MFG European Reporter -

On the 27th and 28th of October in the wonderful location of Strasbourg the second meeting of our Pro CI project took place. Together with our partners from France, Belgium, Netherlands, Ireland and England we have kept on working on the project idea, that we are willing to submit under the next Interreg NWE call in March 2010. Those who have already worked on an Interreg Project know for sure how much work and efforts it requires. Strong and reliable partnership are the basis for a successful project. That’s why MFG is glad to have the chance to work with creative and innovative European partners as Flanders DC, The Digital Hub, AER, Iconoval, CIDA and Brainport Development.

Personal meetings offer the great opportunity to get to know better and learn to trust the people you are working with. Even if sometimes it could be difficult to arrange a meeting according to the busy agenda of everyone, we strongly believe that it is always worth to meet your partners, before of course meeting them once again in a Skype conference!

Pro CI Consortium

MFG Annual Report's cover

The Annual Report of MFG Baden-Württemberg has been assigned the Platinum Award by the international competition “2009 spotlight Awards: print, video & web communications competition“ launched from the League of American Communication Professionals. The MFG has been awarded with the highest prize with a score of 99/100,  beating the competition of one thousand other applicants.  The jury was particulary impressed by the overall visual design and narrative of the Annual Report as well as by the creativity and the clarity of the message, which have got the highest possible score. Here you can see the results: http://www.lacp.com/2009spotlight/8081.HTM

For the third consecutive year, MFG has now had an active presence at the eChallenges conference, this year for the first hosted in Istanbul. Once again, an inspiring conference, though it was apparent, that due to the crisis, frozen budgets limited participation especially among the delegates from industry. Nevertheless, both panels with MFG contributions had an interested and broad audience.
From our perspective, we particularly enjoyed the input all around the Living Lab issues. Of course, Istanbul itself provides for a wonderful setting during the evenings.

The 8^th Heidelberg Innovation Forum is now over. On the 20^th October 2009 the street of scientists and investors have crossed once again on the top of Heidelberg’s hills in the suggestive location of the Studio Villa Bosch. As usual, this crossroad has raised a lot of new ideas and aroused expectations for promising results.

The formula is the one successfully tested in all the previous editions: bringing researchers and companies together, offering them a platform for the transfer of researchs close to the market. A matchmaking event created by MFG Baden Württemberg in collaboration with European Media Laboratory, which allows promising scientific results and new brilliant business ideas to be presented to a wider audience of investors, business angels and decision makers of European industry.

The focus of 8^th edition was on Visual Computing, Simulation and Digital Media. 33 Business Ideas where presented: each speaker had only eight minute to offer a short insight in his project and let people taste what the future of innovation could be like. A very short time, indeed, but enough to raise curiosity, exchange ideas and networking. Yes, because this is the core of Heidelberg Innovation Forum: connecting people and ideas.

As usual the Forum has been opened with the Keynote of a successful speaker: this year was the turn of Ruprecht von Buttlar, Director of the CONNECT’s Commercialization and Finance Programs. In this capacity, he directs the execution and development of the Springboard program, which helps and support entrepreneur in their start-up phase. His speech has once again underlined that innovation always need financial and business support to became truth.

After the open speech, two different panels have hosted the short presentations of a very wide spectrum of innovative business ideas. Among them: the Wii Spray, a touch screen to realize digital graffiti; Meetable, a multitouch collaborative table but also photorealistic rendering of very large dynamic 3D models and solutions on how to use thermography for visual effects in film.

Wii Spray

This.Play - Demonstration

During the closing dinner in the heart of Heidelberg old town the Best Business Idea has been rewarded with the Bwcon Prize – an initiative of the Region Baden-Württemberg, Germany. This year the prize has been assigned to Professor Christoph Cremer from the Kirchhoff Institute for Physics, Heidelberg, for the invention of “Vertico SMI”, the fastest high-resolution light-optical microscope of the world. The prize includes a personal Business-Coaching offered in the framework of the “Coach & Connect” Initiative in order to support a further spread of the idea into the market.

Now we just have to wait until April to see what brilliant, new, innovative business ideas will give live to the next edition of the Heidelberg Innovation Forum.

Prof. Cremer awarded by Klaus Haasis, CEO of MFG

The CReATE project, coordinated by MFG and funded within the FP7 – Regions of Knowledge framework,  is organizing the international conference  “CReATE: CONNECTING ICT RESEARCH AND CREATIVE ENTERPRISES”, that will take place in Turin, Italy, on 4th and 5th November 2009.

The conference  will be the meeting point for experts, coming from several countries and different background, to discuss the state of the art of ICT innovation in creative industries and cluster development. It is meant to involve public, political, entrepreneurial stakeholders through targeted workshops and discussions, in order to network them, to identify new ICT development trajectories and ICT research priorities, to focus innovative business models.

The event is addressed to cluster organisations, company representatives (SMEs and MNCs), researchers, intermediaries, enterprise associations, political decision-makers, both from CReATE partner and non-partner regions.

The CReATE conference will be hosted at the Virtual Reality & Multimedia Park in Turin, a high tech facility supported by local university and Regione Piemonte to promote research and development of innovative applications – especially in virtual reality and new technologies – for the audiovisual and multimedia sector development.
Moreover, the CReATE conference is part of a week in Turin full of events and festivals, to explore digital creativity, such as VIEW conference, Share Festival, Club to Club Festival in cooperation with Regione Piemonte.

The conference is part of the programm of the European Year of creativity and innovation and will be be streamed on WIPIE TV.

The event will be enriched by a Matchmaking session, organized for the evening of the 4th November, which will bring together enterprises, working  in Creative sector,  from the hot-spots region involved in CReATE.

Klaus Haasis and Sergio Duretti

We are happy to celebrate the strong collaboration with our Italian partner, CSP- Innovazione nelle ICT, now strengthened with a Memorandum of Understanding signed by Mr Haasis, CEO of MFG and Mr. Duretti, Director of CSP.

Under the umbrella of Open-Days, Mr Haasis and Duretti met each other for a strategic meeting, during which future cooperation activities have been defined. CReATE, Focus, SVEA, Master dei Talenti – with the collaboration of Fondazione CRT of Turin – are just some examples of projects and programmes which remark the collaboration between CSP and MFG during these years.

The moment of the signature