TechIE Tuesday!: delivered

This week we hosted in the Instituto de Empresa the "TechIE Tuesday!". The name is based on the gatherings of entrepreneurs and investors at the dawn of endless ideas in the world of internet. It was an initiative organized by the TechIE Club, the first 'big' event since its foundation. Firstly we had the opportunity of listening to Anil de Mello, from Mobuzz TV, a Spanish start-up that has an interesting proposal about internet TV. After, we hosted a panel session with presentations from Google, Vodafone and Zinkia, another Spanish start-up that is being successful creating original cartoons. This debate was moderated by our professor Enrique Dans.

Initiatives like this are examples of win-win scenarios. All the stakeholders get a benefit from the celebration of this event: the Instituto de Empresa appears as the host for student initiatives that gives it a good external image, the speakers and participant companies get visibility in an event in one of the top Business Schools, the attendants have the possibility of listening to top industry speakers for free, and the organizes have the possibility of learning from the experience to organizae an event like this, apart from the networking possibilities open to everyone.

Silicon Valley, not alley anymore...

During the last week, I had the opportunity of participating in a trip to San Francisco included in my Management studies at the Instituto de Empresa Business School. It was a great opportunity to 'live' Silicon Valley, the most dynamic zone in the world for new technologies, internet, etc. and one of the models followed by other initiatives throughout the world. From our operations base in the Bay Area we could easily reach Mountain View, Palo Alto, San Jose, ... and visit companies such as Google, Cisco, HP, Sun, Electronic Arts, Ideo, etc., including several conferences and workshops that were very profitable in terms of knowledge of this market.

Having a first-hand view from people inside the valley, we could experience the story of this area like if it were the history of a country: the beginning of dozens of start-ups in garages, the crack of 2000, the environment surrounded by entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, business angels, financial markets ready for ‘hype-type’ IPO’s, the workforce coming from Stanford, Berkeley, and each time more the very talented people coming from any part of the world, etc., makes the perfect formula for a success story that will still remain as one of the main references in the business world.

In search of the Paneuropean operator

Blyk is a European venture that aims at creating a pan-European mobile operator. Have you ever dreamt of going anywhere in Europe using your cell phone, without caring which mobile operator is serving you and knowing that they’re not charging you high prices? Thinking in the GSM standard, widely spread in this continent, technically speaking that doesn’t pose a lot of difficulties.

Actually nowadays Vodafone is the operator with more national operators in Europe and could leverage this situation by implementing a true global and unique network. However they’re still keeping each local business separately while starting to unify some back office systems and offering special price plans to their customers to call abroad while using their network. At the same time Blyk is also proposing a different business model, based on being ad-funded. So customers would use their services for free but being receivers of advertising.

Our environment interacts

The concept Ambient Intelligence (AmI) refers to idea that technologies, networks and computers surround people and interact with them. It’s like technologies being embedded in our environment like nature does and respond actively to changes around us and to our own requests. It requires the combination of different technologies: wireless, nanotechnology, biotechnology, sensors, etc.

Another topic related to this one is Human Computer Interaction: how are we going to communicate with machines in the near future? Are we going to accept the intrusive and invasive use of a different set of gadgets inside our everyday lives?