BPN 1440 Finland trip 2010 (7)

On Friday night a farewell dinner was organised by Media Update. We sat around a fine dinner and looked back over the week. The organisers of the trip, Hans and Jak, were thanked and received Groninger gingerbread as a present. They had brought together a group of interesting Dutch multimedia lecturers. They all are working in multimedia education and come from Groningen (Noorderpoort College and Hanze Hogeschool), Utrecht (Hogeschool Utrecht, CMD) Amsterdam (Hogeschool Amsterdam, Interactive Media) and Grafisch Lyceum Rotterdam. They also mixed with one another. And they also played jokes on one another like the guy offering to get coats for his colleagues from their hotel rooms as he was going upstairs. The next day the colleagues found out that their suits had been exchanged.

The weather was also beautiful for the whole week. For the lucky ones in the hotel who had a room with a view, they looked over the lake and part of the wood and had a view in the morning like the photograph. The hotel is built against a rock which is overgrown with trees, who were already showing their autumn colours. It was also remarkable that this solicited a lot of walks in the woods by the participants before and after the program. But they also walked to the city to shop for beautiful, but expensive Finnish goods, such as a winter coat and lady’s bags (no photographs shown!).

Interesting was the behaviour of some of the young lecturers. They were the whole day busy with their mobiles picking up messages and writing tweets. I had expected to see many iPads like I saw last time in New York, where every other youngster of the WSYA event had such a tablet. But sometimes the lecturers were in a meditative mood.

The program consisted of three parts: two days visits to educational institutes, one day academic lectures and a two conference. An evaluation will have to tell what the general feelings were about these three parts of the trip. But the delegates were also enterprising as they went amongst others to a presentation of Electronic Arts at the other side of town. There they were informed about all the new stuff in games and especially about the Wii and the micro strokes. And one of the lecturers got completely excited by the Galaxy tablet by Samsung. He said: Forget the iPad. The only real drawback was the price of 900+ euro in Finland and 750+ euro in The Netherlands. Some lecturers also went out to visit other schools outside Tampere such as in Turku for contact, students and lecturers exchange.

The social agenda wasnot filled but a number of parties were attended. On Wednesday night the Cloud Computing people had drinks together. On Thursday there was a reception at the Old Town hall in the center of Tampere. It is a beautiful old building with a great chandelier in the reception hall. Some of the lecturers extended the invitation of the Electronic Arts people and had a good time at their party.

On Saturday morning most of the group flew back to Holland. Some stayed behind in order to visit Helsinki or have talks with Finnish colleagues. Some went early to Helsinki to look around or do some shopping. Once back in Holland the Amsterdam people were home soon, but the Groninger people had still a long way to go by train.

Links:

http://twitter.com/MindTrek
http://www.mindtrek.org/
http://tamk-artmedia.blogspot.com/
http://npsvk.blogspot.com/


BPN 1440

BPN 1439 Finland trip 2010 (6)

The second day of Mindtrek started with a view of the future. Latif Latid, the president of the IPv6 Forum, spoke in the plenary on the need to change the IP address from version 4 to version 6. He urged the Fins in the audience to press the politician to have IPv6 introduced.
His presentation was larded with historical details. IPv4 originated in 1983 and resulted in 1992 in The Web. In the meantime, from 1986-1995, the US Government and the US military pursued the OSI telecom standard. It was in 1992 that the US Congress approved the use of NSFNET (National Science Foundation) for commercial traffic. In 1993 the US Government moved to IPv6.
His conclusion is that Internet is loosing its original design and needs to change over to IPv6 fast. IPv4 is good to connect a quarter of the world to internet. Google scans only 17 percent of the present Internet. IPv6 can do the whole internet. IPv6 can connect the whole world. Besides, more than 50 billion of devices will be connected to the internet in the next 10 years.

After the plenary a choice could be made out of four tracks: social moving pictures; social machines; war stories and a workshop on designing social network games with soPlay heuristics. I chose for the social moving pictures. Tommi Pelkonen of Frantic Media in Helsinki has been in interactive marketing for years and has worked in The Netherlands and Hungary. He introduced the subject and the speakers. It is all about story telling. It is the oldest media format, while video is fairly new.

