Tech Talks Central

Helen Keegan, organiser of Swedish Beers and Mobile Advertising Expert, Ilicco Elia, Head of Mobile at DigitasLBi and Rafe Blandford, Mobile Strategist at DigitasLBi discuss mobile trends and what they expect to see anew, at this year’s Mobile World Congress. Interviewed by Vicki Kolovou for Tech Talks Central.

Choons n’ Chat with Helen Keegan and her friends is back for Mobile World Congress 2018 where else? Yes, once more in Barcelona. This time Helen Keegan, organiser of Swedish Beers and Mobile Advertising Expert hosts Rafe Blandford, Mobile Strategist at DigitasLBi and Paul Swaddle, Chairman and Co-founder of PocketApp. They get together to discuss mobile trends, what they expect from this year’s Mobile World Congress, and interestingly enough they don’t shy away from hot topics like the new GDPR, that comes into full affect May’18; and ethics, involving the use and development of AI use cases. Interviewed by Vicki Kolovou for Tech Talks Central.

Helen Keegan, the organiser of Swedish Beers; Paul Stringer, Head of Mobile at Equal Experts; Alex Barth, VP of Business Development at Mapbox; and Jeff Beene, Head of New Devices at Orion Labs, got together, during the Mobile World Congress 2018 in Barcelona, to discuss smart cities, what’s happening right now and what we should be expecting. The podcast was sponsored by Equal Experts and hosted by Tech Talks Central.

Yiannis Rizopoulos speaks with Luca Verre, founder of the startup Chronocam, which develops a unique artificial vision and cybervision technology to be used for autonomous navigation and new IoT applications. Interviewed by Yiannis Rizopoulos for Tech Talks Central.

Vicki believes she discovered an innovative solution to the “I need 2 or 3 mobile phones” to separate “my different identities”. She spoke with Rob Grapes, from Graphite Software, about “spaces” and how they are segmenting your ONE phone -at kernel level- to serve your different profiles including a…hidden one. Interviewed by Vicki Kolovou for Tech Talks Central.

Venetia talks with Founder and leader of Qualcomm's healthcare subsidiary Qualcomm Life, Rick Valencia, about the two finalists dueling out to win the 10 million dollar tri-corder XPrize in the next 2 months, the path of getting to connected care being the standard of healthcare the Connect event he created to connect the tech industry under the responsibility to work together on bringing health innovation to scale for consumers as soon as possible.

Venetia talks with Lennart van der Ziel and Nick Yap - the team that created "Travis the Translator" a device that uses AI, Voice Control and Gesture Control to translate in 80 languages in real time. The boys explain their plan to break the language barrier around the world bringing people together. Interviewed by Venetia Kyritsi for Tech Talks Central.

Venetia talks with Carl Tonsgard of Crunchfish a company that's developing AR and VR gesture control for the classroom. Carl shows us the devices and explains how they will help kids and teachers in classrooms around the world. Interviewed by Venetia Kyritsi for Tech Talks Central.

Rafi Zauer, head of marketing at Essence, discussed about their newly deployed home care system for seniors and people with special needs. Their software algorithm creates and monitors behavioural patterns, notifying their carers at varying levels of alarm. Interviewed by Vicki Kolovou for Tech Talks Central.

Vicki spoke with John Shier, senior security advisor at Sophos and experienced security expert, about why we need to take every precaution when it comes to privacy and our mobile phones. Interviewed by Vicki Kolovou for Tech Talks Central.

Nikolaos Isaris, Deputy head of the IoT Unit at the European DG Connect office, discusses with Vicki about their newly established unit on IoT and actions they’re taking on promoting IoT while provisioning for standardisation, regulations, security and privacy. Interviewed by Vicki Kolovou for Tech Talks Central.

