Strands has been invited to present a research challenge at SynergyS22@Barcelona of the International Conference on Intelligent Networking and Collaborative Systems – INCOS 2009 organized by both 22@Barcelona and KIMbcn (Knowledge Innovation Market Barcelona). The session has included several presentations from local companies that are related to intelligent networking and and collaborative systems. The idea was to present a research challenge to the audience, and then bridge the gap between academia and industry with specific cases. This is the schedule of the event:
17:00 – 17.30 Registration
17:30 – 17.40 Welcome to SynergyS 22@Barcelona
17:40 – 17:45 SynergyS presentation
17:45 – 18:10 Companies challenges
Yahoo Research
CIP Microsoft
Strands
Dotopen
Polymita
EMascaro
18:10 – 19:00 Networking coffee
I think the format was very appropriate and the most important: we had fun!
Alejandro Jaimes and I are organizing a workshop on Recommender-based Industrial Applications to be held in conjunction with the 3rd ACM Conference on Recommender Systems. We are just spreading the word for the Call for Papers, and would like to announce the page of the workshop. We are completing the Program Committee, and we will be updating the site as new information becomes available.
Last week I attended UMAP 2009 and participated in its Industry Panel organized by Alejandro Jaimes from Telefonica I+D. In the panel, we discussed what are main challenges the industry is facing on personalization. The topic is clearly very hot for both the industry and the academia, and I hope the panel was interesting for the audience. Panelists came from very different types of companies and areas and I am not sure if this was a good thing to have or not. We had Mauro Barbieri from Philips Research (The Netherlands), Susan Dumais from Microsoft Research (USA), Armen Aghasarian from Alcatel-Lucent (Paris, France) and myself from Strands Labs (Barcelona). We discussed important issues for personalization and recommendation such as privacy, modeling, standards, context, and cultural barriers and differences.
There was some controversy about privacy when personalizing on the Internet. I think there is almost no privacy issue on the Internet, I believe this is a topic that we have artificially created (I know I am controversial here!). We are all using credit cards that collect all kinds of sensitive and private data, and we do not really care. This is because of two factors: a) we get a valuable service back that is rewarding enough to us, and b) we trust credit card companies. I think the game is the same when talking about Internet services. I do not mind if Amazon has my reading taste because a) I can buy books online easily and conveniently, and b) I trust Amazon. I believe we (professionals working on the Internet) are not understanding that young people and new generations are actually using the Internet to expose themselves, they want to tell eveybody about everything. MySpace, Facebook, Twitter are all companies about letting people express and expose themselves to the crowd. Of course, they do not care about privacy, they just want to get their lives out there.
I also believe that is very important to understand that data and profiles users are creating on the Web belong to them. Users should have complete control over their data, they own them. Companies hosting these data should be considered just as data hosting and service providers.
Strands (formerly MusicStrands, then MyStrands and finally Strands) has been the exclusive professional obsession of many people since we founded it, 5 years ago. We had all kind of experiences ranging from hard times and difficult situations to the best moments you can ever imagine sharing collective dreams.
We will continue working very hard with our best energy and creativity to make a great success from all the work done by everyone who has taken part in this journey.
My friend Patrick Hertzog just sent me this interesting post. This is about WorldMate launching an iPhone application for travellers. The application (also available in all other popular mobile platforms) will basically accompany and assist you during the whole journey experience: checking the travel plan, receiving flight alerts, lookup for flight status, get maps and directions, search for hotels, look for weather forecasts, and anything else you think may be useful to have at hand when travelling. The application is well designed and looks robust. This is cool because travel has been one of the most promising areas on the Internet, and especially on the mobile Internet.
Back in 1999, a group of crazy scientists and entrepreneurs (Prof. Boi Faltings, Dr. Pearl Pu, Dr. Christian Frei, Andreas Güenthard and myself) were creating very similar software for business travellers on mobile platforms. We founded Iconomic Systems and were developing a software to plan business trips intelligently and then offering travel support on the road with a PDA. I guess we were ahead of the market… this was 10 years ago. Anyway, we had tons of fun, we learnt a lot, and on top of that we made money! Here you have a taste of what we built a decade ago!
Ahir vaig participar a un seminari força interessant sobre la transferència de coneixement i tecnologia de les institucions de recerca cap a les empreses privades, organitzat per l’ICMAB (Institut de Ciències Materials de Barcelona) del CSIC.
La transferència de coneixaments i tecnologia dels investigadors cap al sector industrial privat un tema cabdal per al nostre desenvolupament econòmic i superar aixi la gran dependència que tenim amb sectors de tan poc valor afegit com la construcció, el turisme, o la producció de béns bàsics. Un tema clau per sortir d’aquesta crisi econòmica i reinventar-nos una mica el model, si podem.