Tommi introduced Christian Fonnesbech an interactive media producer from Denmark. He has been in this trade since 10 years and has made interactive, cross-media productions for banks and other companies. I met him some 10 years ago when he had just left the movie industry for the interactive industry. Now he is creating big production. As promo for Mindtrek he wrote:

"Facebook is wonderful on a good day. Most of the time, however, the experience is like inviting your friends over to watch TV and discovering that there is nothing on. You sit around, trying to start conversations, chitchatting about the weather and making jokes.
But what if this is just the beginning? What if the Internet is destined to become a dramatic, narrative medium – just like other media? Books, Films, TV, and Console Games have all become storytelling media.
My presentation will show some of the cases and methods that have led us to the development of our online, storytelling format, including our global breakthrough from 2009, The Climate Mystery."

Christian Fonnesbech is a new kind of director. In over 30 different online projects, he has explored the Internet’s potential as a storytelling medium. Through various combinations of dramatic fiction and games, social networks, search, e-mails, mobile phones, webisodes, websites, teaching materials and more, Christian has gained unique insights into how to engage online audiences emotionally and interactively. He has worked with many different audiences, purposes and media formats. The Climate Mystery (2009) was a global breakthrough, developed in collaboration with partners such as Microsof and Discovery Channel.
Christian is Creative Director at the newly started The Quantum Room (TQR), a Copenhagen-based digital content studio, which has just become the first team in Denmark to receive Film financing for online fiction. Christian is a master of Film and Media Science. He has worked as a consultant for the Danish EU chairmanship, for a variety of film and TV companies, as well as for the MEDIA and IST programmes.

After the presentation of Christan Fonnesbech, Korash Sanjideh, managing director of chew tv network, took the floor and presented TELL US TV, connecting the UK's young people through social movie making.

In summer of 2010, The Chew TV Network was commissioned by the UK’s leading youth development agency, Creativity Culture in Education, to develop a nationwide social moviemaking experience that would see thousands of young people from all over the county be given the chance to let the UK government know what they thought about Culture and how it affected them.
The TELL US project is based on the premise that exposure to the arts and culture can transform the aspirations, attainment, skills and life chances of young people and over the course of 3 months, Chew TV developed a unique approach to capture the imaginations of thousands of young people through in a fun and exciting way.
From the development of the core brand messaging to the production of positioning movies to be used on the national tour, The Chew TV Network involved young people in every step of the production process to ensure that the content remained current and connected with young people on a level they understand and enjoy.

Links:
http://twitter.com/MindTrek
http://www.mindtrek.org/
http://tamk-artmedia.blogspot.com/
http://npsvk.blogspot.com/

BPN 1439

BPN 1438 Finland trip 2010 (5)

It is Thursday and the conference Mindtrek starts. It is the largest multimedia conference in Finland and draws a lot of people. Looking into the halls I estimate that there are some 450 visitors. The conference starts with two plenary sessions, followed by four tracks. The conference day will be closed with another plenary session. In the evening there is a social program with a reception at the old town hall, followed by the Mindtrek party and the awards ceremony.

The first plenary sessions dealt with cloud computing and Yle, the Finnish broadcast company. The cloud computing presentation was a good presentation. At the end of the presentation I understood the breadth and the with of cloud computing and the potential effect. I understood that Amazon is the example of cloud computing. Around Christmas time they have to scale up in order to process all the orders; so they buy capacity and not servers. Dave Nielsen of Cloud Camp had a nice oneliner saying that data are like oil now. And he predicted that healthcare was a typical area for cloud computing.

The second plenary was an interesting subject, be it presented too slowly by Lauri Kivinen, the CEO of Yle. He started presenting the basic stats of Yle. It is a broadcasting company, which started in 1926, now serving 5.5 million Fins with 4 TV channels, 6 radio channels and the Yle.fi portal, but also with events, mobile and big screens. The company now also has on demand television and radio, but this is not very popular yet. Presently the company is restructuring itself and aiming at cross-media programs. On November 1 it launches a children’s series, using all the media available. Around that same time the company will launch a series with ten instalments on Rock ‘n Roll, presenting it on TV and radio and drawing heavily on archives. The objectives for the coming months are:
- few services, but richer content;
- network journalism;
- ubiquity;
- unlimited mobility;
- services for young adults are growing fast.
New to the broadcast business is the top of the broadcast pyramid. On the bottem are the direct broadcasts, in the middle the on demand programs and on top the social media with which the audience can share, link, mesh and participate.

