Wednesday, March 26, 2014

#DATE14 - and what it has to do with the future

Over the course of five days in late March 2014 an elite group of people are meeting for a conference in a place that is not as prominent at Barcelona (home of the Mobile World Congress), Las Vegas (home of CES) or Silicon Valley (home of to numerous to name).

Do you remember #IEEETTM back in 2012 that took place also at this relaxed city on the River Elbe? Have a look on what I wrote back then here.

It's DRESDEN, a city on the edge and at the core of the emerging future. In the midst of Europe's hotspot for semiconductors, nanotech, biotech, life sciences and increasingly evolving adjacent application areas.

DATE stands for Design, Automation & Test in Europe - more to be found on Twitter #DATE14

What sounds at first sight not worth visiting to the non-tech guy, transforms more to a surprise of serendipity. Of course it is a conference focusing on very technical, pre-application developments in
FlashAir™
microelectronics, communication.

Surprises like the FlashAir™ by Toshiba, an up to 32GB SD-card with WiFi-ability are just among several serendipity encounters at this conference one would not expect.

Visit of the exhibition (which will be on also tomorrow, Thursday March 27, 2014, 10am-5pm) is free of charge.

Tomahawk 2 (photo credits: cfaed)
The Excellence Cluster Center for Advanced Electronics Dresden cfaed at the TU Dresden presents its new superfast microchip 'Tomahawk 2' which could play a more prominent role in the 'Tactile Internet' (presentation during the Johannesberg Summit) that its chair Prof. Gerhard Fettweis promoted just recently at the CeBIT.

Never doubt a smart crowd to teach you something extraordinary new. Go for the serendipity challenge that pulls new ideas into your head.

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

#Io ... in every aspect of our lives. Why not?

Over the last two days #IoTEUsummit, a smallish but rather prominent summit on issues around the rising relevance of the "Internet of Things" in everyday life took place in Brussels.

What seemed to get slowly into the public discussion over the last few years still seems to lack common naming, and thorough explanation (rather than definition) in the real-world context by the various stakeholders. Research, politics, technology providers, application makers, users, organizations, .... all seem to have quite a different view, and understanding of the issue, and the adjacent fields.

In a way it feels like a "Little United Nations", or the Germany of the 19th century with hundreds of small and tiny kingdoms. What once started off as #IoT now has siblings called #IoX #IoE (Internet of Everything), Cyber-Physical-Systems, Industrie 4.0 (quite a German approach focusing on production use of IoT).

From a user's point of view the whole discussion could be reduced to the point, "Where does connected information make sense in the business/daily-life processes make sense, and brings added-value to the whole (process)?" instead of "Where can sensors be installed to make new business models create additional revenue?".

What became clear during the summit is that the #IoH* was clearly missing in the conversation, and yet brought value to the whole conversation in real-time, and online.

* #IoH - Internet of Humans