#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

Internet of Things - or Everythinks?

#iot = Internet of Things (or may it be Internet of Thinking?)

"Gutenberg invented the printing press (with variable letters) -
considered the most important event of the modern era
1455 he published the bible.
Soon later he was bankrupt.
1517 Martin Luther put the 95 theses on the church gate.
Knowledge about the bible spread across Europe."


>> Fate of an innovator?

@MikeNelson on stage, different approaches to new technologies

Over the past two days it was the web-age and the internet that disrupts current business and create new business models. The 3rd Internet of Things Conference Europe with distinguished guests and speakers from politics arena around the European Commission, main players in the field, innovators (like Uman Haquer, Christian Nold), bloggers and tweeteres from around Europe (like Pierre Metivier, and myself), and some well-known folks from the U.S. (like Mike Nelson [whom I met at Amplify Festival 2011 a mere three weeks ago in Sydney], John Curran)

What is the output that is valuable for society, businesses, and country economies? Reading John Hagel's & John Seely Brown's  "Power of Pull" it can only be:

Define the outputs - and then orchestrate the complex network of players from customers, to service-providers to political entities and standardization institutions to co-create through shared standards and governing interactions that are transparent between the actors. (based on text on page 84 of "Power of Pull")

Can all the players in the game be put on just "one table" in order to achieve that? What enabling power can the "Internet of Thinking" play in this?

The Internet Wave - has it arrived yet?

On my way to the 3rd Internet of Things Conference Europe. This time about 9 hours on the train and one would expect that was is not common in air, should be normal on ground: internet connection all along Europe.

Reading John Hagel's and John Seely Brown's book "The Power of Pull" I do a little bit of field research on use of web on the train. Just while reading watching the people around me, which -due to lack of power sockets on this IC 2250 from Leipzig to Frankfurt-Airport- gather around the tabes in the waggon. Besides me three other folks who have their fingers on either a laptop, iPhone, or Treo (that's me ;-)).

To my surprise only the mobile connection via my Treo makes sense at all, GPRS connection is just sufficient to grab the latest tweets and mails  - thoough most of the time (at least to Frankfurt there is no net available. "Strange! Aren't we talking about LTE, G4, already? Where is the infrastructure got stuck?"

Reading my tweets, a response by O2-business team to Dirk Spannaus (with whom I ran the session on senso networks at Mobile Camp mid-May) caught my interest. Asked these guys on the connectivity to their web service. Their answer, "We have no clue whatsever" (roughly in this sense, the original see tweet). - Amazing! I offer my support and help as tester. Let's see what happens (Undisclosure: around a dozen tickets on not working internet connection put to service hotline in the past 12 months - no change whatsoever yet)

Even more thrilling is the fact that especially two of these guys, while working with on the edge technical devices - to my surprise- got out worn-out paper calendars of a size of a medium cooking-pot! Connected in the "show-off" part of the digital personality divide (as I would call it), but yet still sticking to the paper as in the past decades before the the WorldWideWeb and mobile interconnectivity have changed the way of work and pleasure.

I wonder whether I travel right now through the lands of the past or the state of the art tech-nation in Europe towards the hot spot where political decisions are put into place to change the behavior of the "big players" to move into the web-age soon (at an accelerated pace - otherwise Europe will be pretty much outwashed by countries like China, India, or even Austtralia.

Looking very much forward meeting Mike Nelson up in Bruxelles, whom I met two weeks ago in Sydney at Amplify Festival 2011, and learning about the movements of the European Commission. 

More on coverage of the mentioned conference under #iotconf and http://ietherpad.com/iotconf

PS.: Without broadband infrastructure especially in mobile environmemt there is tough times for "Internet of Things" and as long as we see business people with their heavy paper timers (also carrying their Blackberries and iPhones ;-)) we are still pretty much behind the mainstream in other parts of the globe. Europe wake up, YES WE (also) can DO!