The tracks were concerned with: new mobile ecosystem; cloud computing; Mindtrek launchpad and more academic sessions. I joined the new mobile ecosystem. Not that I could do much with the information, but you can hear what the companies are going to do next month. In the presentations the systems Android by Google, Symbian 1.3. by Nokia and the iOS by Apple. Google gives Android away for free in order to grab the market. Google gets 30,5 pct of the mobile world. As far as the future, the bet is on Symbian and Anadroid. The iPhone, also called Jezus’ phone, has less of than a Nokia. Real potential will have the Bada operating system. Remarkable was the presentation of Tomi Ahonen, an excentrix Fin, who proves that less iPOD has been sold. He states that Apple works with perception of market share rather than the actual figures.

In the evening there was the traditional reception in the monumental town hall in the center of Tampere. In the reception room there is a beautiful chandelier. After a speech the glasses were filled and finger food served. After the reception we negotiated the corner to the right and got to the disco Brix. There was the Mindtrek party: music, drinks and dancing till late in the night. There was also a reward ceremony of several contest. I was asked to be the representative for the World Summit Award Finland 2010 and the World Summit Award Mobile Media Finland 2010 and hand the certificates to the winners.

Links:
http://twitter.com/MindTrek
http://www.mindtrek.org/
http://tamk-artmedia.blogspot.com/
http://npsvk.blogspot.com/

BPN 1438

BPN 1437 Finland trip 2010 (4)

, TAMKToday we do not have to rise so early as the Pre-Mindtrek activities start in the hotel. So no hastening in order to catch the Telitaksi. We can slowly take breakfast and go to pick up the Mindtrek badge.

The Pre-Mindtrek activities consist of two major tracks: Academic and Cloud Computing. The Cloud Computing stream is a full day session. The Academic track has five major streams: gaming, social media, open source, ambient media and user experience. I have chosen for social media. I would almost say of course, as we are in the country were social media was embodied first. Finland was in my book the first country to develop social media with the Habba-hotel, a social media site for kids. In 1999 it received a Europrix award and has had lots of success with licensing the concept.

The Academic sessions were really academic sessions: some presentations were very obligatory and just an excuse to come to Finland, but I also heard some interesting stuff. Early in the morning I was confronted with social media and public transport. Not exactly a line of research I would have thought about. Yet one of the first slides I remembered. It was about a metro exit where the staircase had been decorated with the keyboard of a piano. When piano music was played more people took the staircase than the escalators. But when I saw it first I did not see this as an exercise in social media. Now the researcher demonstrates with examples that public transport can do with an experience by using screens and mobile applications. It looks promising, but I guess that first many transport systems, like the Dutch smart card system, will have to be made more efficient before people experience public transport as a joy.

This presentation was followed by a presentation with a high igNobel Award level. The subject was users as sensors. It was a filmed presentation as the researchers were now based in Stanford temporarily. The long paper has as subject creating shared experiences in co-creational spaces by collective heart rate. That was really a mouthful for an experiment whereby members of the audience of an ice hockey event all received a device with which the heartbeat could be collected and totalled. Conclusion: whenever a goal is in the making the collective heart beat rate goes up. Of course.

In the afternoon I sat in on a session named In the face (book) of daily routine. Greek researchers had studied the use of Facebook by 60 students. Their conclusion: the students only use Facebook as a waste of their time. They want to be busy with Facebook, for then they do not have to be busy with something else. I have my doubts about this research. First of all the group is very onesided, only students. But I think that this group is online and using Facebook just in order to present themselves to peers and claim a place in the community. As such it is not a waste of time. Secondly the choice of a single group like students does not deliver interesting results. No attention was paid to Facebook and business. The researchers thought that LinkedIn was more apt for that. That is not my experience. LinkedIn is too restrictive with its premium messaging and putting up events. More can be done with Facebook. I hope that the Greek researchers can do another research project on Facebook.

