A peep at this year's innovation (3)

Today it is decision day. The jury will have to select the nominees of the various categories. This means debate and voting. It is all done according to the rules of Roberts; not all jurors are familiar with them. This leads sometimes to confusion. But the jury is doing well on time.

During the presentations it was interesting to notice that students and young professionals are drawn in large projects. Of course among the entries are still a lot of small creative entities, but the number of entries with large projects and groups of young professionals. They work on large multimedia archives as broadcast and event archives and make them accessible textually and visually.

So far I have also seen two projects with real innovation. One is impressive. I know that Nike has smart shoes, but the smart shoes for blind people are a piece of technology and usability. The shoes can be sent on a guided tour, sense an obstacle, correct the angle of the shoe and steer the blind person to a safer route. Another application in the tourist world is simple and effective: take a picture of a monument or a statue, send it to the server and you will receive back historic information about the monument and the statue. The mobile category has been interesting over years such as PDAs for golfers, running against a competitor, a walking guide in the mountains.

By the end of the day all the nominees will be known. By tomorrow morning the overall winner will be selected. The nominees and the winner will not be announced until November, when the Grand Gala will be held in Vienna.

Today I will leave the hotel in which we have been staying. It is a theme hotel like others in Salzburg. I have slept before in a hotel in the Nussdorferstrasse Hotel Nussdorf, where the owner tells custommade stories for every guest; upon arrival the guest will find a welcome story at the front door and upon the pillow of the bed and a new one for every night he/she stays. This hotel had music as a theme (of course in Salzburg with Mozart, the Salzburg Festival and the indelable Sound of Music); and the music was angelic as Melissa Lee Price of the EADiM Academic Network demonstrated. I will fly back to the Netherlands tonight. It is a pity that I cannot see the entry of the winner of the Europrix TTA 2006.

Tags: Europrix, EADiM, TTA, World Summit Award

Blog Posting Number: 494