Passion, Craftsmanship and Technology

"Forbidden Fruit" by Artist in Residence Chris Antemann currently at MEISSEN® ArtCAMPUS - what an amazing pulling force to learn more about one of the most amazing porcelain manufacturers in the world.

MEISSEN® - in operation since 1710 and famous for their blue swords

Can such a company compete in an era where robotics, digital technology and productivity is setting the pace and everywhere you hear the slogan, "Faster, cheaper, better - sell sell sell!"

Yes it can. It's driver being the PASSION of its people, who as we followed through the vast production areas across the historical buildings, as well as the quite new show rooms were more than open to share their insights in personal conversations. 

Part of "Forbidden Fruit" in the making

Seen at close distance how delicately fine drawings are put onto the porcelain let's one appreciate the craftsmanship that is necessary to fulfill such exquisite quality. Passion, patience and deep knowledge paired together making the necessary mold. It was not a daily offered show room visit but a genuine insight into the production almost a normal working conditions at a Saturday - one of two yearly Open Days the Staatliche Porzellan-Manufaktur MEISSEN® is offering to the interested public [next one is October 18, 2014 - don't miss when you are in the region]. 

What seemed to start like a 1-2 hour visit to a company turned out to become a day-long engagement and learning about one of the most amazing cultures of craftsmanship just a mere 25 km away from hightech center Dresden. Close to the end of the

Toscana - by Monika Zeinar

day the conversation with one of the artists, Monika Zeinar, who is very passionate about flowers made clear that passionate people don't stop where their daily (routine) work ends, but excel beyond. Her exhibition at Hafenstraße e.V. (open from 5pm, except Tuesday) a socio-cultural center on the right-bank of the river on flowers, and landscapes inspired to not only plan to come back for the upcoming Open Day in October but learn more about the history, and current paths of the PEOPLE of MEISSEN®.

Delft - by Monika Zeinar

#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.

#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

Innovation - Catching the Mystery

When in late August at the 26th International Cartographic Conference hundreds of experts on mapping flocked over the course of five days the conference rooms even an outsider of this "narrow", though, in our connected times more than relevant, the field could attach to the various sessions. The reason for that: every one of us has had a map in his or her hand for sure (if not on paper, or computer screen then on a mobile device).

The theme of the conference was "From Pole to Pole" and Prof. Manfred Buchroithner laid out in a radio interview the specific aim was to bring regions outside the scope of easy reach into awareness. The use of the latest laser technology, data transformation, and the latest display technology (e.g. Plastic Logic) was the focus.

Could there come out real new and value-creating innovation out of such a conference, which by definition is often bounded to experts only?

http://bit.ly/Kf5Lqe (Creative Commons)

In a WIRED article dated back in 2011 author, Mark Brown laid out what the Robust Robotics Lab at MIT was working on in the field of UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles), "Kinect-carrying drone automatically builds 3D maps of rooms". The project Archaecopter (filming archaeological sites) jointly done together by the HTW Dresden and the Freie Universität Berlin shows a more recent application also for "indoor" use.

Singularity University Spin-offs Matternet and ARIA Logistics focus more on the transportation side of this new technological innovation. However, there is a lot in common between the different application fields, especially in terms of technology (behind it).

Too often is technology best to be used in our close vicinity, and personal needs (nitty-gritty things we encounter every day, or several times in our life that we wish to faster and easier to happen), and yet it often seems to need the detour via some special purpose field from which the technology may come into general public use, and become a true innovation (other than just an invention). What one often encounters (as myself this morning proposing to an employee of a kitchen shop using autonomous UAVs for 3D indoor mapping for flats or houses) is an instant of fear that comes of the listener to new ideas. The instant reaction was, "Honestly I am not in technology. Actually, we are using the traditional methods, which is sufficient. We don't need anything new!"

That got me more than thinking (once again) in which way innovation can be brought into the world without triggering fear in the people's minds who will be in one or the other way affected by technology?

Edgar H. Schein's paper on "Kurt Lewin's Change Theory in the Field and in the Classroom: Notes Toward a Model of Managed Learning 1" may shed some light on why innovation is so difficult to achieve.

