Ludovic Copéré

Strategic Outlooks for European High Definition and IP TV

I know you may have been wondering where I was hiding or what was behind the (very unstringent) lack of update on this blog in those last few weeks. Well, I was quite a bit busy finishing up my Master's thesis I began back in January when starting my end-of-study internship at Sony in Paris.

After those six wonderful months of discovering, investigating, getting in touch with and living (breathing?) in the European media sector, I 'm delighted to travel up to Stockholm to present and defend my work next week, on Monday June 13th at 13:00 in Kista (have a look at the official announcement posted at KTH).

What will be the topic-of-the-day, might you ask? Quite simply, I have been looking at the structural trends and disruptive innovations that are today appearing in the TV world in Europe - mainly High Definition TV (HD TV) and Internet-based TV (IP TV). What are they influence in the European "big picture" digital TV ecosystem? Can evolution patterns and emerging business models be sketched out of the profound and quicker-than-expected digital switchover we are experiencing today in Europe?

The event is public, so you are more than welcome to attend if you happen to be around (maybe lingering a couple more days in Scandinavia after the Reboot7 conference?). Oh, and expect the report and the presentation slides sometimes soon on this blog. Stay tuned!

Blogs: it's all happening in Paris

After this week's article in Wired about the strength and dynamism of the blogosphere in France, a new and even bolder indication of the massive adoption of the new media in the country is finally coming tomorrow, with the Les Blogs conference in the Sénat. As participant n°76, I'm looking forward to stimulating and enlightening speeches and discussions, catching up with familiar faces, meeting new ones, all while thinking outside-the box on tomorrow's Internet and looking beyond at the crossroads of technology, people and communities.

See you in a couple of hours!

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!