Miguel PdL

I’ve just spent a couple of lovely days in Bremen (temp avg. 28C) on the inviation of BIBA’s Division IKAP who hosted the German Living Labs Event, at the World Trade Center Bremen
There were an interesting mix of topics, “Towards a European Network of Living Labs”, “Examples and Visions of Living Labs”, “Industrial Perspectives on Living Labs” and “Applications for Living Labs – Specific Scenarios and Customer Groups”. The speakers made a good case and obvious need for the Living Labs concept, but I left feeling that we are truely in the early days of this initiative and there are many things (service offerings) to sort out.
This event was also an opportunity to meet up with all the CoreLabs partners after the summer break. There was loads to catch up on, deliverables to finalise and a Lanuch Event (Nov. 20th) to prepare for.

There area number of other items I picked up from the very interesting HSE workshop last week.
I start with David Kolb’s learning styles model and experiential learning theory (ELT). David Kolb published this work in 1984 but has relevance today. To really get a feel for this work the best reference site / research library is from the EBLS Network.
There are other Experiential Learning articles and critiques of David Kolb’s theory which can be found at the link.
Another book recommenadtion this time from Henry Chesbrough, Open Innovation : The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology
Although I must admit, I find the words “Open Innovation”, a paradox, as
Open , according to Webster, has the meaning

having no enclosing or confining barrier : accessible on all or nearly all sides

Innovation has the meaning of

the introduction of something new

But in the business world we have traditionally lived in the closed innovation paradigm, but I am hoping we can change that with the Living Labs.
Following on from this discussion the true promotors of Open Innovation are John Seeley-Brown & John Hagel with their most recent work on Creation Nets [in pdf] . There is some interesting blogs on this, one from John Hagel, and I found another Mediangler with a slight Irish/European perspective.
Maybe it can really happen.

I’ve finally made it to Helsinki, after missing my initial flight out of Cork, I had a worrying wait on the reserve list of the next flight out and once I got it, I then had a very tight connection in Heathrow, to finlly get out to Helsinki. I made it and so did my baggage, which was a surprise, that’s two visits through Heathrow in a week, and it’s not so bad really.
I’m here at the Helsinki School of Economics presenting at the the HSE – 2006 | CKIR Workshop in Helsinki 29-30 August, 2006 which has a theme this year of “The challenge of ‘Open Innovation’ to firms, regions and public agencies’ and a number of the presentations, are attempting to look at the changing nature of service and business development, work and technology in the Internet world.
Into the earlier morning session and I need to follow up on
The Wisdom of Crowds
and
Europe INNOVA initiative presents the first comprehensive cluster mapping report in the EU-10 new Member States

Berlin is massive, it’s such a pity I didn’t have more time to explore, I was mainly in the Tiergarten area and managed to catch the Brandenburg Gate and Reichstag.
As for the topic of the day, the ‘Future Internet’ well there are many, many, many many challenges. In order to focus I started with a look at the Internet Society (ISOC) All About The Internet: Brief History of the Internet article. One key line I took from this “The most pressing question for the future of the Internet is not how the technology will change, but how the process of change and evolution itself will be managed.”
In reviewing this topic, and participating in the days workshop I also found the following EU sources
Report on the “COMMUNICATION NETWORKS OF THE FUTURE” Brussels, 29 March 2006 [pdf]
and
“Visions of Future Generation Networks” (EuroView2006) July 31st – August 1st 2006
quite helpful.