My personal TAKE AWAY:
It often comes to real breakthrough innovations when least expected (but the underlying forces, including timing and needs of stakeholders, have come together in a suitable way). Most often what made the innovation become reality was a need and a direct connection to the real-life experiences of the people who then make it possible.

Share your experience in the comments if you like.

Cheers, Ralf

Engineering Reversed - Decision-Making Revisited

Following a lecture on social systems and the deeper forces behind it in an engineering context Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman once again came into sight.

In a world where exactness, concrete, plan, and measurable results are the essentials of the work ethics, it makes wonder how his thoughts, as it is touched on in "Abundance - The Future is Better Than You Think" in chapter three, come into play.

Decisions of engineers (not just the mechanical and electrical, but also the software and other subfields that are driven by hard facts, which also touch on doctors, architects, chemists, and physicists) tend to depend on clear facts, and the processes these generate.

Why can it then be that all too often decisions in these contexts are not as expected?

A recent example is the new Leipzig City Tunnel which has gone into operation today, December 14, 2013, should have been opened four years ago, and it overarched the projected expenses by almost two-thirds. So there is evidence for improvement on how we make decisions.

Kahneman's advice for strengthening decision-making capabilities applies in many fields, including our own personal terrain.

All too often we are bound in our learned mental models which make it impossible to even question the most obvious (that could go wrong), and in the end we suffer by "unexpected" failure. Or put the other way round, even the most promising opportunities in the future are denied, as we (individually or as a group) are bound.

The advice for everyone out of the lecture first mentioned is to reflect on our own thinking (and the inherent mental models we carry on with our mind), and whether our assumptions about the world around us are "set in stone" (or just a mental model in our heads).

The Improvement Kata Handbook - by Mike Rother EtAl

Taken from: The Kata Improvement Handbook

Currently, I am attending a design thinking course #DTActionLab (current assignment challenge due today), the International Conference on Engineering Design in Seoul #ICED13 just having been started today, it came to mind there is a more that Toyota has brought to the "world table".

"Lean" may be the buzzword, lots of consultants, and marketeers build their business on, selling standard solutions to clients who are urgently in need to solve their present pressing problems.

However, the wisdom is right inside our organizations we often see struggling, especially when we are the customer.

Can we as individuals, and groups harness this gold around us? Certainly, we only have to learn to see and take the choices wisely.

Mike Rother, Professor at the University of Ann Arbor, has recently shared - in creative commons terms - his book called:

The Improvement Kata Handbook

PS.: Thanks a lot, Mike & TEAM!!!

Unconnected Moves Smartly Joined Together May Lead to Great Future

In mid summer 2012 the Technical University Dresden (TUD) obtained the prestigious title „Excellence University“ out of a years-long process in competition with other German universities. It happens to be the only one in the East-Germany countries (besides Berlin) and with good reasons so it seems.

The region around Dresden, Chemnitz, Freiberg, and in more general terms Saxony has a long lasting legacy of technical invention, technology-driven innovation, research stemming from a time when the early ore reserves were found, and new materials were starting to be used in the energy producing fields.

Rudolf Sigismund Blochmann who not only was one of the founding fathers of the TUD but had brought the German-version of the gaslighting to wide use in Germany as an efficient energy usage for street lighting (which can also nowadays be seen in Dresden in action; info via StadtWiki). Around Chemnitz and Freital there had been intensive coal deep-ground digging with all ajacent innovation which spread to new transport infrastructures, and other innovations that last till today on which to build on for the future.

DRESDEN-concept, the future concept of TUD around a synergetic university combining different diverse, and not always obviously connecting, fields like material science, semiconductors, arts, entrepreneurship, libraries, life sciences, and not least, nor last energy creation. The intent of this partnership of these institutions is to not only draw out the best of all involved partners ranging from Fraunhofer, Helmholtz, Leibniz and Max-Planck Institutes but to facilitate the power of arts, and sozio-science fields for tackling the „grand challenges“ ahead of us with effective, and efficient for education, and making use of this knowledge across boundaries of disciplines, generations, gender, and cultures.

