Innovation & Future Trends interviews grouped together under one playlist

Innovation & Future Trends

The field of non-invasive Brain Computer Interfaces (BCI) is gaining massive momentum as startups, companies and researchers are pushing hard. The race on BCI research is on improvement of the efficiency and the accuracy of the systems, while some of the first commercial efforts are testing the waters with several affordable devices already available to consumers. Professor Bin He, a pioneer in the field of Biomedical Engineering, talks about the ground-breaking research currently being done at the University of Minnesota in decoding brainwaves more accurately and reliably using non-invasive interfaces. We discuss the already impressive results of a  brain-controlled helicopter experiment, some of  the present challenges and the upcoming breakthroughs in the field of Brain Computer Interfaces. Interviewed by George Voulgaris for Tech Talks central.

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TTC #109 Your brain as the ultimate controller, Prof. Bin He

Norbert Sagnard a man of many hats talks about the Northern Ireland pavillion at MWC, what kind of startups they were hosting ie. security; what it takes to succeed in Northern Ireland and how the state is helping startups get off their feet with grants, schemes and accelerators. He goes on to talk about his own investment interests and the opportunities he sees in the mobile and technology fields. Interviewed by Vicki Kolovou for Tech Talks Central.

TTC #139 Investing in Northern Ireland and Mobile Startups, Norbert Sagnard

Ian Parness and Brad Folkens explain how the difficulty of searching on the mobile led to the creation of Camfind; a mobile application that returns results for anything you snap an image of, ranging from a lady’s handbag to a living animal. Ian mentions the interest they have received from companies to integrate their product into their own platforms, mainly retail for product matching, price comparison, but also stock photography vendors or even applications for the visually impaired. Brad explains how valuable their app is with over 11 patents filed; how it always returns results (successful image recognition 100% to a varying degree of detail); what their revenue model is and how their $5M funding will help the product develop.  The third founder, Dominik Mazur, was mentioned but not present at the interview. Interviewed by Vicki Kolovou for Tech Talks Central.

TTC #144 Image Search That Always Returns Results, Ian Parness and Brad Folkens

James Tagg, author of the book ‘Are the Androids Dreaming Yet?’ presented in front of an audience his own beliefs on the Singularity issue. He started out by answering his own question ‘Can a Machine think Creatively?’ and argued mathematically on how much artificial intelligence has progressed, which are the crucial parity point dates and why he doesn’t believe that machines can surpass the creativity of humans. The speech was conducted during a Heroes of Mobile event organised by its founder Helen Keegan, on the 2nd of March at the Talent Garden(TAG).


TTC #145 Are The Androids Dreaming Yet, James Tagg

Filip Maertens, Founder and Chief Product Officer of Sentiance a Belgian B2B startup that builds a rich contextual profile on the true behaviour of a user by using the built-in sensors of his/her mobile or wearables. As the company moto goes it makes Smart devices intelligent! Their product is a software development kit with revenues from daily active users. Filip mentions how they were surprised to find that the industry with the biggest interest in their product was the insurance companies since they want to know about our driving behaviour. He goes on to talk about their $2M funding, expanding to Asia and the US, the IPs involved in their product, data, artificial intelligence and the...singularity theory. One of the most interesting interviews to come out of MWC15. Interviewed by Vicki Kolovou for Tech Talks central.


TTC #154 Context Aware Technology Provider with High Accuracy, Filip Maertens

Privacy and security are important in the digital and data world and especially after Snowdens’ revelations. Phil Zimmermann, the creator of PGP and Zfone and currently the Co-Founder of Silent Circle is the most suitable person to talk about the privacy and security issues we face. How enterprises and their employees can protect their data including an average user. Social media and various devices make it really easy for people to reveal important information about their lives, without them realising it. As we are now entering the IoT era, security and privacy will be even more important as more devices will generate even more sensitive data. Interviewed by Sakis Triantafyllakis for Tech Talks Central.