Links

http://twitter.com/MindTrek
http://www.mindtrek.org/
http://npsvk.blogspot.com/

BPN 1437.

BPN 1436 Finland trip 2010 (3)

The second day of the Finland trip was a heavy one. We will move to Hervanta, a new town with a smart industry such as Nokia Lab, just half an hour outside Tampere. We went there with two small coaches.
9:00 – 10:00 Nokia Research Centre/Nokia Innovation Centre
http://research.nokia.com/locations/tampere
The session at Nokia Innovation Centre concentrated on the way the company works on innovation. Political issues like the future of the mobile operating system Symbian and the new CEO are friendly avoided.
Nokia started research in electronics in 1977 and presented its first computers in 1992 with Mikko and Mikromikko. In 1991 the first digital GSM was launched. In 1992 the first portable phone Mobra Cityman was launched. Since 2007 Nokia looks at innovation as managing complexity. Since then research concentrated on four areas:
- Sensing & Data Intelligence;
- New User Interfaces;
- High performance mobileplatforms;
- Cognitive Radio.
In these areas research should deliver breakthroughs, cutting edge technologies and provide alternatives in unchartered territories such as 3D or mixed reality.
In order to reach innovation by co-creation. Nokia works together with universities in joint projects. It also receives public funding from the innovation agency Tekes and the European Union. In Tampere Nokia has a contract with local universities (TUT, UTA and TAMK). In this framework there are 16 professors involved and some 50 PhD researchers. Nokia offers collaborative meetings, discusses topics and uses the open call for proposals and grants. The lifecycle should have 5P’s as results:
- Publications
- Patent
- Publicity
- Prototypes
- Products

10:30 – 11:30 Tampere College, Hervanta: Qualification in Publishing and Printing (Hervanta)
- Study Programme in Layout Design
- Study Programme in Printing Technology
This department of Tampere College teaches students printing and lay-out design. It was for me like going back in time. Printing machines and even lead fonts! It was an ink sniffing occassion. In the same building the students have digital design using high tech computers; of course Apple, the symbol of the typographic community.

11:30-13:00 Lunch at Tampere College (in Finland lunched is served early). For the afternoon program we got into the small buses to go back to Finlayson in the center of Tampere.

14:00 New Factory: The collaborative innovation engine room
http://www.demola.fi/
In Finlayson we went to Demola, the demo factory. Here students design solutions for products and services on request of companies. Presently it has delivered 30 products. The time from idetion till evaluation and follow-up lasts 3-8 months. This year a summercamp was held in which 9 problems were posed to teams to be solved. One product was a game, the Super Awesome Fighters, created with tools from Nokia. The licenses to the game stay with the originator and will deliver some money.

14:30 University of Tampere Department of Information Studies and Interactive Media (at Demola)
http://www.uta.fi/laitokset/infim/english/index.html
This year Tampere has a new university institute, named INFIM. It is a merger of Hypermedia Lab, the baby of Jarmo Vittelli from 1998, and the Department of Information Studies. It now has 70 employees and 6 professors. The new institute teaches Information Studies and Interactive studies.

15:00 Creative Tampere and HUB Tampere
http://www.luovatampere.fi/eng
http://hubtampere.wordpress.com/in-english/

Tampere has been an active municipality in the digital world. It has had a program e-Tampere, I guess since 1998 or perhaps even earlier. Now the program is named Creative Tampere. It is oriented towards attracting creative industry. The municipality puts 7,4 million euro in the program. Support from Tampere institutions and companies should bring the total to 40 million euro, while the total revenue out of this effort should be 100 million euro. One of the activities supported by Creative Tampere is the HUB. This is a community which wants to be the center of social innovation. The HUB has 2 to 3 events a week such as salad events, speeddating by companies and dinners. The visit to the HUB started with changing shoes for houseshoes, sold by one of the HUB members.

Late in the evening a group of Dutch delegates went for dinner and climbed over the rocky hill, against which Scandic Hotel Rosendahl has been built. It was a good choice of restaurant.

