OCOVA Forum 2007: Communicating Objects, Identity & Value Creation

September 13^th, 2007, Charance castle,  Gap, France

Please Register

Event Overview

Since 2004, the OCOVA annual forum attracts 130 to 150 top managers of the key players in the Communicating Object value chain. Leading Industries, SMEs, Research laboratories, financing and development organisations gather together in the attractive site of the Charance castle in Gap?a mid-size city of the French Southern Alps?for a full day of exchanges on technolgical breakthroughs and barriers, market trends, and usage evolutions. The event represents a unique occasion to meet with global leaders of the Smart Card, Multimedia, Telecommunications, and software industries, for one time sharing their views on our fast evolving hypercommunicating world.

Major players in the field such as Amadeus, Air France, ASK, Atmel, Atos Origin, Bouygues Telecom, Banque de France, BNP-Paribas, Cisco, France Telecom, Gemalto, Hitachi, i2e, IBM, Infineon Technologies, Inside Contactless, Innovacard, MasterCard, NXP, Orange, OSEO, RATP, SNCF, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments,Thales Aliena Space, Visa, participate to this event?either as solution providers, solution users, or financers. Most of the above mentioned industrial players possess research centers located in the nearby Sophia Antipolis, Aix-Marseille or Grenoble technopoles.

About one third of the attendance is constituted of innovative SMEs offering components or integrated solutions for access control and authentification, traceability, identification, and mobility markets. Participants of former editions include, among others, Actis Ingenierie, ARD, BaZile Telecom, Cybercartes, IBS, Impika, Insight SIP, Micro-BE, Mobile Distillery, NBS Technologies, Newlogic, Newsteo, One-RF Solution, PSI Electronics, RW Consulting, Smartcom, SPS, Technolia.

Research laboratories such as Minatech, CEA-Leti, CMP-Ecole des Mines (Microeletronic Centre of Provence), CNRS, INRIA, Polytech Marseille, Polytech Sophia, University of Aix-Marseille, University of Avignon, University of Mediterranée, University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis, and several reknowned ingeneer schools in computing, electronics, multimedia, and telecommunications offer an expert  vision on innovation barriers and technology breakthroughs.  A large majority of the attendees actively contribute to consortia and collaborative research programs that intend to shape the communicating environment of the future.

An international meeting to build up European collaborations and partnerships

Gap is located at the crossing of three major microelectronics and telecommunication clusters: the Provence-Alpes-Côte d?Azur Secured Communicating Solutions pole of competitiveness, Minalogic?the Rhône-Alpes pole of micro-nanotechnology, and Torino Wireless, the Italian Piemonte telecommunication cluster. The event is widely open to international actors: videoconferencing with the MIT Medialab in 2004; videoconferencing with the HongKong Octopus card organisation in 2005; participation of the North Rhine-Westphalia Fraunhofer in 2006.

The 2007 program includes four sessions:

9h30-11h30 ? Clusters, innovation, development

The first morning is dedicated to clusters, innovation and economic development in smart object and communicating solutions, with a focus on the integration of research laboratories, SMEs and big industry players in partnering innovative projects or consortia and their effect on economic development.
French poles of competitiveness as well as invited European clusters (Torino Wireless, North Rhine-Westpahalia, Switzerland, Finland...) will be invited to share their experience and debate about development tools and policies, as well as partnership at the European level. 

11h30-13h00?Communicating Solutions for Healthcare
This session will draw a panorama of the most recent advances of communicating solutions for the patient. Representatives of major hospitals and health clusters will be invited to talk about the healthcare professionals and organizations? needs and expectations for the near future.

13h00-14h00?Buffet & Poster session
The buffet will be served in the poster area where Research Laboratories, Solution designers and manufacturers will present their activities.

14h00?17h00?Urban communication networks and communicating solutions for the citizens
This session will be entirely dedicated to  communicating solutions and urban community services for the citizens?transportation, education, mobile payments, access management, authentification, environment control and alerts??in relation with the development of global urban wireless networks. We anticipate the participation of the Piemonte region which possesses the widest European mesh network as of today, as well as actors from Finland who have pionnerered the deployment of communicating services for citizens in the Oulu, Tempere and Helsinki areas.

 Please Register