October 5, 2009

For its second edition, the "2009 NEM Summit - Towards Future Media Internet" successfully took place last week on September 28-30, 2009 in St Malo's Palais du Grand Large, France.

Organised by the NEM European Technology Platform under the aegis of the European Commission's DG Information Society & Media with the support of the Région Bretagne, the Images & Réseaux cluster and the St Malo Agglomeration, the 2009 NEM Summit represented this year again a major event in the field of networked and electronic media, and ICT at large.

This year the Summit welcomed 54 exhibitors (see exhibitors list and exhibition layout) including 20 EU-funded projects and 20 projects from the Images & Réseaux cluster. It gathered 70 authors and chairmen, and welcomed over 460 delegates (see the attendee list) committed to the NEM field.

On September 28, a Welcome Cocktail enabled Jean-Dominique Meunier (Executive Director of NEM), Dominique Taillandier (Saint-Malo Agglomeration), André Lespagnol (Vice-President of the Région Bretagne in charge of Education, Research and Innovation) and Vincent Marcatté (Chairman of the Images & Réseaux cluster board) to welcome all participants in Saint-Malo for the second year in a row.

On september 29, the conference started with an plenary session chaired by Jean-Dominique Meunier, during which Karine Valin (Managing Director of Sigma Orionis, chair of the NEM Summit Organising Committee) warmly welcomed all attendees as the Summit Organiser, while Viviane Reding (European Commissionner for Information Society & Media) gave the opening address.

Opening Address by Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for Information Society and Media

The opening session concluded with a keynote address from Joao Da Silva (Director of Directorate D "Converged Networks & Services" of the EC's DG Information Society and Media).

Troughout the Summit the conference also featured 4 keynote speakers from Europe and beyond:

• Prof. A. Katsaggelos (Northwestern University Chicago, USA)
• Tun Van Rijswijck (Broadcasting Center Europe, Luxembourg)
• Prof. Dr.-Ing. Philipp Slusallek (Intel Visual Computing Institute in Saarbruecken, Germany)
• Prof. Levent Onural (Bilkent University, Turkey)

In addition to keynote speeches, the Summit also included thematic sessions, introduced by Astrid (a 3D avatar), and addressing topics as defined by the Technical Programme Committee following the Call for papers, i.e. the following:

• Apllications
• Networks and services
• Content
• Enabling technologies

The Summit namely included a specific Panel Session on 3D, chaired by Atanas Gotchev, as well as a session devoted to Future Media Internet Strategy, Future Media Distribution and Challenges & Future Media Internet, chaired by Andrew Oliphant.

The Summit was also the opportunity to welcome co-located events, namely:

• The NEM Open Forum;
• The Global NEM which aimed at strengthening and supporting european cooperation with regions around the world in the NEM field;
• The PetaMedia Industry Workshop, organised by a EU network of excellence dedicated to R&D in the area of multimedia access and retrieval.

"I heard so many stories about the NEM Summit! Everyone was so happy with the exhibition and the PetaMedia workshop. Also, I heard all about how good the food was and how beautiful Bretagne is."
Martha Larson, University of Delft and PetaMedia NoE

During the closing session, Jean-Dominique Meunier and Andrew Oliphant presented the Best Paper Award and the Best Exhibition Awards.

• The Best Paper Award has been attributed, as per the decision of the Technical Programme Committee, to Christian Timmerer, Jean Gelissen, Markus Waltl and Hermann Hellwagner in recognition of the high quality of their paper entitled "Interfacing with Virtual Worlds".
• The Best Exhibition Award has been attributed to the CONTENTUS project, which received a simple majority following the vote organised on site and on the NEM Summit website.

2009 NEM Summit demographics:

When compared to 2008 data, the demographics enable to derive the following conclusions:

• the increase in attendance (over 460 instead of over 404) is mainly due to a higher committment of the industry, resulting in a higher share (38% instead of 28%), comparable to the one of universities and academia
• the Summit is getting more international: the weight for France is decreasing (39% instead of 45%), and the share of delegates from outside Europe has almost doubled, mainly because of strong delegations from Latin America and Asia.

"Thank you for your welcome at the 2009 NEM Summit and for the excellent organisation. The contacts we have made are already very positive!"
Claire Fertet, French National Contact Point for ICT, Ideal-IST