Iikka Salo co-founder and CEO of Trybe talks to us about their mobile app at 4YFN during Mobile World Congress 2017. You know how they say “it takes a village”? Well that’s exactly what the guys came up with, a smart way to connect the hungry with those who love and are great at feeding people, all while making a connection, a community, a “tribe”. Crazy right? Well, if you pay the rent checking spreadsheets 9 to5 but have mad skills in the kitchen, there’s no reason why you couldn’t cook for your neighbors and make a pretty penny while you’re at it. Trybe is SaaS enabled marketplace for independent chefs to set up, operate and promote an online food business. With over 1000 chefs and 10,000 customers so far, Trybe connects chefs who prepare food with the hungry patrons who are looking to purchase some excellent quality eats. Hey! Step away from the microwave and explore your Trybe, I bet a real person is making you dinner, around the block, with love, and no, it is not your mother. Interviewed by Venetia Kyritsi for Tech Talks Central.

Anna Sort aka @LostNurse, CEO of Play Benefit, and a World of Warcraft hard core gamer talks about gamefication and health. She explains how she got involved and what BeEnergy is trying to accomplish. Interviewed by Vicki Kolovou for Tech Talks Central.

Adrian Domenech, CEO of Vitcord, tells us the story his community connecting and engaging people around the world through video at 4YFN during Mobile World Congress 2017. In this real-life-honest-to-goodness tale Adrian unfolds the process of how users contribute their videos through Vitcord to create a living 'mosaic', a continuously evolving body of experiences that come together to tell a life story. Vitcord and its growing community is creating a new way of seeing the world through video. We all create content individually on a daily basis, but in this hyper-connected digital environment Vitcord makes us collaborators through an app that allows us all to add clips of an event creating unique content that grows as our community of contributions grow. With Vitcord, events and social media viral content take on a life of their own enhanced and embellished by each of our personal perspectives while still remaining unique enough to call our own. Interviewed by Venetia Kyritsi for Tech Talks Central.

Paul Gailey Alburquerque, founder of Everywoah, talks to us about their experience in NUMA Barcelona and the company’s 360 video middleware apps for mobile VR, and ‘mojo’ - mobile journalism at 4YFN during Mobile World Congress 2017. Paul explains how they develop white label 360 video player apps for creator studios, broadcasters, and brands seeking Android, iOS, webVR, and other VR distribution of their virtual reality content. He tells us how Everywhoah supports journalists and broadcasters going mojo with 360 video tools, customizable workflows, feature enhanced publishing, and integrations with APIs and hardware that can make any freelancer out there give big on site outfits a run for their money. The company also develops instant 360 preview app tools for 360 directors and VR storytellers to benefit from smartphone powered real time stitching aids that can accelerate and guide the filmmaking process. Interviewed by Venetia Kyritsi for Tech Talks Central.

Venetia talks with Campbell Foster, Director at Adobe Primetime, about Adobe’s strategy around 180 VR cinema, TV, and cross-device solutions. They discussed Adobe's first big project with with Coca Cola for a 180 VR ad that would run during the viewing of a 180 movie.

Venetia talks with Siri Sung Marketing director of BISECU a startup that developed a smart bike lock that works with your phone to help you "forget the lock and enjoy the ride". Interviewed by Venetia Kyritsi for Tech Talks Central.

Esteban Redolfi is the Director of 4YFN. Vicki asked him all sorts of questions on 4YFN 2017; how many startups and investors are participating; how many people they’re expecting and what the future beholds. Vicki says he was a great interviewee with a strong sense of what collaboration entails. Interviewed by Vicki Kolovou for Tech Talks Central.

We talk with Brendan O'Brien , Co-Founder & Chief Innovation officer Aria Systems during Mobile World Congress 2017. Brendan, an IoT and connected car monetization expert, explains how (IoT) has created an entirely new market in the automotive industry with connected car services that are driving new streams of revenue growth and transforming the industry. He explains how much of the connected-car opportunity is “recurring revenue” due to the way connected car services are consumed, measured and paid for. We talk about connected cars being the new big thing and Brendan explains how industrial applications for these connected vehicles could be just as profitable. Finally Brendan gives us the scoop on companies like Audi, Cadillac, Subaru, Ford and GM who are already getting on the bandwagon of leveraging innovative connected car services. Interviewed by Venetia Kyritsi for Tech Talks Central.

