September 2006, Issue 74
Club
of Amsterdam Journal.
This issue looks into the future of
"Business
Meetings"
and our Season Event on October 5th. In
the future, there will be many new processes and technologies to help participants
and organizers prepare and manage meetings for superior communications and
outcomes. - Felix Bopp,
editor-in-chief
Des
Leach, Research Fellow, Institute of Work Psychology, University of Sheffield:
"Work meetings are fundamentally a communication tool with which
to accomplish a range of organisational goals. Despite this practical importance,
the meeting has been largely overlooked as a topic of inquiry in organisational
research. In this talk, I will present recent research findings on the effects
of meetings on employee well-being and factors associated with meeting effectiveness."
.. and don't miss our
Cross
Media CEO Breakfast on September 27!
| .The Future of Business Meetings: Applications for AMI Technologies | ||
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Christine Perey AMI technology transfer specialist |
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People, processes and technologies we use in business meetings are continuously changing in order to increase efficiency in the workplace, or enhance meeting productivity. How can the addition of more technology help more than it hurts? The goal of this article is to take what is currently known about meetings and to overlay a vision of the future, to see how the addition of new technologies based on advanced signal processing and information analysis can have a positive impact on meetings. The reader will also learn about the AMI Project and explore how moving beyond the analysis of simple verbal communications - adding non-verbal communications - can reveal deeper trends and patterns. Applications using AMI technology could give people the ability: |
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| At a management level, having technologies, which analyze verbal and non-verbal content and communications, could be integrated with other enterprise managements systems to: | ||
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[...] In some scenarios for
AMI technology use, a meeting participant's gestures or position
relative to others can be the cue, which causes a response in a
virtual representation of a remote participant. For example, as
illustrated in figure 3, when all the participants are in the meeting
are turned towards a white board, the virtual participant is expected
to turn similarly. Detecting patterns
could also help decisions in rendering agent actions (body language).
If during a meeting everyone has their arms folded, would the remote
participant also seek to assume this posture as well? These are
other examples of how using AMI technology to detect patterns will
be potentially valuable during meetings. In the AMI demonstration of this scenario, the Remote Meeting Assistant (RMA) will detect events (e.g., keywords, entry or exit, change in dialog, debates) which it has been configured to monitor and alert the user. These could be real time alerts (via a pop up or toaster like an Instant Message) and they could be compiled for later review. Taking action based on information provided by a RMA would require first gaining the context for the alert, perhaps by way of an accelerated playback of recent remarks or discussion. [...] |
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| .Club of Amsterdam blog | ||
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Club
of Amsterdam blog http://clubofamsterdam.blogspot.com August 16 :
Q&A
with Igor van Gemert June 19:
The
Innovation Manifesto
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| .News about Business Meetings | ||
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The
Mind-Reading Robot Honda Motor and the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR) have jointly developed new technology that enables a robot to mimic the movements of a person by reading the patterns of activity in the person's brain. Clench your fist, and the robot does the same; hold two fingers up, and the robot does likewise. Researchers in the West have already developed technology in which devices can be operated by implanting electrodes in the brain or controlling blood flow through special exercises, but this is the first system in the world to achieve robotic movement using changes in the natural blood flow caused by brain activity. |
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eyescreen "Based on breakthrough, super-fast P-OLED technology, eyescreens offer spectacular blur-free video using almost zero power to deliver continuous video entertainment to a new generation of wirelessly connected, lightweight, low cost and stylish video glasses." |
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| .News about the Future | ||
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Taxis
without drivers At London's Heathrow Airport, starting in summer of 2008, 19-computer steered electric cars will go into operation. The automated taxis will be used to connect Heathrow's Terminal 5 with a parking lot. The technology, which has been named "ULTra," has been developed by the British firm ATS and is already being tested. The driverless vehicles pick up passengers after they are ordered and deliver them to their destination. Magnets or sensors on the ground direct the vehicles along their route. |
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| .Next Event | ||
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Cross
Media CEO Breakfast September 27, 2006, 08:30 - 10:00 Location: Westergasfabriek, Room Openbare Verlichting, Haarlemmerweg 8-10, 1014 BE Amsterdam Entertainment, content, advertising, video, wireless, media rights, news, movies, TV, games, blogging, SMS ... Meet the Experts: Wendy L. Bernfeld, Founder & Managing Director, Rights Stuff BV Madanmohan Rao, Consultant and prolific writer from Bangalore, Research Director, Asian Media Information and Communication centre (AMIC), Singapore. Sylvia Paull, Founder, Berkeley Cybersalon (United States) Mary Hodder, CEO, Dabble (United States) Igor van Gemert, Founder & CEO, Innergy Creations BV Jonathan Marks, Director, Critical Distance BV Arnold Smeulders, Intelligent Systems Lab Amsterdam (ISLA) Simon Jones, Director, Human-Computer Studies Laboratory, University of Amsterdam Moderated by Bob Stumpel, Result Strategy, Cellspace, OpenBC, Ideabroker, LBI, GetMobile, TCS, Mendix, FON For decision makers in industry, government, science and education. There is only a limited amount of seats available. |
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| .Innovation and Risk: The New Media Perspective | ||
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Simon
Jones Director, HCS, University of Amsterdam former Managing Director, M.I.T. Media Lab Europe |
