Ludovic Copéré

HDTV preps up in Europe

The day after seeing beautiful HD Ready screens almost at every corner of the CeBIT (with special mentions to the always fantastic Qualia 004 projector, 005 LCD and 006 rear-projector as well as the massive 57" LCD and 102" Plasma Samsung was showcasing), I was in London to attend the 2nd European HDTV Summit. More than just the buzz created around the recent public announcements of major broadcasters like TPS, Premiere and BSkyB to launch HD offerings before the 2006 World Cup, the first and most striking impression that comes out of such a gathering is the increasing momentum to make HD a pervasive component of audio-video entertainment for the years to come.

Beyond the now obvious choice of satellite operators, HD is positioning itself as a key growth element in the IP world: NTL, a large cable and multi-service provider in UK, announced today that they had been experimenting with ADSL2+ and HDTV. This example, among the many other significant trials and plans to massively move towards HD + IP over Europe, amplifies the formula of combining easier accessibility (in terms of networks capacity, but also relevance of the service  and "triple play" packaging) with better quality (first with DVD-quality over ADSL, and now with HD).

The missing link could therefore well be on the content side itself. However, with digital production being more affordable than ever, and distribution being one of the turning point of the nascent "Internet 2.0" (think Peer-to-peer, torrents and recommendation-based diffusion), it is only a matter of time before the long tail shows its true power: more than a niche filler, a working alternative and complement to vertically integrated broadcast media.

Going to CeBIT

Okay, I know the CeBIT 2005 has already opened its doors for two days (with glittering pictures and live impressions for instance on Gizmodo), but anyway I'll be in Hannover on the 16th to have a (first-timer) view at the newest and trendiest in the IT world. I'm already preparing good shoes (thanks Rodrigo for the foot-saving tip!) for what looms itself as a heavy walking  and brochure-picking day.

If you happen also to be there on the 16th, drop me an e-mail so that we can catch-up.

On to 2005!

Quite calm blogging activity those past weeks, which have actually been quite an hectic period for me of moving from Stockholm and settling down back in France in Paris, where I have just started working at Sony (more on that soon). Now almost set-up, so keep a close eye around here :-)

In the meantime, I wish heartily to you all Happy New Year / Heureuse Année / Feliz año nuevo / gott nytt  år /  あけまして　おめでとう　ございます ! May this year bring dreams to reality and hope to success.

Sweden - US Entrepreneurial Forum 2004

Yesterday I was at the Sweden - US Entrepreneurial Forum 2004, which was very insightful in showing the similarities and differences in innovation, legal frameworks and capital accessibility in the two countries. Firstly, as underlined by Mario Cardullo, Counselor to the Under Secretary on Entrepreneurism and Technology, US Department of Commerce, taking the entrepreneurial initiative is by essence an individual responsibility, but it is encouraged (or hampered) by the local environment, which should ideally provide:
- A culture of failure: in this respect, we all have to learn from the USA, where (in most of the cases), failing does not blacklist the entrepreneur, but even gives him credibility in the eyes of investors as a person with guts and drive.
- An appropriate tax structure: high social taxes are in this case not discouraging creation as there are less incentive to go out of one's "comfort zone".
- An consistent training: a component quickly growing here in Sweden, both in Stockholm or Göteborg.

Looking back at the different panels, a shared redline was definitely the concept of networks:
- During the entrepreneurial training, with the close clustering of academia, industry and the support state (i.e. the so-called "Triple Helix" model).
- In the management of innovation and technology: to bridge the "valley of death" gap between funded research and commercial applications, thanks to early-stage funding capital to transform ideas into innovations. This means a rationalized and more daring government through specific programs (e.g. SBIR in the USA) as well as a smoother links between them and the entrepreneurs.
- In the legal and regulatory framework in place. For instance, an organization like the Näringslivets Regelnämnd (NNR - Board of Swedish Industry and Commerce for Better Regulation) maintains close contacts with the private and public sector in order to bring forth laws and regulations promoting entrepreneurship.
- For capital formation: importance of Business Angels Network (e.g. EBAN in Europe, BANSEA in South-East Asia...) and other formal and informal gatherings and associations to use the "catalystic" effect of risk capital the best way.

To wrap-up, some food for thought: quoting a panelist, "The space is divided in three - hunters, gatherers, and farmers". Hunters as the entrepreneurs taking the highest risks, gatherers as the investors, and farmers as the managers settling and growing the venture.