Skolkovo is the state owned innovation centre, in Moscow, with over 12 hundred startups under its wings. Vicki interviewed Alexey Belyakov, Vice President of Skolkovo Foundation, Maxim Zharenov, Director and Taisiya Yarmak, Head of International PR about Skolkovo, its aims as an innovation centre and its strong points. Interviewed by Vicki Kolovou for Tech Talks Central.

We interviewed Pedro Concalves, COO for Hi Jiffy. He explains how the hotel chatbot works over Facebook messenger, communicating with potential customers, directly. Their strongest advantage is the sort of customer service they provide with a human touch. Interviewed by Vicki Kolovou for Tech Talks Central.

Vicki interviewed Anthony Rovito from All The Foodies. "All the Foodies" is a creative cooking network show with a hipster twist. Random chefs or wanna-be-chefs prepare the recipe in a very aesthetic video, explaining in 2 minutes the story behind the recipe. You can look up their videos on Facebook at AllTheFoodiesSpain. Interviewed by Vicki Kolovou for Tech Talks Central.

Gesture and face recognition including emotions is the next big thing in the future of driving and safety when it comes to the automotive industry. Rony Greenberg, Vice President of Development at EyeSight talked with Vicki about how poker gave him the idea to work on face recognition. Interviewed by Vicki Kolovou for Tech Talks Central.

How about a smart palette? You might think of it as trivial, but GSMA surely thinks different, as it has awarded RM2 with the innovation award for its Smart Palette. Vicki interviewed Christopher Gibbs at the Innovation City and discussed about their geolocation enabled long lasting palettes with amazing opportunities for the assets business. Interviewed by Vicki Kolovou for Tech Talks Central.

Vicki was in the Innovation City speaking with Intel and AT&T on IoT and sensor kits, that cut back time and cost for ventures who are looking for ways to get into the Internet of Things era and wanna start small. Dipti Vachani, Vice President General Manager of strategy and solutions IoT Group at Intel, and Sunder Somasundaram, Director of IoT solutions at AT&T discuss Intel’s LIQD program and their IoT development partnership. Interviewed by Vicki Kolovou for Tech Talks Central.

Ever wanted to get started with sensors and create your own Internet of Things? AT&T has a starter kit solution for developers with limited development knowledge. Vicki discussed with Richard Finn, Lead Product Marketing Manager at AT&T, on the IoT starter kits available. Interviewed by Vicki Kolovou for Tech Talks Central.

Bas Van Abel, Founder and CEO of Fairphone talks to Vicki about the concept behind the mobile phone Fairphone. It all started from the awful mining conditions in Congo. It’s not often we talk about fair construction. Interviewed by Vicki Kolovou for Tech Talks Central.

Gregor Gimmy founder and head of the BMW Startup Garage talks to Tech Talks Central and Vicki about the term he’s coined "Venture Client", where a big corporation avoids the usual accelerator model and goes straight to being the client of the startup, supporting and growing it in the process. Interviewed by Vicki Kolovou for Tech Talks Central.

Daniel Cohen, Product Director at Fluid Ads, a UK startup, discusses with Vicki about their easy to use HTML5 ad creation platform. Daniel says it takes a few minutes to create a proper HTML5 ad on their platform -with limited technical knowledge- instead of the usual 4 to 5 days. Check it out! Interviewed by Vicki Kolovou for Tech Talks Central.

Vicki talks with Maya Thomine Desmazures, from La French Tech and finds out what France is doing for its ecosystem of startups. Ever wondered how you can move your startup to Paris? There’s a VISA for that now. Interviewed by Vicki Kolovou for Tech Talks Central.

Yiannis Rizopoulos speaks with Suresh Subramanian VP of Global industry relations of Iconectiv, an Ericsson subsidiary on the standards of the MZM and Internet of Things era, security and authentication. Interviewed by Yannis Rizopoulos for Tech Talks Central.

