Le blog de la French Siliconnection

Une visite des entreprises les plus innovantes du moment.

La liste, bien qu’amenée à s’allonger est déjà prometteuse ! Pour n’en citer que quelques unes, Better Place qui est en train de bouleverser l’avenir de l’automobile, Twitter qui a déjà révolutionné les réseaux sociaux et media, la fondation Mozilla qui est un acteur incontournable du web, Zynga une des start ups la mieux valorisée du moment qui édite des jeux sociaux (comme FarmVille), ou encore Seesmic. Toute la liste ici.

Des rencontres avec des personnalités influentes de la Silicon Vallée

Pendant nos visites d’entreprises et à côté, ce sont les rencontres qui vont être les plus passionnantes ! Nous rencontrerons notamment Loic Le Meur, une des personnalités les plus reconnues du web français, Steve Blank le serial entrepreneur, auteur et maintenant professeur, ou encore Jeff Clavier, Venture Capitalist influent de la Vallée.

Un voyage mixte entre étudiants centraliens et acteurs de l’innovation en France.

Vous serez en contact avec une quinzaine d’élèves de troisième année en option Sciences de l’Information de l’Ecole Centrale Paris, passionnés de nouvelles technologies, pour certains d’entrepreneuriat et seront accompagnés de leur équipe de professeurs spécialistes du secteur. Ils partageront avec vous leur enthousiasme et leur passion.

Un prix défiant toute concurrence.

Combien êtes-vous prêt à payer pour participer à un des plus ambitieux voyage d’étude de l’année 2011? 5 000€ ? 10 000€ ?

Et bien non !! Grâce au travail acharné de l’équipe, vous pourrez partir pour seulement 2 300€ ! Ne manquez pas cette occasion unique. Contactez-nous dès maintenant à registration@frenchsiliconnection.com et soyez prêts pour les inscriptions qui commencent le 27 janvier sur notre site internet http://frenchsiliconnection.com/

Interactivity and connectivity are everywhere nowadays, but it looks like the most influent medium is left aside. Connected Televisions have appeared but the content available is not yet fully satisfactory and constructors haven’t adopted a unique solution to offer content from the internet. Television is bound to evolve, but how, and when?

Many companies and different possibilities

In 2010, Google launched its Google TV platform. It is used to recover every video content on the internet, free or paying. But even if the technology is good, the “user experience” is still to improve. Many thought that announcements would be made during the CES in Las Vegas a week ago concerning the adoption of Google TV by major television constructors. It appears that it was not the case, and the giant from Mountain View might have asked to delay any to improve their software. An other major actor in the battle for connected TVs is Apple with the Apple TV. The goal here is to offer rentals at the very competitive price of 99 cents.

Other companies could also become important players, such as D-Link with the launch of the Boxee Box, or Orb networks who announced during the CES last week that they would sell a Blu-ray disk that enables a player to have access to various internet TV channels such as Hulu, Netflix, Youtube or Amazon VOD. The Sony Playstation 3 could then become a way to watch content online. 

What content on connected TVs?

There are already many offers if you want to watch television online, with Hulu for TV Shows, or Netflix for rentals and now Apple offers a Video On Demand service. Netflix has become the undisputed leader, generating ten times more rentals than iTunes. After expanding in Canada, they are now considering to launch their offer throughout the world.  Netflix could also become more social, by using Facebook’s social graph.

But the battle for online content is also fierce with majors. Google TV is just between web and television. The web is a free and open zone but television has more rules. Economic models are not the same and it is difficult to have the both in one product. This is why many majors such as ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and Viacom have decided to block access to their online content on Google TVs. Also, Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman said that Apple’s 99-cent rental model was not good while other say it devalues the content. One of the biggest challenges will then be to get the content providers on board for a reduced price.

Connected TVs are getting more and more popular, but for now, no satisfactory solution exists. The TV constructors will have to choose the software they want to implement on their products and the software developpers will have to convince majors to allow their content on their platform. The television revolution has started, but the outcome is still very uncertain, and that is what we will investigate during our trip.

Here we are, the peak oil is reached and greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere have never been this high. It is not an option anymore to find alternative energies and optimize our consumption and Information Technologies might very well have a role to play: we are just at the beginning of an upcoming revolution, revolving around IT and its ability to save energy.

Yes, the IT sector is responsible for between 2% and 3% of the global greenhouse gas emissions, but could be used to reduce the global emission from 15% to 40%, according to estimations. Thus, there are two parallel goals to achieve by the IT industry: reduce its own emissions and provide help in reducing the other industries emissions.

Reducing its own emissions

More and more companies have a “Green IT” strategy, aimed towards rationalization and reduction of electric consumption of IT equipment. Several major IT companies such as Intel, Google, Microsoft and Dell have even joined the Climate Saver Computing Initiative, first created by WWF. We are planning on meeting several of them in order to find out which initiatives were carried out and how they can help other companies reduce the environmental impact of their IT.