Ericsson and the future of the mobile

Low blogging those past two days, mainly because of the crammed schedule during Armada, the job fair at KTH. Among the many interesting things out there, the grand come-back of Ericsson was probably the most noticeable. More than just a big booth (with nice flashy give-away telephone collars), the company also hosted several events to better understand what's inside the mobile telecommunication giant.

One of those events was a panel discussion on R&D and future technology trends, and it reminded us all, if needed at all, that the telecommunication industry is probably one of the most complex: as underlined by Ulf Wahlberg, Vice President Research, making your shiny new 3G mobile phone able to seamlessly call a 60 year-old phone sitting in a dusty corner in the outskirts of Mexico is no easy task indeed. A perfect (yet of such an ironic coincidence) example of the complexity to handle is the major network failure Bouygues Telecom suffered yesterday, effectively preventing most of its 6 millions customers to make or receive calls during the whole day.

Yet the future looks bright and open: 3.5G is already showing up its potential in the labs, with the new HSDPA (High Speed Digital Packet Access). In Kista (the "Wireless Valley", where Ericsson's HQ are located), Ericsson is experimenting this future generation of mobile access through prototype base stations in vans that drive around in the neighborhood, effectively allowing up to 5Mbit/s. Concerning services, the convergence towards an all-IP, Internet based platform opens up the way for integrated multimedia services (think Triple Play - broadband, Voice over IP and Video on Demand, directly on your mobile phone). In that sense, the development of IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) should hopefully make it easier for terminal manufacturers, operators and service providers to roll-out their contents and services in an always shortening Time-To-Market.

The key challenge might well be beyond the technological development: in order to avoid the self-created and sustained hype around 3G the whole industry suffered from, it is important to always put those innovations back in a user-driven and customer-centered perspective: such said customer might not always be rational, but at the end of the day, he's the one who sets the pace for the sector.

Bloggforum: knowledge, fun and mobility in the blogosphere

Well, as you might have noticed from my lack of real-time posting, there was no wireless at the Bloggforum (at least, none that I could actually use). Nevertheless it was extremely interesting to listen to the three panels, which approached blogs (eller kanske skulle jag skriva "bloggar" istället) through different angles. I especially liked the discussion on how to recognize "true" and "false" information in the blogosphere:  as Stephanie  pointed out, an underlying parameter of blogs are their use as social aggregators.

"It's hard to lie, but it's harder not to be spot" in the virtual world: tools like permalinks and trackbacks make (most) blogs networked instead of being single, stand-alone entities. When thinking on whether blogs can (and should) be considered on the same level as "respected" traditional medias, one can draw the parallel to the attention Wikipedia has received: can it replace established encyclopedias? Can it actually achieve the ambitious goal of gathering and offering neutral and objective knowledge? I think such questions take the issue at the wrong end, and instead we should see those emergent tools as a great opportunity to sharpen our critical reading.

I should not forget critical writing: blogging isn't just about displaying and forwarding pre-digested knowledge; it's first and foremost an open door to produce knowledge: the first signs of the convergence of complementary publication tools - think Flickr, podcasting and Chatango, can help achieving greater synchronization and information sharing, both on a private level and in a professional context, as to bring a new fresh perspective to Knowledge Management. What's really missing however is the real-time and "on the move" capability, which is precisely why the mobile sector is such an exciting environment to be in (I already mentioned Smart Mobs before, but I can't stress enough how deep and inspiring both the book and the weblog are in this domain).

More than just "moblog" (i.e. pictures or short texts) , it is the promise of pervasive "mobile-blogging" that can actually better connect people and information, both in the physical and digital worlds. Sounds far-fetched? Well it is still as of today, but it's up to us to make it real...

Thanks again Erik and Stefan for organizing the event, and to all the inspiring and enthusiast people I met and talked to at Tranan!

Going to Bloggforum Stockholm

A quick post before I head to the Bloggforum Stockholm 2004 in a few minutes. With 15 panelists and surely a large blogging audience, it sounds interesting.

Now, as it seems there will be Wi-Fi at the Forum, I may try live blogging there :-)

Howard Rheingold coming to Stockholm

Howard Rheingold is coming tomorrow morning at Handelshögskolan in Stockholm: for those who have not heard of him, he is an Internet Guru, founder of The Well, one of the first (if not the first) true online Internet community,first redactor-in-chief of HotWired - the online presence of Wired, the journalistic emblem of the worldwide digital society, and more recently author of Smart Mobs, a book on "the next social revolution" through digital and mobile technologies enabling individuals, groups and societies as a whole  organize and coordinate themselves better and thus transforming themselves into "Smart Mobs".