Anastasia Krithara, research associate at the Insititute of Informatics and Telecommunications (IIT) of NCSR "Demokritos" talks about IASiS, an EU funded project that seeks to pave the way for precision medicine approaches by utilising insights from patient data. It aims to combine information from medical records, imaging databases and genomics data to enable more personalised diagnosis and treatment approaches in two disease areas – lung cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. Interviewed by Vicki Kolovou for Tech Talks Central.

Speech to text and vice-versa is a technology that is driving a lot of AI innovation. One of which is virtual interactive assistants like Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant. Aimilios Chalamandaris, CEO and Co-founder of Innoetics shares with us their 10-years journey, starting an NLP (Natural Language Processing) spin-off out of Athena Research and Innovation Centre up to the point of getting acquired by Samsung Electronics. He shares with us the main factors that made the acquisition possible and what are the next steps for Innoetics. If you are a researcher and trying to productise and commercialize your project or idea then this is an interview you should listen to, as Aimilios shares his insights on what skills you need to develop to become a businessman and an entrepreneur. Interviewed by Sakis Triantafyllakis for Tech Talks Central.

Modern powerful computers open a whole new era for the application of the Monte Carlo method for the simulation of physical systems of higher complexity. The Monte Carlo simulations are important computational techniques in many areas of natural sciences and have significant application in particle and nuclear physics, quantum physics, statistical physics, quantum chemistry, material science, among many other multidisciplinary applications. In the heart of the Monte Carlo simulations are Pseudo Random Number Generators (RNG). The primary objective of the proposed network is a systematic development and implementation of the state of the art new generation of Pseudo Random Number Generators based on Kolmogorov-Anosov K-systems, which demonstrate excellent statistical properties, into a multidisciplinary usable product. Senior researcher George Savvidy explains how this rather theoretical problem also finds many applications in everyday life. Interviewed by Yannis Rizopoulos for Tech Talks Central.

Nassos Katsamanis, researcher at the ILSP Lap for the Athena Research Centre, and VP of Engineering for the Behavioral Signals startup, discusses the origins of the team and their research. He explains how the US based startup is using speech data, AI and deep learniing for behavioral modeling, in real time, and how their findings can be used by companies who produce large quantities of speech data. Interviewed by Vicki Kolovou for Tech Talks Central.

Combustion processes (SCS) are advantageous for the production of nanomaterials, as an express and simple technology; using this method, which allows the creation of a unique morphology and metastable phase composition, particles of high purity can be obtained. Senior researcher at NCSR “Demokritos”, Professor Galina Xanthopoulou, talks about the application of this technology for tuning crystal lattice structure, nanoparticle size; explaining how this could be an efficient breakthrough for the production of nanomaterials with ordered properties. Interviewed by Yannis Rizopoulos for Tech Talks Central.

What is going on in diabetic research? Can we revitalize pancreatic stem cells to prevent kidney failure and help diabetes patients? Dr. Garyfallia Drossopoulou offers valuable information on these very important issues for numerous people all over the world, based on her team research, which is supported by Novo Nordisk, a pharmaceutical company leading in diabetic treatment. She talks about the social impact of their results, the significant improvement of the current therapeutic treatment and their effort for a better quality of life for all these people. Interviewed by Yannis Rizopoulos for Tech Talks Central.

Given the fact that millennials and Generation Z visitors rarely get attracted by the content of museums, even open-air ones, the need to find a kind of “bait” for them in order to visit, is more than an urgent one. Maria Roussou, Assistant Professor in Interactive Systems at UoA and senior researcher at “Athena” Research Center, explains how she tries to offer new and immersive experiences to them, clad in a digital storytelling costume, in the framework of an EU - funded (Horizon 2020) project that exploits the special dynamics of Human - Computer Interaction. Interviewed by Yannis Rizopoulos for Tech Talks Central.

Renée Jiménez, Head Marketing Communications, Manager GSMA talks to us about Hack_D_Gap, the global startup challenge, ahead of Mobile World Congress 2017. Renée sets the context by explaining what the GSMA’s plans for women4tech are, who initiated it, the initiatives planned during the MWC17 and the expected impact of the overall program. While the program, its activities, and the challenge is not exclusive to women she does explain why its creation was imperative in the overall scheme of things at GSMA; focusing on how they want to address gender equality and diversity in the technology sector.

