Hi all and welcome to this last post about DICE’s conferences. It will be my last article about it since this was the very last one. This conference was named Get Digital and happened at the helix right after we finished to present our DICE poster. Just to explain you quickly, we have made a beautiful and useful app avaible on windows store called Xplore Lyon to help people to find restaurants, hostels, events and much more in the french city Lyon. We have made a big poster to present it in front of a jury just before the conference. It was aimed at making the app easier to understand, especially the cloud computing aspect.
Anyway, here is my summary as usual of the conference, I hope you will like it !
Right at the begenning of the conference we had a speech about IC4 which is basically for help at making seminars, workshop, clinics… It helps to choose projects and you can sponsor a chosen project. It can basically be compared to an accelerator as in the get started conference. The IC4 is focused on the cloud, and thanks to some surveys it is able to see what is important for the customers. Then the project can help you for a « targeted project » to fixe what just has been highlighted by the different surveys.
Our first real speaker was Mary Maloney from CoderDojo. Let me tell you more about it !
This is a community avaible in most of the countries in Europe, which is aimed at kids. The goal is to try to make kids understand technology and not only to consume it. For that the coder dojo teaches them how to understand and use the different computing languages which are named codes (java, C++ etc…).
The movement is not aimed at creating engineers, but at managing to make everybody able to deal with technology. The basic thing is to make kids confidence in technology.
But what makes coder dojo special ? First of all it is truly global because it is present in 50 countries, it is a community based and focused, inclusive and non-discriminary, volunteer led, open source, independent of formal education, free, software and hardware agnostic, collaborative approach.
The goal is to go from a kid using Minecraft (a famous video game) passively to a kid able to use the codes to make something new from minecraft (games, mods or app as examples).
It is basically like assembling Lego bricks; they can build stuffs with this code bricks and then see the result and the effects of these new bricks in real time.
Coder dojo is supported by a lot of brands as linux or iOS, php, wordpress, java, C++, some 3printing’s brands…
It exists different stages from Ninja, to champion, depending on how good kids are and for how long they have been in the dojo. This kind of stage involves responsibilities because kids have to help other kids with lower rank than them. It is in addition of teaching them how to use technology, a way to teach them to be responsible and mature.
I was really impressed by this new concept, I really think it is a amazing idea because it will make kids more familiar with technology, and it will help them not being basic consumers. In addition it is educating the next generation, which can only be seen as a positive point!
After this impressive presentation, we had the luck to have Richard Garsthagen from Oracle. Let me first remind you that Oracle is the creator of the worlwide famous and awesome software Java ! So now that you have an idea of how big the opportunity was to listen to Richard Garsthagen, let me tell you a bit more about what he said.
He began his speech with explaining us that in majority we all misunderstand the cloud computing. He told us that there isn’t THE cloud but a multitude of clouds owned by a multitude of firms. He then told us that cloud computing is about changing the way we use technology, more than just using it as an online storage.
At Oracle they are trying to change the fact that if you want to find a cloud (like google drive or dropbox) you can have something in less than 5 minutes; but if you are from a firm and you need a cloud you must have to wait about 6 months to have something. Indeed the market is not aimed at a quick cloud response for firms in need.
However, the cloud is a real advantage and most firms should take advantage of it. Indeed a lot of brand are already using it daily like Amazon, Netflix or even Uber (these examples are using it because their business is even made of it).
He told us that he believes that most of the future changes will not come from IT anymore. The IT department should be changed to something else because for him it is too slow and not adapted.
The third speaker of this conference was John Massey from SAP. If I had to describe SAP I would say it is basically the same kind of firm than Oracle. Indeed they are focused on software too, and they sell them to firms to help them improve their management or their organization. It is composed of 1650 employees, and has a total of 29 languages spoken !
Lately the SAP had a huge new turn in their firm because they have started providing cloud computing to firms. Their goal is to integrate it in an easily way in the business systems. The only remaining issue is that it must be able to fit in any system of any firm, without forgetting to be easy to use.
I didn’t find his speech really interesting, maybe because of the fact that he was speaking really slowly. It was hard to follow more because of his talking speed than because of the contents.
Our last speaker was Shay Garvey, who was the founder partner of capital.
Venture capital is a firm which is making business of giving funds to start ups. It is focused on the European market and has already done a platform for innovative tech entrepreneur and building capital efficient businesses in high-growth markets.
It is a great opportunity for most of the new businesses because it cans really be a boost for your firm if you are just starting. Frontline Venture has already helped a lot of businesses to grow up in success and has not finished yet. It helps the CEO of the business to focus on something else than raising money so this kind of action cans help in two ways: first of all it helps to grow by giving funds, second of all but not the last it makes the firm focus on innovation and research instead of trying to make profit.
So if you have a good idea of business and Frontline Venture accepts you, you can be sure to grow up really quickly!
That’s all lads ! I hope you enjoyed this very last summary of the DICE conferences. As always feel free to comment to tell me what you thought about it; and feel also free to share the article of course !
Have a good day,
Thomas Cozon