One of these „grand challenges“, energy, which also is one of the main fields of a university of a quite contrary kind, as its curriculum changes every six months which holds it back to be acknowledged as a „real“ university, yet called Singularity University, drew in 250 researchers, scientists, and executives to two days on the River Elbe last week to discuss new ways to create energy in sustainable, and new ways.

Fraunhofer IWS, one of several Fraunhofer institutes based here in Dresden due to the strong technology-based community, and future-orientated wise moves of a handful of institute leaders, and politicians after the reunification to make effective use of the available resources in the region, was host of this conference.

The pulling force of the conference has been the Dresden-based „Dresden Innovation Center Energy Efficiency DIZE“, funded by the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft and the Free State of Saxony. Apart from scientific research, and economic aspects the center focuses on the creation of future scientists, and engineers in the broad field of energy across disciplinary boundaries.

More on the conference can be found at the conference website "Energy in Future" and on Twitter.

The topics of the threads reached from thermoelectrics, solar energy, photovoltaics, energy storage, mobility, fuel cells and energy efficiency, and offered a wide range of insight into an amazing field for „outsiders“, as well as sparking ground for future collaboration, and creation of projects on bringing technologies into practical use for the "insiders".

Besides providing direct benefit for members of the research institutes as well as their direct project partners in the form of meeting and exchanging ideas in condensed matter, coffee breaks enabled the conversation across boundaries. It could be learned that public transportation companies with tram networks, such as the Dresdner Verkehrsbetriebe AG that is currently testing hybrid-electric busses, can offer electrical energy storage of a kind that has been not yet really tapped in. For providing the electric energy for the tramways continuous current at high voltage is provided by transformer substations (spread around the network within the city). These transformer substations can be further used in the future as electric storage stations for electric cars, e-bikes, and alike – the infrastructure is there, now it is time for innovation, and business model creation to set this potential to effective work for society.

As the just announced stop of operations of Better Place (which filed for bankruptcy in Israel), a company focusing on battery swapping technologies for electrical cars with headquarters in Palo Alto, and first prototype markets in Denmark and Israel showed once more the difficulty that "good technologies"despite good intent, and visions in a world of "normal energy providing" can eventually take. It takes bold visions, and smart moves alongside when technology innovation is going to become striving business models that last for decades, or centuries into the future. For sure is only that the future is unclear, full of surprises, and that new ways to tackle the great challenges of humanity (energy, food, health, housing, education, etc.) of which energy is amongst the most fundamental ones, it takes courageous steps out of the research, and prototype world to make a fertile business out of it, and generate the money to further fuel the future research in these fields, and create lasting economic wealth.

What could demonstrate this challenge better than the (rather surprising) announcement of closing of the Collaborative Research Center 804 at TUD due to not relieved funding for this cross-disciplinary spanning project that reaches also on the impacts of technology implementation in society. Dresden, and its citizens have the ability not only to power up economic wealth, and understanding the dynamics behind it by using its technology-based engine, but combine it with its legacy in social sciences as well.

The newly put into operation of UNU-Flores (part of the United Nations University) at WTC Dresden in joint cooperation with TUD is focusing on the education around integrated resources management, and doesn't the described situation provide a chance of the future that could be no better?

Integrating the technology, engineering approach with entrepreneurial visionaries, and glueing both by learning to see, perceive and understand the underlying dynamics by establishing a new institution at the TUD that not only generates its "own funding" by enabling entrepreneurs (these can be very well be former PhD students, or graduate students as well as university personnel) to build their (even though small in the beginning) companies.

The VISION is there to set to work, and Dresden could not be a better place for what the founder of the field system dynamics, Jay W. Forrester, envisioned in his "System dynamics - the next fifty years" talk at the ISDC 2007 in Boston.

If a new cross-disciplinary institute focusing on system dynamics here in Dresden could be outcome from these rather unconnected looking events then a "small step today may lead to bold moves into the future" soon.

The Team of HTxA