5G Pulling the Pack Ahead, Especially on the Edge

Final talk at #IEEETTM 2012 in Dresden;
photographer: Ralf Lippold

It was a bright sunny day in late spring of the year 2012. Several hundred tech experts, researchers and media folks began to flock the City of Dresden. One could immediately sense the international flair near the Hilton Hotel in downtown right in the middle of the Altstadt, yet the miracle was over soon enough. The city itself often is described as a "cultural pearl" with a historic legacy that can be still today be visited. That it could be a modern day technology hot spot probably is not that well-known (at least outside the tech community). The TU Dresden was just about to hand its application to Excellence Initiative which would make it later the one university in the Eastern part of Germany holding the title of an "Excellence University".

This was seven years ago. If you'd be interested in what it was like you can read my personal experiences from that event here. From here the story evolves in ways that might not be so obvious, even for the curious outside observer, even at a local basis.

With the right mindset, the right people, and the right amount of capital, anything is possible - so Peter H. Diamandis, founder of XPRIZE, Singularity University and co-founder of Planetary Resources

One thing that was mentioned by one of the co-organizers, Prof. Gerhard Fettweis, at his planetary talk was the "tactile internet", literally the real-time interaction via data communication. Back then and mostly still today is the latency time of signal travelling through fibre cables or via air. Listen to his visionary talk at the 2013 Johannesberg Summit. What was still missing was a technology that enables signals to move fast enough to almost create real-time situations (e.g. relevant for remote-control surgery or autonomous driving) even at short distances and not like space-related distances as SpaceX and PlanetaryResources had launched their operations earlier that year.

In 2014, just a year later, Dresden-based technology blogger Heiko Weckbrodt (aka Oiger) captured a live presentation on what was going to become the next generation in mobile communication. And roughly around the same at the Date 2014 the "Tactile Internet" found its way again into the conversation in Dresden, this time in connection with the cfaed (Center for Advanced Electronics Dresden - one of the funded excellence projects at the TU Dresden researching in the "electronics of tomorrow").

Two years later, the focus of the Hannover Messe 2016 was "Industrie 4.0" (a term coined in 2012 in order to establish a brand around the German efforts towards what is commonly known as "The 4th Industrial Revolutions". It was about to pull in local companies and research institutes in that area to the giant fairground (formerly base of the EXPO2000) in Hannover. Additionally, in early spring the  MP of the Free State of Saxony, Stanislaw Tillich, had initiated a local conference in Dresden on "Industry 4.0" (in German). Several hundred stakeholders flocked to the International Congress Center Dresden and a social media there can be still the spirit of that day be captured via the hashtag #SachsenIndustrie40. Industry 4.0 and real-time interaction with as little latency between connected machines certainly was in need for technology beyond cable or WiFi connectivity. Examples of the difference could be seen in Berlin during the 1st SUGermanySummit in May which was also attended by Saxons, namely the boundary spanning mind behind HTxA - HighTech x Agency. An overview of what happened during these two days in Berlin, seen from a Saxon perspective, has been captured here.

Even though the events over the years since 2012 look like single dots in history, a closer look certainly reveals an ongoing development and like patient upbringing of camellias (a flower originating in China and Japan which has a long, and lately rising, relevance in Saxony; famous examples are the "Pillnitzer Kamelie" at Pillnitz Castle or "Königsbrücker Kamelien" at Castle Königsbrück). Like a jigsaw puzzle, things only become visible only shortly before all the dots/pieces are connected and the "big picture" comes into view.

Press conference on Tuesday, April 2, 2019, #HM19;
photographer: Ralf Lippold

The latest highlight took place at the Hannover Messe 2019, just this week, where the City of Dresden held a press conference (live stream via Periscope from minute 59:00 onwards) together with several partners, e.g. Future Mobility Incubator of Volkswagen Sachsen GmbH (Transparent Factory), Airrays GmbH, 5G Lab Germany, Smart Systems Hub, T-Systems MMS GmbH, SQL Projekt AG led by Robert Weichert, WeichertMehner (furthest on the left)

More details on the press conference and adjacent activities around technology see the Dresden Convention website. The following conferences in Dresden touch on 5G-, telecommunication-technologies, as well as applications. Don't miss to take into account and in your travel plans.

1. connect-ec: Germany's first telecommunications trade fair (German), May 2-5, 2019, connect-ec (open for the public), May 4-5, #connectec2019 (Twitter)
2. IEEE 4th 5G Summit Dresden, October 1, 2019, @5g_lab
3. IEEE 5G World Forum Dresden, September 30 - October 2, 2019 

.... as always, this could only be a small dip in the pool of amazing things ongoing in Dresden. Stay tuned for more, check on Twitter, and see recapture from personal experience and staying close to this years' Hannover Messe via our Twitter activities. 