TTC #167 How Secure are Your Devices, Phil Zimmermann

Background, context, and poem text: http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/05/28/keeping-quiet-sylvia-boorstein-reads-pablo-neruda

Excerpted from https://soundcloud.com/onbeing/what-we-nurture-with-sylvia

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Sylvia Boorstein reads "Keeping Quiet" by Pablo Neruda

Marcello Melgara Responsible for International eHealth Projects, Italy /
Karima Bourquard, IHE-Europe Director of Interoperability, France

How does compliance with the European Interoperability Framework(EIF) help a National health system’s sustainability? At what percentage would you say your country’s NIF is aligned w/ the EIF when it comes to eHealth? What are the obstacles? Does your country have a published eHealth Strategy and what are its core objectives? In what percentage is it being implemented?


TTC #204 Interoperability & eHealth Strategies In Italy & France

Dimitra Liveri, Network and Information Security Expert at ENISA /
Marcello Melgara Responsible for International eHealth Projects

European eHealth companies have a huge potential to grow, by approaching an ever growing market inside and outside EU borders. Apart from the obvious innovation potentials in a broad number of health & patient care sectors, markets like that of the US, Latin America and China have come ‘closer’ due to international agreements. What kind of impediments will European eHealth companies have to overcome, in order to reach these markets effectively?


TTC #205 Extroversion of eHealth Companies

George Crooks, Medical Director for NHS24 and Director of the Scottish Centre for Tele-health and Telecare. President of the European Telematics Association (EHTEL) & leader of the Integrated Care Action Group of the European Innovation Partnership for active and healthy ageing for the European Commission

George Crooks responds to our questions on whether Scotland has a published eHealth Strategy and what are its core objectives. Also, how does compliance with the European Interoperability Framework(EIF) help a National health system’s sustainability? 


TTC #210 George Crooks on Scotland’s eHealth Strategy & Interoperability

Grab a cocktail, put on your favorite karaoke track, and let’s talk some more about disentangling audio data!

The Cocktail Party Problem

Centuries ago, Germany came up with a way to keep books that contained "dangerous" information without releasing them to the general public: The Giftschrank.
The word, a combination of "poison" and "cabinet," has a variety of meanings in different contexts. At its most literal, a Giftschrank is a space for storing controlled substances in places like pharmacies. Colloquially, it can refer to spaces reserved for all kinds of hidden and forbidden objects, ideas or stories.

203- The Giftschrank

So... about those bots. Bots bots bots. Bots!

In this episode of the botcast, a16z partners Benedict Evans and Connie Chan -- along with Chris Messina, longtime advocate of the open web and more -- pull apart various threads related to the topic of bots, mobile, and beyond: the (evolution?) from web to apps to messaging to bots; chat as an interface; “conversational commerce”; and so on. They also discuss why framing messaging through the lens of WeChat both reveals useful things (what works/ might not work) and not-so-useful things (such as seeking the “WeChat of the West”).

More importantly, how can we keep bots, and what they represent, in perspective -- beyond the fad? Especially when it comes to considering innovation on the 'web' vs. 'mobile' (remember the mobile browser!) and when it comes to removing friction (vs. adding limited interaction). What contexts (like customer service) are most useful for thinking about bots? And how can we even know, given it’s early days yet and we haven’t moved much beyond the command-line interface... 

Finally, as computing moves outside the classic work-centric paradigm to room- and urban-scale, how do we think about integrating online and offline, ubiquitous and “diffuse” computing through bots?

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a16z Podcast: Bots and Beyond

The Tech Talks Central web radio covers all the hot topics and trends in the connected world and features interactive interviews with thought leaders, as well as movers and shakers of the tech industry.
It’s a joint venture between entrepreneurs working in the mobile and technology field and people who love the radio waves!

TTC #167 How Secure are Your Devices, Phil Zimmermann

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