Innovation

You plan to come in Nantes for leisure or maybe for a business trip. 
You want to meet people living, working in the city. Those people could be the Nantes Greeters.

They are ready to welcome you and share info about the city, not only arts, architecture or history, but also the way of living, gastronomy, the unusual addresses, the hidden treasures, the special encounters, the local customs.
All the things you want to know when you are in a city and want to discover it. Especially if you come from a foreign country. 
No worry for the others : the Greeters also welcome inhabitants of Nantes or France who want to be a tourist there.  
The Greeters are volunteers and the visit is free of charge.
You only will have to pay your drink or your entrance in a museum, etc…

Greeters concept had been created in NY in 1990 and there is a Greeters worldwide network  in The Hague in NL, Melbourne in Australia, Paris, Lyon, Marseille in France, Chicago Il, Houston TX, etc… that will go on being developped in many other cities.

By the way, I am one the greeters.

More info on it on the télénantes channel where you can watch a testimony of 2 American people visiting Nantes with Marion.

We had been very pleased to welcome 44 IT and cleantech startups for the Global Tech Showcase GTS and the Transatlantic Green Platform TGP last week in La Baule among all the 800 speakers, attendees and exhibitors of La Baule World Investment Conference WIC.

Among the 44 IT and cleantech startups :
-> 32 exhibited at GTS :
- 18 from the US, 11 from Europe  & 1 from Israel, 1 from Canada and 1 from New Zealand
-> 12 exhibited at TGP : 
- 5 from the US, 6 from Europe & 1 from Canada.

Last year, we also welcomed 44 startups : 26 CTS08 and 18 TGP 
-> 26 for CTS (previous name of GTS) :
- 18 from the US & 8 from Europe
-> 18 for TGP
- 7 from the US & 11 from Europe

This year, we also focused on the local startups to make them meet the foreign ones. 
It had been a good opportunity for OBEO to be shown (OBEO was one of the exhibitors, so this company could have had some interesting planned business meetings).
Obeo is a member of Alliance Libre, the association that gathers the companies involved in free software in the Nantes area.

OBEO took the opportunity to be one of the exhibitors thanks to the WIN Atlantic programme which aim is to develop a European network gathering innovative startups, science parks and universities.

It was also a good mean for the startups of Atlantic 2.0 to have some good contacts. The Atlantic 2.0 network gathers companies that want to develop meetings and the information  in the web, innovation and digital creation sectors. 

In other words, it was really useful to let the attendees/exhibitors of the GTS know that the Western France territory has some innovative and promising companies. So the foreign companies could understand what our territory could offer if they want to develop their business here. 
That’s also why we organised a leisure programme in the Friday afternoon, so the American and European startups visited a part of Western France (especially in Saint Nazaire).

Who will be the next GTS exhibitors in 2010 ? If you want to develop your business in Europe, be prepared to be one. 

La Baule, in Western France will welcome tonight some 44 startups from USA, Canada, Israel, New Zealand and Europe for the Global Tech Showcase ‘09 and the Transatlantic Green Platform.

Those two events held in conjunction with the World Investment Conference on June 3, 4 and 5, 2009 at the Atlantia Convention Center in La Baule, France.

It will be a great show and a big event under the sun!

Fifty of the world’s most promising high-tech companies are being selected to present at the Global Tech Showcase to be held in conjunction with the World Investment Conference in La Baule, France, June 3-5 2009.

Avise Partners announced the presenting company candidates. Their profiles can be downloaded here.

Presenters go through a stringent selection process to ensure optimal technology sourcing or partnership opportunities for European technology leaders. They come from across the high-tech industry sectors including Security, Enterprise Applications, Internet and Services, Entertainment and Media, Telecom and Wireless and Computing, Networking, Hardware.

Top European technology executives and investors will also share their insights on where the sectors are heading, including: TF1, Vivendi, Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments, Lagardere, Thomson Reuters, Royal Bank of Scotland Group, Renault, T-Systems, Capgemini, Balderton Capital, Elaia Partners, Acton Capital Partners, Truffle Capital, Iris Financing, Adelit, Logitech, France Telecom - Orange, Deutsche Telecom - T-Mobile, Vodafone, TeliaSonera Group, SFR, Bouygues Telecom, Nokia Corporation, KPN, Alcatel and ST Ericsson.

Topics that will be discussed include: How to build a global company from the start-up stage? How can IT Security be a competitive advantage? Enterprise Software: Will everything be in “The Cloud”? Big Media’s Digital Strategy: What’s coming for the consumer? Better network, better device: What are the mobile services of tomorrow? How are server and desktop virtualization revolutionizing computing?

To register to attend, please visit: www.globaltechshowcase.com/attend

GTS 2009 sponsors include Business Wire, Invest in Western France, Europe+ Foundation, Nair & Co., Inc., Avenir Finance and Calibre One.

The global press coverage includes CNBC Europe, Euronews, Financial Times, LCI, Les Echos, M6, Public Broadcasting Service, Time Magazine and others.

Avise Partners - Marcel Van Gemert, Program Coordinator +1-415-568-2133  - mvangemert@avisepartners.com

If you want to know more about the kind of startups that attended last year, watch our channel :

Laval Virtual is over. I attended it only one day (last Thursday April 23). It was the first time I went there. Really interesting, incredible, amazing !
There were also some conferences during the VRIC - Virtual Reality International Conferences.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to visit all the event but I managed to meet people, visit some booths and see some amazing animations.

By the way, some people told me that Laval Virtual is the place to be when you need to know what’s going on on this sector.
That’s the reason why there were companies and people from USA (MIT with the Nexi robot - the great attraction of the event), Canada, the Netherlands, Japan, Spain, UK, etc…
Some companies and high schools from Laval (Mayenne) and from the  Pays de la Loire Region show themselves (Ecole du Design, ESIEA, ESCIN, ISTIA, CNAM, CLARTE, Haption, Cap Gemini, Didhaptic, Enozone,  Joodan.id, I-Maginer, IDS, RTE, as well as some companies members of the Media and Networks Cluster.
This is a proof that Western France has a lot of competences and good points in virtual reality, especially the Laval area.

Some pictures : (I made some videos with my camera but I have two problems : there are made in .mov and when I finally succeeded in converting them in mpeg, I couldn’t turn them to let you show those videos on this post - if someone knows how to do, please tell me…).

Some info about the other animations can be read in French on this link (thanks to Mr Gouchet).

Main point is : web is in a changing world and a new era has come….

Just a few words :
- innovation helps the competition
- social network vs individuals
- Google, Amazon, Yahoo
- web 2.0 is dead ’cause it doesn’t generate money
- twitter, twitter and always twitter
- iphone
- apps
- do it yourself and share: music, video
- contribute, collaborate
- algorithms
- software, free software
- users, consumers, usages
- ….

More detailed info soon.