I’m on my way to Berlin tomorrow to participate in a meeting in which the main topic of disscussion is “Technical Challenges for the fuure internet”.
The bar has been set high, really in an attempt to engage the group and to see what really comes out of the session.
While preparing I came across two intersting articles.
The EDUCAUSE REVIEW | Lessons for the Future Internet: Learning from the Past, July/August 2006, Volume 41, Number 4 lays out the basic characteristics of the internet and then the author goes through and describes a few highlights of Internet development in the past 30 years, (In four stages) analyzes some of the policy factors at work in that development, and then suggests some avenues for research contributions to the evolution of the future Internet which include
Basic Research of networking and its underlying technologies
Advanced Network Facilities.
Universal Affordable Broadband.
Middleware (to provide a set of commonly needed software tools that interpose themselves between applications code and network facilities)
Preservation of the Internet Commons.
Also a report from ACMA (Austrialian Communications and Media Authority) called Vision 20/20: Future Scenarios for the Communications Industry – Implications for Regulation has a good insight into what is seen as the networking utopia – of ‘Internet Everywhere’ and it points out some chalenages such as the incentives for government, industry and users in realising the potential social and economic benefits of a world of pervasive communications – an
information-rich world of ever-present connectivity and distributed computational intelligence.

v6 is having its growing pains, but it shall overcome, well at least the roadmap to the new internet will be discussed at the IST 2006 session “The New Internet: IPv6 Drivers & Challenges – The European IPv6 Roadmap” and let’s not forget that if Google are in the hunt for IPv6 as noted by ZDNet in “Google’s secret IPv6 plans” then Europe better have a good plan of how we want to play in this New Internet.

A number of the EU IST Technology platforms are will be representing their wares at the IST 2006 event.
I’ve registered my interest in the eMobility session called “Leveraging Europe’s strength in mobile communications for the benefit of the applications providers”
I also note with interest the NEM
Networked and Electronic Media (NEM) Networking
and the NESSI
“transforming the Internet to service your life” sessions

With the Finnish launch on November 20th, 2006 of a European Network of Living Labs, this IST Event 2006 European Network of Living Labs session is also very close to my research heart.
It is a first step towards a new European Innovation Infrastructure (EII), and I would like to participate in the session, and have it as an oppportunity to express what I think the Living Lab concept can offer to FP7 and beyond, and how the project IST Corelabs has contributed to these thoughts.
I’ve also noted some other related sessions such as
Collaboration Upperware for New Working Environments
Collaborative working environment to enable innovation and promotion of SME’s business competitivenes
Finnish Information Society Strategy – P-P Partnership and Research as Key Enablers for e-services
GATE2START: HELPING ENSURE THAT ICTS CONTRIBUTE TO AN INNOVATIVE EUROPE

IST Event 2006 | EUROPA
One of the most important events on the EU IST calendar is on the horizon IST 2006 and the TSSG are currently requesting input in the preparation of the “Security, Dependability and Trust in pervasive networks and services: Towards a Roadmap 2007-2013” networking session by asking you to contribute to the open consultation forum established by SecurIST, at the site
http://www.securitytaskforce.eu
We are looking for feedback on the recently published recommendations report of the Advisory Board on a series of proposed directions for the European Commission’s programme in FP7 in the areas of ICT Security, Dependability and Trust.
The comments already up on the site looks like making the session very interesting.

IEEE Spectrum: Metcalfe’s Law is Wrong
I’ve read with interest this article recently published in the July 2006 IEEE Spectrum magazine, which refutes Metcalfe’s Law that states that the value of a communications network is proportional to the square of the number of users on the system, and proposes an alternative which states that the value of a communications network of size n grows in proportion to n log(n). They do highlight that this is a growth law, which means it cannot predict the value of a network from its size alone, but has to know the valuation of a network at one particular size. It can then estimate its value at any future size.
Why is it interesting. Well it’s starts to put in perspecific how the communication network will effect Web 2.0.
The article also gives the currently popular thesis called The Long Tail, some validity.
There are also some other communcation laws not cosidered by these articles which should be, such as Gilder’s and Cooper’s Laws on network bandwidth and the effectiveness of wireless spectrum utilisation in personal communications, as noted in the article Laying Down the Law
Which leans me towards how future wireless networks may effect a create a new law.
For further unrivalled comments have a look at the good folks at Slashdot, in which they have Metcalfe’s Law Refutation Explained