It goes without saying that I'm looking forward to it - rest assured that I'll blog more on that after tomorrow's seminar!

Going to the Search Engine Strategy 2004 Conference

Tomorrow I'll be heading to the Search Engine Strategy 2004 Conference & Expo, organized here in Stockholm by Jupiter Media (thanks Henrik for the tip!). It will be interesting to get acquainted with the latest and hottest in the search field, hopefully streamlined from the hype far too often present in media articles (yes, I did read that Google's capitalization just reached $50 billion, effectively topping up Yahoo!'s mere $48 billion).

For those interested in coming to the conference, free passes to the exhibition are available.

Great time at China Day

Yesterday evening I was out for the China Day, the final event of the year-long Project China 2004, an cooperation between fellow students from the Royal Institute of Technology (go KTH!) and the Stockholm School of Economics. Its objective is to raise the mutual awareness between Sweden and China, so as to contribute to drive up the economic and cultural exchanges between the two countries. In cooperation with many large Swedish companies (AstraZeneca, Electrolux, SKF...), the project hold a "Sweden Day" in April at Fudan University in Shanghai (one of the top Chinese University, along with Tsinghua and Jiao Tong) to promote Swedish companies among top Chinese students and encourage them to get into an international professional track.

Moreover, the three weeks spent in eastern China were an opportunity to conduct field studies through interviews of the general climate and trends in China, concerning the business opportunities, challenges and overall opening of the Asian giant to western exchanges. The resulting analysis has been compiled in a printed book and outlined yesterday: a major aspect is that, in many aspects, China is quickly growing beyond being merely the "cheap factory of the world" or an emerging but still distant "threat". Quite the opposite, and as already underlined by Loic at the World Economic Forum Weblog, "we do not realize the impact of China's growth and we are totally unprepared because of the speed at which the change happens", both in terms of end-consumer demands, needs and purchasing power (Shanghai is nicknamed the New-York of China not only for its striking skyline, but also for its new young generation that is a real driver for the local and national economy) as well as B2B exchanges.

One of the cornerstone of this new development phase is the deep changes in the educational systems and values promoted in front of what will eventually be the country's leaders of tomorrow: one cannot see Chinese studying abroad as a mere "brain-drain" from the Occident, but as a manifestation of the increased dialogue and cooperation in science, technology and business: and as noted by Ambassador Lu Feng Ding, such knowledge transfer contributes to more balanced and extensive bilateral relations.

While this does not smooth down all the challenges, it nevertheless opens up our eyes to look at a New China, with highly-educated and entrepreneurial graduates willing to take on driving the transforming Dragon. That is why, as much as China is striving to change and progress, we, as comfy Europeans, have to get prepared for China's growth, "a tougher event than anything we faced since World War Two" (Jeffrey E. Garten, Dean, Yale School of Management)!

Information Technology in Sweden and Japan

On Monday I was invited to an extremely interesting seminar on the uses and implactions of Information Technology (IT) both in Sweden and Japan. Organized by ITPS (Institutet för tillväxtpolitiska studier, i.e. Swedish Institute for Growth Policy Studies) , in cooperation with VINNOVA (the Swedish Agency for Innovation Systems), NUTEK (the Swedish Business Development Agency) and STEM (the Swedish Energy Agency), it gave a broad overview of the innovations and challenges in the two regions.

First were several presentations hilighting the state of the art in Japan in respect to IT:
- JEITA (the Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association) shed some light on the sucessful business models in the Japanese IT industry over the next 10 years : building on Japan's exceptional hardware, industrial and Intellectual Property assets, the country should strive towards an ubiquitous IT environment (From e-Life to u-Life - from electronics to ubiquity), as a part of the governmental policy of e-Japan. Through the convergence of sectors in which Japan has a strong presence (such as digital home appliances and mobile terminals) can the country grow as a leader in user-targeted IT innovations and uses.
- Representatives from Total Life and ALICE Forum explained the developments on the newest housing network equipments in Japan and the processes for standardizing and spreading its use. In comparison to what is being done in Sweden (for instance Svenska Bostäder's fiber-to-the-home city network in Vällingby), Japan seems more inclined towards smart house innovations, such as remote and centralized control, monitoring and surveillance. To illustrate this, we were shown an example of a wall socket featuring power, ethernet, TV and sensor access alltogether (pictured here).
- Speaking of sensors, the presentation from IPSquare underlined the impressive innovations occuring in Japan: they have developped a single-chip solution for processing information from versatile physical sensors (temperature, humidity, CO2 level...) and sending it over an IP network using standard protocols. thereby opening the way towards swarms of sensor-based intelligent agents.
- Showing that IT is diffusing itself into every economic sector in Japan, the presentation from SHIMIZU, a 200-year old construction group, underlined the influence of IT throughout the engineering process, with examples such as Mobile Phone Positioning System, Structural Health Monitoring System (important in earthquake-prone Japan), and Biotope Monitoring System.