Links:

http://twitter.com/MindTrek
http://www.mindtrek.org/
http://npsvk.blogspot.com/

BPN 1436

BPN 1435 Finland trip 2010 (2)

The Media Update delegation started the first leg of the program on Monday morning. First visit on the program:
9:00 – 10:00 Tampere College, Pyynikki, vocational Qualification in Audiovisual Communication
- Study Programme in Audiovisual Communication.
http://www.tao.tampere.fi/tao/TAOWWWTAO/briefly_in_english.html

This vocational college train boys and girls for the audio-visual industry. The training lasts 3 years and has 20 students in every year, in total 60 students. They follow 32 lessons a week and have 8 hours of homework. A normal college day lasts from 8 till 4 o’clock. The gender balance is 50/50 per cent. The students becomes mostly all round AV assistants.The college exists 14 years and has produced amongst others in 2005 the World Skills games in Helsinki.
We noted, that the college was well equiped with AV material and has a strict selection procedure. The initial applications of 80 candidates has to wittled down to 20. The diploma’s are checked, there are tests bringing the number down to 40 and by new tests and an admission interview the 20 students are selected.

10:30 – 12:00 Proacademy and Voimala, Finlayson
http://www.proakatemia.fi/en; http://www.voimalaan.fi/

The visit to the Proacademy was fascinating. I have been at the Proacademy in 2007 when it still cohabitated with the TAMK School of Arts, Media and Music. Now the Proacademy has a floor of its own in a factory building in Finlayson. The Proacademinas study for a BBA degree in entrepreneurship. The story about its origin sounds biblical:
“The story of the Proacademians began over ten years ago. Some restless nomads in tampere had a nose for business but there didn’t seem to be any place where they could test their ideas in practice. They sent scouts around in Finland to look for new radical solutions. Many scouts returned without nothing. However, one scout returned from a little town called Jyvaskyla telling stories about a tribe that learned via action and dialogue. These Teamacademicians had an elder with vision of taking the tribe around the world and learning in the process. The scout’s stories inspired two elders in tampere to change their ways of teaching the young and Proacademian tribe was born.”
One of the students presented the working of the Postacademy. At the Proacademy university students work 2,5 years in a team and learns business and marketing. They are evaluated ny their fellow team members and by coaches. All the teams aim at getting a turnover; but the Proacademy is not money oriented.

12:00h Lunch in Ziberia

13:00 – 15:00 Tampere University of Applied Sciences (TAMK), School of Art Media and Music
http://www.tamk.fi/en;%20http://tamk-artmedia.blogspot.com

After lunch we went to the Tampere University of Applied Sciences (TAMK), School of Art Media and Music (new name). This is the school of our guides Sohvi and Cai. Funny enough they did not take the floor to tell about the school itself. But they had a student present a students initiative: Score. It is a community of students interested in game development and gamers. The community is student oriented; teachers cooperate.Score started three years ago with 20 members and has today 80 members. They arrange lectures, workshops and trips. TAMK offers space and resources such as licenses for game projects. So far they have developed their own games such as Overboard, Number game, Poltergeist and Overtower. Some rights have been sold amongst others to Microsoft. Since the summer 2010 the community organized itself into a co-operative with 20 members.
Sohvi showed also one of their famous movies: The Electrician (http://www.electrician.fi/). This is a surrealistic movies about an electrician, who loses his job as the electrician of the electric chair.
A guided tour through the building from the ground to the fifth floor drew quite some oh's and ah's about the equipment and the space available.

Links

http://twitter.com/MindTrek
http://www.mindtrek.org/
http://npsvk.blogspot.com/

BPN 1435

Mindtrek 2007 (5)

The Finnish gaming industry

On Thursday morning there was a session especially for the Dutch delegation (see photograph by Cai Melakoski) on mobile games. The organisers of the trip of the Dutch delegation, Hans Sleurink of Media Update and myself, had requested this special session with the following brief: (a) overview of the state of art of the Finnish gaming industry; (3) a mobile game developer, which turned out to be Nokia; (3) mobile game development for education; the delegation got an encore with a presentation of mobile gaming education.