Costas Spyropoulos, Director of Research at the Institute of Informatics & Telecommunications at NCSR “Demokritos” describes the many benefits of the IoT era, when we will have -in only a few years from now- several billions of connected devices all around us, offering terabytes of data and many, many new simple and complex services as an answer to our needs. Dr. Spyropoulos gives some examples of these services in tourism, health, culture, retail and other sectors but he also points out the existing problems in interoperability, privacy and security. He also talks about their research, at NCSR; their own IoT platform and services that use open standards in order to easily extend and foster broad use. Finally, he insists that the public has to be educated on IoT and for that reason, himself and his team participate in conferences to inform the audience and demonstrate best practices. Interviewed by Yannis Rizopoulos for Tech Talks Central.

Dr Athanassios Ganas is the Research Director for Active Tectonics, GPS, Geological Remote Sensing at the Institute of Geodynamics of the National Observatory of Athens. His research is focused on earthquakes and in understanding patterns and behaviour of earth’s cluster based on recording signals from satellites.They have also developed an open-data web platform called GSAC where someone can access geological data from Greece and other countries in the nearby region. He also shares some surprising outcomes and discoveries of their research not only in Greece (Lefkada) but also from the US (California), Chile and Italy. Based on GNSS technology and real-time data, Dr Ganas and his research team are able to estimate accurately an earthquake’s magnitude (in just 2 minutes) and run predictive models for location and time of tsunami attacks. Interviewed by Sakis Triantafyllakis for Tech Talks Central.

Dimitrios Niarchos, Director of Research at NCSR Demokritos, talks about his specialty - magnetic materials; a multibillion dollar industry with a very bright future and the effort to get to new materials with better properties, that open the way for new markets in the coming Age of Magnetic Materials. Dr Niarchos tells us that his lab in NCSR produces innovative and novel materials like permanent magnets containing less or no rare (and expensive) earths, and has already several breakthroughs to be proud of. They are also working on recording media, passing -in a short of mini revolution- from 2D to 3D recording and, finally, they are putting a lot of research on transformers for mobile devices, having already increased their efficiency to over 95% meaning a longer life for batteries and many benefits for the environment. Interviewed by Yannis Rizopoulos for Tech Talks Central.

Natalia Manola, Assoc. Researcher at Athens University and Athena Research Centre, guides us through the initiatives taken in the EU on open access for data, open source and facility sharing, that aim to ameliorate collaboration among scientists and researchers around the world, in spite of many and different faces of diversity. This initiative, through the Open Air e-infrastructure and other steps (including the implementation of a European open science cloud) funded by major European countries, is closely linked to innovation and it also offers much needed reach to industry and the public. Interviewed by Yannis Rizopoulos for Tech Talks Central.

Alceste Bonanos, a passionate astronomer and Assoc. Researcher at the National Observatory of Athens talks about two very interesting research projects realised by her team: the goal of the first one is to identify over a period of three years all variable stars ever observed by Hubble telescope and make a catalog of them; while the second (which is called Neliota and it is actually an ESA activity taking place at NOA) has to do with the observation and detection of the impacts of really small (with a mass less than 10 grams) objects (eg. debris, meteorites, comets etc.) hitting the surface of the Moon. For the implementation of this project, a rather outdated 1,2 m. telescope near Kiato, Greece, was recently upgraded and special instruments had to be developed. This project -only the 3rd of its kind in the world- will last until Nov ‘18. Interviewed by Yannis Rizopoulos for Tech Talks Central.

Dimitris Gavrilis, Senior Researcher at the Digital Curation Unit of the Institute of Information Systems at the Athena Research Centre, talks about digital libraries which is the design and development of knowledge management systems mostly for the humanities. Mopseus, their digital library software tool, which stores text, images, audio files etc. uses complex models with metadata to present information in a much smarter and useful way. Their MORe aggregator, is a flexible metadata aggregator that provides fast curation and enrichment services, like showing coordinates for a specific address or finding links to create semantic relations, amongst other things. The repository is constantly curated through automatic live services that run behind the scenes checking for data degradation, missing links, affiliations and other information. Interviewed by Vicki Kolovou for Tech Talks Central.