After that, the seminar shifted towards IT in Sweden, with a special focus on governmental policy and social issues:
- Aiming for An Information Society for All, the Ministry of Industry, Employment and Communication explained Sweden's e-Government strategy, consisting of a specific structure and activity plan focusing on five prioritized areas: education, healthcare, broadband infrastructure, economic growth, and IT culture.
- Very logically, the focus was then put on the issue the ability to create a democratic information society for everyone, with a reflection on going from thinking IT as a tool for Democracy to Democracy in the Information Society. This would entail deep structural changes in the way democracy runs and is perceived by the citizens, but this is a far-reaching and long-term view that could position the Information Society as the founder for a renewed and updated democracy, just like the Industrial Revolution crafted the values and systems in which we are currently evolving.

As a perfect synthesis to bridge the views, assets and issues in Sweden and Japan, the seminar was concluded by an insightful reflection on what makes Sweden an Japan simultanesouly similar and different in the IT world. Both strong R&D and innovcation clusters with a strong home market, the two countries yet subtly differ in their respective strengths and weaknesses: international outlook, conceptual thinking and multidisciplinary thinking in Sweden, quicker Time To Market, playfulness of the domestic market and market push in Japan, to higlight a few.

All in all, this even was a great occasion to get a more global vision on what is driving IT in terms of innovation, markets and policies, thanks to the inspiring people present that day.

Slides of the EuroScience Forum

As promised, the slides presented at the session on Innovation and creativity in Europe are available on Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship's webpage.

I really enjoyed the presentations as well as the panel afterwards, as it clearly stressed on the needs for local initiatives (Science Parks, better synergies between leading universities and the regional business ecosystem) that in turn are included in European-level policies and initiatives for gaining a true innovation and creativity leadership. It however remains to be seen how it is possible to carry along the two (conflicting?) paths of creating "centers of excellence" scattered all over Europe and ensuring that all the member-states have reached a threshold level of scientific and technical outreach.

Going to the EuroScience Open Forum

From Wednesday 25th to Saturday 28th Stockholm will host the EuroScience Open Forum 2004, an european-level open conference on the current status, challenges and promises of science, technology and their impact on society. Organized by the EuroScience association, the gathering should be a good occasion to get an up-to-date view on the trends, policies and debates going on in Europe.

The programme is dense, to say the least, and as the page describes it as a smörgåsbord (Swedish self-serving buffet), it indeeds combines plenary lectures, seminars, open debates as well as exhibitions and events all around the city, thus trying to make it closer to a celebration of science than just yet-another dry succession of panels. As for me, I am most interested by the sessions on emerging fields and the ones on the policy issues in Europe (such as Innovation and creativity in Europe, organized by the Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship). The most difficult decision will be to choose among all the simultaneously scheduled events...

See you at Norra Latin and Folkets Hus!

東京 comes to Stockholm

Starting tomorrow, and until the 10th, the Venice of the North (i.e.Stockholm) will actually be pointing at the (far) east as it is holding Tokyo Style. Judging by the program, there is going to be a multitude of interesting events and exhibitions all over the city, ranging from the classical Tea Ceremony (茶の湯), flower arrangements (生花) and Noh (能狂言) theatre to music (both classical - Toru Takemitsu for instance, and pop' with several performances of invited Japanese bands and DJ's), cinema (finally the Swedes will be given the chance to enjoy Zatoichi and Battle Royale 2!) and seminars, while not forgetting the obligatory Anime festival (managed by blogging comrade Kim).

All in all, a very promising program, and an ambitious project. Depicted as a celebration of Japanese contemporary culture and urban lifestyle (taken from TSiS brochure), it sure is an innovative way of showing foreign culture by making it alive, upbeat, interactive and multiform. I look forward to attending as many of the events I can cram in my schedule, and to blogging about them.