Mr KooPee Hiltunen started his presentation with a reference to a recent report about the Finnish gaming industry (please register to read the full report). Here is the summary:
From an industry of a few companies in the late 1990s, the industry has, since the mid 2000s, become an integral part of the Finnish content export industry. According to a study published by Neogames in 2006, the growth rate in 2004-2005 measured both by net sales and employment effect was 50%(Publication of the Finnish Gaming Industri, Finnish Game Companies 2006/Neogames). The growth rate for 2006-2007 is, based on this study with a smaller sampling (11 companies), estimated to be approximately 20% in both sectors.
In 2005, the annual net sales of the gaming industry were estimated to be approximately EUR 65 million and involved the employment of approximately 1,000 people. There is no aggregate figure for 2006 but simply in light of this study we have reason to claim that the above mentioned figures grew in 2006 and the growth seems to continue at approximately a 20% rate in 2007.
According to our estimate, the 2006 net sales of the Finnish gaming industry was EUR 70-80 million and involved the employment of 1,200-1,300 people. In a gaming industry culture export report compiled by Neogames for the ministry, the 2012 vision includes the following figures:
- Employment 2,500-3,500 people.
- According to our estimate, this is the structural employment of the gaming industry in Finland. In addition, the Finnish gaming industry is likely to employ approximately 1,000 people in international subcontracting companies. In addition, a considerable number of Finnish gaming industry professionals also work abroad.
- Net sales EUR 500-700 million of which 90% from abroad
- Net value of sales EUR 1.3-1.5 billion. The figure takes into consideration unit sales but not the indirect employment effect of the industry or the skirt industries.
- 50-60 gaming companies. The industry becomes centralised.
- Average company size approximately 50 people (now approximately 10 people).

In an earlier study, the strong development of the Finnish gaming industry was estimated to be based on four factors:
- technological and content know-how of the companies
- excellent price-quality ratio of gaming production
- delivery reliability
- international growth in the mobile entertainment sector.

In light of this study, the above mentioned issues have remained strong competitive factors.

The study also confirmed the finding that the dependency of the Finnish gaming industry on mobile operations is no longer true. For instance Max Payne (Remedy), FlatOut and FlatOut II (Bugbear) and Habbo Hotel (Sulake) prove that the front extends to PC and console games as well. This side also shows signs of new implementations in utilising digital distribution.

Mobile game operators are, however, still strongly represented and in the mobile sector in particular the technological lead gained in the late 1990s seems to be important especially as the number of mobile devices increases and, in order to be successful, a single game must be developed for several hundred different handsets both in the European and US markets.

An interesting growing trend is in handheld devices. Both PSP and to a wider extent DS seem to interest new players. It remains to be seen whether it is possible to build a solid business only on these devices.

So what are the game developers doing, Mr KooPee Hiltunen (see photograph) asked himself. Four years ago 75 percent of the game company employees – many former Nokia employees) - were in mobile games, using Finland with 5,3 million inhabitants as a testing ground stimulated by education and Nokia. But it is no longer mobile anymore. Mobile has become complex due to the fragmentation in handsets. Only big firms can handle the porting to this range of devices. Besides mobile gaming did not get the push from N-Gage as expected. The Nokia effect faded away. Mobile is no longer the entry platform; when needed, companies subcontract porting to big companies as they can build porting production streets for the diversity of mobile phones. Big companies of 160 employees are Digital Chocalate, owned by Trip Hawkins, or Mr Goodliving and Universum. The small companies do the concepting, while subcontracting the technical development.

There are many similarities between Finland and the Netherlands. Both countries have a relative small amount of in inhabitants with Finland 5,3 million people and the Netherlands with 17,2 million inhabitants. Both countries have a minority language. Both countries work cost efficient as the standard costs of living are high. Both markets are small and can be exploited as test markets; so companies have to go global immediately. The Finnish gaming industry is reliable as it is not overpromising or underdelivering.

Blog Posting Number: 886

Tags: games, game industry games, game industry

Mindtrek 2007 (1)

Mindtrek 2007

In my posting of yesterday I referred to my next trip. After Salzburg I will fly to Finland, where I will attend the annual conference Mindtrek. In fact, as business partner of Hans Sleurink of the news and information service Media Update I will accompany a delegation of Dutch educationalists to the conference.