Ralf Lippold 

Grasping Beyond the Stars and Landing in Saxony

Space technology is not just since live streams of the relanding (CRS-11 Landing aerial view) of the Falcon 9 rocket, and several resupply missions to the ISS (International Space Station) made possible by the team around serial entrepreneur Elon Musk in the news. Planetary Resources, a bold start-up with the mission to mine Earth-near asteroids, co-founded by Peter H. Diamandis (he is also the co-founder of Singularity University, a visionary think tank with the mission to teach and empower leaders about the power of converging exponential technologies through various in-person and digital formats, whose chancellor Ray Kurzweil gave an outstanding keynote at the 4th Dresden Future Forum in 2010).

At first sight one would not expect Saxony, or more specifically Dresden, to play a significant role in this context. And yet, it does. More subtle through the person Prof. Hans Müller-Steinhagen, Rektor of the Technical University of Dresden (TU Dresden), who not only led the university to its current heights being one of 11 top universities in Germany with the "excellence status" in 2012. This even pulled in the interest of the New York Times which put a story up on this achievement in January 13, 2013

Dresden, once the home of the East German passenger plane industry in the late 50s and beginnings of the 60s, has transformed this legacy into being a viable part of the Airbus-family with the Elbe Flugzeugwerke EFW that is specializing transforming passenger aircrafts into freight liners. Even though situated on the edge of Germany, and even on the edge of the City of Dresden, there are many "hidden champions" in the aerospace industry (see the post "Engineered Serendipity Shaping the Future") and which can be found in the Cluster LRT Sachsen/Thüringen.

On top of this, the TU Dresden is home of the Institut für Luft- und Raumfahrttechnik, and one of the largest science communities in the field of Aeronautics in Germany, mainly at the former GDR Aerospace campus in Dresden-Johannstadt with international ties to ESA, NASA, and the International Space University (another startup by Peter H. Diamandis going back to late 80s when he and two buddies at the MIT founded it, now it has its permanent headquarters near Strasbourg, France).

Looking back five years in time when IEEE TTM (IEEE Time Technology Machine) took place right in the historic center of Dresden, SpaceX had just completed its first successful re-supply mission to the ISS (see "Boundaries Across Boundaries, Technologies, and Cultures") it makes perfect sense for another bold step. And it was there to come, not too unexpected as the curious observers of the developments would certainly confirm.

The DLR (German Aerospace Center) the national aeronautics and space research center the Federal Republic of Germany decided during its Senate Meeting end of June the establishment of seven DLR institutes across Germany. One of which is based in Dresden, at the TU Dresden, and it will focus on the "Research into the digitalisation of aviation"

#DLR opens new Institute of Software Methods for Product Virtualisation in #Dresden https://t.co/csd3Iqspxq pic.twitter.com/nwzldcnUqJ

— DLR - English (@DLR_en) 3. August 2017

making not only use of the excellent software industry base, the scientific research community, but also of the high-performance computing capabilities that the TU Dresden provides (and which other potential users are connected to such as the MPI-CBG which opened the Center for Systems Biology Dresden lately).

Today the inaugiration of the Institute of Software Methods for Product Virtualisation in Dresden has taken place and more about the event and first impressions, interviews, and statements are available through DLR's Twitter account through which the exciting news were announced on July 26, 2017,

Am 3.8. eröffnen wir das DLR-Institut für Softwaremethoden zur Produkt-Virtualisierung in Dresden.Wir twittern währenddessen via #DLRdresden

— DLR_de (@DLR_de) 26. Juli 2017

and the specific hashtag #DLRdresden which has been in use since.

We congratulate all people, institutions, and companies who have made this amazing step possible, and with the #DLRdresden and its team most successful scaling into a prosperous and exciting future.

The Singularity and Exponential Change - April 20-21, 2016 Where is More to Learn

In "The Singularity Is Near" futurist and now Google's Chief Engineer Ray Kurzweil predicts a not so distant time in the future when computers have more computing power than humans, and will actually bring it on the road.

The metaphor "The Singularity" is taken from physics where it is used to describe the unpredictable chaos that is following the development of a "black hole".

What seems to most of us as a purely Sci-Fi dreamlike utopia or even dystopia can be felt already some forms that things are changing around us so fast that we as individuals and especially organizations often haven't learnt extensively how to cope with it.