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INTRODUCTION Most people are in favour of innovation. Fewer are in favour of risk, unless it is with someone else’s money or time. New Media is an area where innovation is particularly fruitful and fortunes and reputations can be won and lost in a matter of months. New Media is therefore a useful area to study when seeking to understand the rules and rituals associated with successful innovation in high-tech and the management of its associated risks. This paper gives an overview of my own perspective in New Media innovation arising out of my time leading the MIT Media Lab’s European operations and from founding Ictinos Innovation Ltd, a company that assists regions and SME’s and corporations in making innovation work. WHY INNOVATE? So why should we innovate? After all if something is not broken why try to fix it? Shouldn’t we maximise our return on the investment? Shouldn’t we ‘sweat the assets’ or ‘stick to the knitting’ or a hundred similar phrases heard routinely in meeting places all across the developed world? Well it is reasonably well agreed that an approach based on innovation offers the best opportunity for maximising the use of resources both old and new. Furthermore, in the high-tech and consumer world where product life-spans are short and consumer interest is increasingly fickle, an approach based on innovation may be the only effective strategy for long term prosperity. Globalisation adds its voice to the need to constantly innovate. China is rapidly becoming the world’s factory and India its’ services centre. For Europeans, like me, who have become accustomed to an agreeably affluent and secure lifestyle, working for low wages under difficult conditions is an unattractive and politically infeasible approach to countering this challenge. Specifically in New Media, if we are to avoid a future of US content playing on Chinese technology we will need to be more innovative than our competitors. And remember, the Chinese and Indians are not going to be content with the poor-paying jobs; they too are trying to climb up the innovation ladder as quickly as they can. Perhaps our best hope for a prosperous future is to rely on the culturally rich, design-centric and highly-educated characteristics of European society and ally it to processes and infrastructures that permit continual change, flux and interaction between technologies, networks, consumers and content. This is a major economic and political challenge indeed. Already the ‘creative’ sector (to use an already inexact term rather loosely) accounts for 10% of the EU economy. As factories ship out to China and software centres relocate to India, the creative sector is likely to assume an ever-growing importance to our financial well-being. While in the high-tech internet-enabled consumer sector there are agreeably low barriers to entry and markets are world wide, this applies to the competition as well. In this sector there is always a start-up waiting to invent a new market (www.youtube.com for video sharing, for example) or steal an existing one away from established competitors (www.skype.com, taking away significant voice traffic from the Telco’s). So whatever current innovation you have, you better have a subsequent one as well before the first one gets taken away or bettered. NEW MEDIA We live in a world
where generating new forms of content, for entertainment, business
or a social aspect is increasingly important. The generic term for
this is New Media. It’s more than TV or Radio Programs. It’s
more than Web pages and SMS. It is fundamentally about interaction
and a move away from the old, single sender, multiple receiver models
of TV/Radio and a move towards a world where most people contribute
as well as receive content and where multi-person real-time interaction
is omnipresent. Already significant activity exists in this area,
with blogs (57% of US teenagers have uploaded material to the web)
gaming (5M subscribers to World of Warcraft), video sharing, interactive
services, a plethora of ‘adult’ applications (curiously,
the porn industry has been responsible for many more application
advances than the music industry), interactive massively-multi player
games. These are all delivered using the Internet Protocol for transmission,
a mixture of cable/glass fixed networks and UMTS (3G) mobile networks.
In conjunction with the diversity of delivery mechanisms, this material
can be received on TV screens, PC’s, laptops, PDA’s and
mobile phones. The hackneyed words of ubiquity, personalisation
and asynchronicity all describe well an emerging world in which
where and when you are on-line is not an obstacle to accessing the
world of New Media content. |
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| .Recommended Book | ||
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Asia
Unplugged: The Wireless and Mobile Media Boom in the Asia-Pacific
(Asia-Pacific Internet Handbook) by Madanmohan Rao, Lunita Mendoza This detailed and analytical handbook is a major source of reference for those with an interest in the wireless explosion in the Asia-Pacific region. It includes thematic papers on WiFi//WLL, wireless content, portals, m-commerce, permission marketing, LBS, wireless development centres, enterprise wireless strategies, capacity-building, corporate policy, legal issues, hybrid models, regulation, and venture capital. The volume also includes detailed country profiles. Madanmohan Rao is a speaker at the
Cross Media CEO Breakfast,
September 27
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| .October 5: the future of Business Meetings | ||
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the
future of Business Meetings
Thursday, October 5, 2006 Registration: 18:30-19:00, Conference: 19:00-21:15 Where: Syntens, De Ruyterkade 5, 1013 AA Amsterdam [Building of the Chamber of Commerce] Tickets for € 10.- [students], 20.- [members] or 30.- In the future, there will be many new processes and technologies to help participants and organizers prepare and manage meetings for superior communications and outcomes. Christine Perey, AMI technology transfer specialist: Introduction Des Leach, Research Fellow, Institute of Work Psychology, University of Sheffield: Meetings and their Participants - the Balancing Act between Business and Personal Factors Pierre Wellner, Senior Scientist, IDIAP Research Institute, Martigny, Switzerland: The Whole Meeting in Half the Time Wilfried Post, Researcher, TNO Human Factors: Join Multiple Simultaneous Meetings Without Neglecting Your Personal Priorities moderated by John Grüter, Digital Knowledge |
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| .The Tarot Garden by Niki de Saint Phalle | ||
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| .Club of Amsterdam Open Business Club | ||
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Club
of Amsterdam Open Business Club Are you interested in networking, sharing visions, ideas about your future, the future of your industry, society, discussing issues, which are relevant for yourself as well as for the 'global' community? The future starts now - join our online platform ...: http://www.openbc.com/go/invuid/Felix_Bopp2 CIWI - Creative Minds Worldwide
CIWI
Club of Amsterdam Forum
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