In 2005 Hans and I organised a trip for educationalists and business people to Tampere. It was a great success as there were almost forty people in the delegation, thanks to a European grant for regional business development. This time the delegation is smaller as we do not have a grant; besides it is a week after PICNIC 07 in Amsterdam.

Today we travel to Tampere via Helsinki. There we will have a coach waiting for us to bring us to Tampere. We purposely did not fly on from Helsinki to Tampere, not for ecological reasons, but for social reasons. In a bus it is easier for people to introduce themselves and get to know each other. Once we have arrived at the Scandic Rosendahl Hotel just outside Tampere, where the Mindtrek Conference will be held, we will continue the introduction during the welcome dinner and bring in the Finnish hosts. My friend Cai has been appointed the chaperone of the Dutch delegation, but more Finnish friends will join us at the dinner.

The Mindtrek program looks very attractive. On Wednesday and Thursday they have interesting key-note speakers such as Mark Ollila of Nokia on games, Zak Greant on literate machines and Rick Falkvinge on copyright and society. After the key-note speeches the audience will break up for different tracks: Social Media, Open Source Business & Innovation, Games as Services, Ubimedia, Government, eGovernment – Virtually Yours. I guess that the ubimedia (love the term) and games and services will be the favourite tracks. On Thursday morning there will be a special session for the Dutch delegation. The subject will be mobile gaming; a state of art of the Finnish game industry will be presented, the state of art of mobile gaming and how Finnish multimedia school departments teach the subject. On Friday morning there will a session in the Tampere School of Art and Media. Cai will tell about the Finnish University system of colleges and university and will show the delegates the premises of TAMK, his school.

The delegates will have access to all social events. So they will be present at the Mindtrek award party, but also at the Tampere City reception. Besides there will be an interactive movie session Cause & Effect by Chris Hales; I am sure that this will be great entertainment.

Of course the question will be asked why we organise such a trip to Finland. Besides the effect that everything that comes from far tastes better, I had learned Mindtrek to be a very guiding conference in a country which has always been in the forefront of digital media and these days of course in the forefront of mobile media. The conference will now be held for the eleventh time. And to adstruct my position I would like to refer you to an overview of ten years Finnish digital media, written by my friend Tommi Pelkonen, who is these days working for Satama in the Netherlands.

By Friday night we will return to the Netherlands.

Blog Posting Number: 883

Tags: digital media

Dutch Open Source consultation (2)

I received a summary of the Dutch Open Source consultation document today. In the coming weeks I will make summaries of the individual contributions. I received also a general summary which calls upon the government not to drag its tail any longer.

The government has to set a date when the introduction and the use of open standards should be enforced, even in combination with sanctions. That is one of the most important conclusions of the public consultation about the government policy ICT & OS/OSS, organized by the Dutch chapter of the Internet Society (ISOC.nl), the foundation Livre, Media Update and foundation Holland Open. From the consultation round it has become clear that an overwhelming majority (86%) thinks that the government should oblige its contractors to fulfil a list of desirable, less desirable and absolutely undesirable database formats. A majority of 90% thinks that the Dutch government should contribute to the standardization work such as W3C, IETF and OASIS; the government should also play an active part in the development of relevant open source software for its own activities. Government should be reserve a percentage of its ICT budget to track, develop or have developed as well as stimulate open source software.

In education individual closed commercial applications should be stopped and the digital socialisation should be started up seriously. Many respondents think that the present ICT education consists of training people to execute tricks in certain software packages and not in the teaching of real skills.

The most important priority should lie in a clear choice in favour of specific open standards and open source software, where possible, so that software manufacturers can produce the needed software. Software which should be developed or new to install software should make use of open standards. Use of non-standards should be frozen and new closed formats should not be allowed. Besides, a multi-platform should be enforced. When this is not happen, robustness, safety, innovation power and economic interests of The Netherlands will be harmed.