Whole industries and their key players are threatened by digital competitors like the film industry with Kodak once being the "poster child". Despite the fact that an engineer at Kodak developed the first digital camera, which of course back in the day showed the concept, and the starting point of an exponential process that started at such a low level that the company denied any substantial progress on its development only to see itself filing bankruptcy for Chapter 11 in early 2012 (in 2013 Kodak rose again, though with a much smaller workforce, as a technology company).

What does it tell us?

Exponential technologies enable new-comers in the traditional business and industry fields to take advantage of digital technologies outpacing the business models of the traditional players, as Instagram, Pinterest and others did with Kodak.

Should your industry, and organization fear the same fate? Why, if you are open to see what is happening now already and where the exponential trajectory may lead impacting your own business models.

What till now was possible to learn at on a super-fast learning trip to Silicon Valley's unique think and do tank Singularity University either on a 10-week summer course or various shorter workshop offers at executive level now is coming to Germany with #SUGermanySummit (hashtag) in Berlin from April 20-21, 2016.

Most often we are stuck in our disciplinary boundaries. As a cartographer might not reach into #Industrie40 space and yet layout digitization might be a huge improvement factor in future production scenarios. So why not cross-learn what exiting technologies are around that might have positive impacts on our industry and work field. Engineered serendipity as described in article stemming from the Aspen Ideas Festivals 2014 might be exactly what participants (especially newcomers to the Singularity University community, as it is their first official appearance in Germany organized by SU Ambassador for Germany Stephan Balzer) will get.

Be open. Get overwhelmed. Take the relevant knowledge out of the conversation.

Even if you can't be in Berlin in person connecting via digital technology, namely in the communication such as Twitter, Facebook or else and check out the speaker line-up, and program on the SingularityUniversityGermanySummit website.

Sharing is Gaining - Knowledge Flow Acceleration by Crowdfunding

Since mid-June 80 participants are learning about exponential technologies. The group is not just diverse in terms of languages, or places of origin (from Germany to Italy, Israel, Brazil, and others) but also their educational, and work background. From PhD students to serial entrepreneurs all can be found.

What bounds them together is the PASSION to apply exponential technologies to address humanity's GREAT CHALLENGES.

The place where all this happens is far away for most of us, in Silicon Valley, at NASA Ames Research Center (NASA research outreaches right where new technologies are applied early on in their development), founded in 2008 by philanthropist Peter H. Diamandis, and inventor & futurist Ray Kurzweil.

Question stays, " Can we participate even though we haven't paid $25K+, and are not amongst the 80 lucky ones?"

YES WE CAN DO THAT

Back in early 2009, we had just started to conceptualize a similar project for Europe's semiconductor, nano and life science tech hub Dresden, LockSchuppen - FutureLab2056 - SingularAcademy - CollabSpace, we crowdsourced the translation into German of Ray Kurzweil's TED Talk "A University for the Coming Singularity. Now German speaking audience can follow Ray's speech with translated subtitles.

Five years, and four applications for the Graduate Studies Program later there appeared, more by serendipity than planned search, an opportunity to bring the insightful Twitter conversations from Sinuglarity University to a broader public. A year ago, Angela Incampo and myself got invited to become the social media team for the 26th International Cartographic Conference by the main organizer, Prof. Manfred Buchroithner. As conference proceeded, and the hashtag #iccDD2013 circled in the networks, we became aware of an event entry on Eventifier, a social media news aggregator and a startup themselves.

With the start of this year's #GSP14 the question arose, "Can we crowdfund the Basic Version of Eventifier to enable a possible future conversation with interested stakeholders who'd be interested to help to establish something similar as Singularity University in Silicon Saxony?"

Certainly a project well under the "waterline" of any serious investor, $99 sounding like everybody could pay it personally not needing a crowd (actually these were some of the comments I received from foreign, and local contacts who are active in entrepreneurship, and technology).

It started small with an initial post on this GSP-dedicated blog, now the first level ($99) has been reached with some overshooting funds.

Next level you can read about HERE, and with an achievable goal for #GSP15.

Evolutionary Process ... Humans in the Middle

Reese Jones, trustee of Singularity University, at a recent TEDxSF, on the role of microbiome on not just our individual health but the larger system.

11:18 min - "It's an evolutionary process we are in the middle of. And it is hard to see things when you are in the middle of them"

These two sentences taken in your context of work, or what you try to achieve - what are you currently in, could need an outside, on the edge, observer telling you something you can't possibly see?