saarland. This topic has been on our minds for some time. Since our visit to Mistral AI’s AI Now Summit, our hopes for digital sovereignty and European solutions have grown even stronger. We shared our impressions of the summit in our journal: AI Now Summit 2026: Centigrade at Mistral AI in Paris
Gamification in medical technology
The other major topic was medical technology, especially in combination with gamification. Infarct Protect visited our booth and showed great interest in our project MightyU, a health game for children with cerebral palsy. We talked about the opportunities gamification offers in healthcare. We were delighted by the exchange.
We are still very proud of MightyU. Take a look: Read the MightyU success story
Conclusion
All in all, we had a great experience with good conversations, new contacts and plenty of inspiration. We would love to come back.