Blog Posting Number: 782

Tags: OSS

Dutch Open Source consultation (1)

I am not in The Netherlands, but I wish I was there today. This afternoon a consultation document about Open Source was presented to the Dutch vice-minister of Economic Affairs. It is not the hottest thing on the list of the vice-minister, but he wanted to make time for it as he considers it an important subject.

And he better considers it an important subject as in the past years lip service was paid to the subject, but no real actions came about. So some months ago the idea came up to organise conference around the theme of Open Source. This was not new, but it would have been a great occasion to explore the opportunities in government and democracy. The idea of a conference was not very welcome with civil servants, who had received the task to write a document for parliament telling about the priorities and plans for the future.

This was in fact unbelievable. In an open source environment civil servant do not push citizens to participate in writing a policy document on Open Source and the future of it in The Netherlands and Europe. At that time the idea came up to use internet and start a open consultation and offer this to a cabinet minister. And thus the open consultation round came about. Together with the Dutch ISOC chapter, the foundation Livre and Media Update and foundation Holland Open a press release was sent out.

Of course the initiators were afraid that no one would jump to the opportunity, except for one lonely heart, deploring the negligence of the past cabinets. But to their surprise the anxious expectations were not met. More than 30 documents arrived with surprising proposals and potential policy measures. So the vice-minister of Economic Affairs - and not of Internal Affairs as planned - did accept the document.

So the ball is now in his court. He will have the document of the civil servants, but also a document of concerned and well informed citizens. In principle he has now everything in his hands in order to set out a policy for the coming cabinet period and execute it; for that was what was lacking since the policy document and motions of 2002.

It is too simple to say that Open Source would save the country a lot of money. But is is certain that Open Source would generate a lot of useful software for government, schools and libraries as well as for citizens.

Blog Posting Number: 781

Tgas: OSS

Open consultation on open source software (OSS)

Last week something un-Dutch happened. Three organisations started a public consultation round about policies the government should execute in the field of open standards and open source software. The three organisations are the Internet Society Netherlands (the Dutch chapter of ISOC), Foundation Livre and Media Update Business Publications, the publisher of the Open Software Yearbook. The organisation has sent a survey with 12 questions to their members and clients.







Recent during a parliamentary hearing on open standards and open source software, dissatisfaction was expressed over the government’s performance in the execution of a parliamentary motion of November 2002. Besides the actions that were taken such as assigning two separate bodies for open standards and open source software, did not help the cause. The new State Secretary of the Economic Affairs Department, Mr Frank Heemskerk, admitted that more should happen and promised new policies after the summer of 2007. That coincides with the general government’s policy of listening to society and groups in society during the first 100 days, after which new policies will be announced. The three organisations have accepted this challenge and make an inventory of wishes and proposals in the field of open standards and open source software. After the one month consultation round, the reactions will be bundled and offered to the responsible minister.

The inventory consists of 12 questions such as the government’s policy performance so far, openness of government software, government as launching customer. The questions are only optional, so other questions can also be brought up. In the end the answers most likely will be categorised, bundled and offered to the government. The civil servants charged with drafting the policies on this subject will be able to compare their notes with the answers coming from citizens and organisations. (For those reading Dutch, the consultation survey is available on the web).

It will be interesting to see number of reactions and the quality of the reactions. Open standards and open source software have so far not been on top the list of government policies in The Netherlands nor for that matter in Europe. With a population like Europe, the introduction of open standards and open source software should easily make inroads. A European call for proposals in the field of open source software and services did not yield spectacular proposals nor did it yield strong consortia of players in the field.

When I was in Beijing in 2005, there was a discussion of developing a Chinese operating system. Can you imagine? There are more than a billion Chinese inhabitants and fifty percent of them are in the age group between 18 and 35 years. When they all start using such an operating system, Microsoft would not have anything to do anymore in that part of the continent. On the other hand the example also illustrates the weakness of the open source software movement. It is fragmented and security about the software products is not guaranteed.

But once governments, provinces and municipalities as well as universities and schools are using open source software, spectacular savings could be made.

I look forward to the results of the Dutch consultation round, which will terminate by the end of May. And of course more interesting will be how much the results of this consultation round will influence the new policy on open standards and open source software.

Blog Posting Number 746

Tags: open standards, open source software