Reducing the other emissions

A lot of companies try to provide innovative solutions towards reducing energy consumption and optimizing the necessary use of fossil energy.

In the transport industry, IT allows road transport to make huge savings and reduce their emissions, by optimizing deliveries and routes. For instance, GPS use can save 8% of fuel on an average route. Great energy economies have already been done thanks to remote working and distant collaboration, made possible by information technologies.

Concerning energy, several innovations have been made, but a lot more have to be discovered. One of the most promising of them is the Smart Grid: an intelligent energy network designed to optimize the use of energy and prevent wastes. Better Place  is even mixing these innovations together: it is a Global Provider of Electric Vehicles Networks and Services. We are looking forward to meeting them. We hope to learn a lot from them, and bring back innovative ideas to France.

Olivier Ezratty graduated from Ecole Centrale Paris in 1985. He is now a freelance consultant in the field of digi­tal media tech­no­lo­gies and ser­vices. He works with startups, large organizations, students and also with a wider audience thanks to his blog "Opinions Libres", which includes hundreds of articles and is followed by several thousands of people, including cor­po­rate mar­ke­ting, stra­tegy and eco­no­mic intel­li­gence exe­cu­tives, stu­dents, resear­chers, inves­tors, entre­pre­neurs and journalist.

His career started in 1986 at Sogitec, a subsidiary of the Dassault group, as a soft­ware design engi­neer and then as pro­ject mana­ger and group mana­ger of a deve­lop­ment team wor­king on cus­tom elec­tro­nic publi­shing pro­jects. He joined Microsoft France in 1990 where he acquired experience in various fields such as mix marketing. He became Chief Mar­ke­ting Offi­cer of Micro­soft France in July 1998 and in May 2001, he became Direc­tor of the Deve­lo­per and Plat­form Evan­ge­lism Divi­sion which he crea­ted and staf­fed for the France region. He laun­ched the « .NET » plat­form, new part­ner­ships with the best uni­ver­si­ties, research orga­ni­za­tions and local soft­ware ven­dors, as well as ini­tia­ted the first stra­te­gic .NET pro­jects with large accounts across many industries.

Olivier Ezratty is the first blogger to join the French Siliconnection project and we are very excited about it!

Lors de notre voyage d’option à Sophia-Antipolis, nous avons présenté notre idée auprès des entreprises que nous avons visitées et celles-ci se sont montrées très intéressées et prêtes à nous soutenir. Cela a permi de rafermir notre motivation et de souder l'équipe autour du projet.

En ce qui concerne l’avancement :

Le projet a désormais un compte Facebook (FrenchSiliconnection) et Twitter (Fsiliconnection). Suivez nous dès aujourd’hui !

Le site internet est complet et le travail de fond vient de commencer : trouver des sponsors, des accompagnants et des entreprises californiennes à visiter. Les secteurs prospection et start-up tournent à plein régime et ont déja de nombreuses pistes sérieuses. Nous vous informerons au fur et à mesure sur ce blog des partenaires que nous dénicherons.

Outre ce travail de fourmis, Damien, le responsable du projet participera à la conférence LeWeb les 8 et 9 décembre 2010 pour faire découvrir notre projet aux entrepreneurs et bloggeurs intéressés par la Silicon Valley, et si possible trouver des financements ou accompagnateur parmi ces professionnels et amateurs des nouvelles technologies de l’information. Sa mission: ramener un joli carnet d'adresse pour la prospection et si possible des engagements!

Le projet avance donc comme prévu et l'équipe n'en est que plus motivée: Nous Partirons !

La French Siliconnection, qu’est-ce que c’est ?

    C’est un projet lancé par les élèves de 3^ème année de Centrale, dans l’option Science de l’Information pour découvrir l’effervescence qui se produit dans la Silicon Valley autour des nouvelles technologies, et de la faire partager aux entrepreneurs et cadres français ; C’est faire en quelque sorte la connexion entre la France et la Silicon Valley.

Les dates ont été arrêtées: du 16 au 23 Avril 2011.

5 problématiques ont été définies par le groupe :

• Environnement/ Energie/ Transport: les TIC sauveront-elles la planète ?
• Médias/ Culture/ Communication: Web et médias, désamour total ou entente possible ?
• Education: Une rupture est-elle en marche ?
• Marketing/ Société: Les nouvelles révolutions de la consommation.
• Entrepreneuriat: Du garage à la multinationale.

    Nous visiterons des grandes entreprises, start-up, université et autres acteurs Californien des TIC  pour approfondir ces enjeux majeurs du futur et peut-être apporter notre contribution, en tant que  futures diplômés et acteurs de ce domaine en perpétuel évolution.

Si vous avez des remarques, conseil ou si vous voulez nous rejoindre ou nous soutenir, n’hésitez pas à nous contacter !