La jornada va començar amb la presentació de Rickard Bucksch del Parc de Recerca de la UAB sobre les activitats que realitzen contruint sinergies entre centres d’investigaciói el món empresarial, especialment en la promoció de l’esprit emprenedor entre científics. El PRUAB és una oficina de transferència de tecnologia i compta amb un gran equip. Seguidament, el Professor Alberto Nieto va explicar la seva experiència al capdavant de Pando, el parc tecnòlogic de la Universidad de Uruguay. Una persona molt interessant des de molts punts de vista. Per exemple, va viure a Barcelona fa 20 anys i parla un català excel·lent! Eva Baltar i Lucía Colmenero que venien de Santiago de Compostela van explicar una oficina de transferència de tecnologia que estan começant. Bona iniciativa, poc a poc anirem progressant. Després, vem presentar 3 casos pràctics, jo sobre Strands (IIIA-CSIC), Josep Lladós sobre ICAR (CVC) i Ventura Guamis de AB-Biotics.
Al final de les presentacions vem participar tots en una taula rodona. Des del meu punt de vista falta cultura emprenedora dins les universtitats. Això només es pot canviar si es fomenta l’esprit emprenedor en els estudiants. També hi ha una mancança d’empreses de capital risc que realment entenguin el negoci del capital risc i que estiguin ben connectades localment. Hi ha una tendència (comprensible) dels investigadors a pensar: “tinc una bona idea, busco finançament públic, contracto un gestor que munti la empresa, i així jo puc continuar investigant”. A mí em sembla que és un enfocament equivocat i que aixi es molt dificil emprendre amb èxit. Per emprendre cal assumir riscos, econòmics, professionals i personals. El millor emprenedor serà sempre l’innovador o científic al darrera de la idea. Contractar un gestor perquè executi la genial idea que hem tingut no serveix en la majoria de casos. Si la idea ve d’investigadors sèniors que no volen asumir el rol d’emprenedor, el meu consell es que creïn un equip del grup d’ivnestigadors i que s’animin a sortir del laboratori i fer el pas. L’empresa serà dels emprenedors, i l’originador de la idea que es quedi al laboratori hauria de tenir un participació més o menys important però quedar-se al marge de l’activitat empresarial. Aquest no és un tema trivial… i aquestes son només algunes impressions informals i personals, res més.
I’ve just read the post Academic Earth Is The Hulu For Education at Techcrunch and quickly check out the Academic Earth site. This is a magnific idea and the site is very well executed, simple and interesting in many ways. You can discover excellent presentations by renown academic professors about any topic. If I could just go back in time and return to the university again…
Xavier Amatriain from Telefonica I+D and I will be organizing the 4th ACM Recommender Systems 2009 in Barcelona. This is an international conference on research and applications of recommender technologies. The conference started with Recommenders 06 Summer School in Bilbao, Euskadi; and has been followed by the 1st ACM Conference in Minneapolis, USA; and the 2nd Conference in Lausanne, Switzerland. This year the conference will be held in New York, USA; and in 2010 we are very happy to organize it in Barcelona, Catalonia. I hope it will be at least as good and interesting as the previous events!
The session started with an introduction and a warm welcome by Júlia Palma from the Parc de Recerca de la UAB. Then, Prof. Ramón Lopez de Mántaras gave an introduction about the Artificial Intelligence Research Insititue and its main activities. It is interesting to see all the different topics they are covering from AI. Basically they are focusing in three main areas: 1) Learning Systems, 2) Multiagent Systems, and 3) Reasoning and Logic.
The second speaker was Enrique Puig from SECOD. He gave a very interesting talk about the common mistakes young companies easily do. I am very happy to have learnt about SECOD which is an organization of senior and retired professionals that want to be active by helping early stage companies. This group of more than 100 senior professionals are volunteers to give all kind of advices and solutions for free, just for the fun to be involved with the industry and the business world. They are high level profiles, usually executives and managers from all kind of sectors and type of companies. Very interesting concept!
I was talking about Strands (a spin-off out of IIIA) and the experience of starting a company from our perspective. You can take a look at the slides above.
Finally, Joaquim Querol from Endor Nanotechnologies explained their experience in founding a company about nanotechnology. It is motivating to see other people creating successful and interesting companies in Barcelona, and nanotechnology is so cool!
This is a presentation from David Armano who is VP of Experience Design at Critical Mass. I found these slides really meaningful and interesting. This is about realizing and learning how important is to think visually, or as the author claims how to inform, influence + inspire by thinking in pictures. I will also try to get these insights and apply them when transferring knowledge or ideas to other people, notably in presentations.
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