Konstantinos Giannakopoulos is a Research Officer of the Laboratory of Electromicroscopy and Nanomaterials at the National Center for Scientific Research “Demokritos”. He talks about how technology is now developing, by what he and his peers are doing at the nano and atom scale, where they manipulate matter. Using the information about the composition and properties of materials he says is what has lead to the advanced materials behind everyday things we all enjoy. The technology behind your microphone, your screen, the processors and other elements that interconnect devices, so that we can take and see pretty pictures on a variety of devices, talk to each other remotely or seamlessly, watch a movie, is all the result of working and changing materials at the smallest level. Konstantinos talks about their EU funded project www.materialsfuture.eu where information on materials is available for free in 23 languages as well as, short films, educational games, lesson plans for schools and other cool stuff. Interviewed by Sakis Triantafyllakis for Tech Talks Central.

Drakoulis Yannoukakos, Director of Research at NCSR “Demokritos” and Director of the Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory, talks about hereditary ovarian and breast cancer. Their research involves hereditary factors that lead to cancer in very young women, between the ages of 30-35 and even younger. By analysing the family genome they’re trying to discover the molecular mutations that are responsible for the early onset of cancer, which although it could be blamed on environmental issues is not that often a cause in so young ages. Interviewed by Vicki Kolovou for Tech Talks Central.

Ioannis Raptis, Senior Researcher at NCSR “Demokritos”, discusses food safety. He starts out by mentioning several dangerous food scandals like the horse meat in over 10M burgers, the 3K patients fallen sick by e-coli in food, and the tainted baby milk in China. He continues by pointing out the disadvantages of the time consuming methodology used now to analyse food in the lab. The Food Sniffer (www.foodsniffer.eu), developed by his team as a prototype, consists of the sensing chip, the analysis reader and a computer which could mean a tablet or mobile. It’s advantages are it’s very small and can run with a single battery making it easy to use for analysis in the field. After producing the prototype they’re now planning to include the detection of more pathogens and even more miniaturization to make it even more portable. Interviewed by Yannis Rizopoulos for Tech Talks Central.

Sakis Triantafyllakis interviews Dr. Elena Dascalaki, senior researcher at the Institute for Environmental Research and Sustainable Development of the National Observatory of Athens on the energy performance and environmental footprint of buildings. Dr. Dascalaki talks about her work at the Energy Conservation Group of the Institute where they study the behavior and energy performance of buildings, the challenges and the importance not only of developing new zero energy structures but also upgrading existing older buildings to have close to zero energy performance, a feat that is substantial especially considering the large amount of old structures all around Europe. Dr. Dascalaki tells us they were instrumental in helping develop the regulations for energy performance of buildings and says they are working on new strategies to upgrade and refurbish old buildings in Greece and Europe to meet the EU mandate that all residential buildings will have to be built or upgraded to be zero or near zero energy, relying solely on renewable sources by 2020. This project she says will be first implemented for all public buildings which will have to make the switch by 2019. Interviewed by Sakis Triantafyllakis for Tech Talks Central.

Evangelia Diapouli, Postdoc Researcher in the institute of Nuclear Technology & Radiation Protection at NCSR "Demokritos", talks about their international environmental project which involves linking research discoveries with decision makers ie. state authorities. Their ‘EU Life Program’ funded project offers quantitative assessment for air pollutants, helping officials make informed decisions when it comes to effectively controlling emissions. The team is now continuing their work by researching how these specific concentrations of air pollutants are affecting our lives outdoors and indoors, every day. Interviewed by Vicki Kolovou for Tech Talks Central.

We had the pleasure to interview Dr. Athanasios Dimoulas in the past and it seems that this interview is as interesting as the previous one. Athanasios Dimoulas is the head of Epitaxy and the Surface Science Laboratory at NCSR “Demokritos” and he gives us an update with the latest developments of new novel materials in nanoelectronics. The explosion of big data and IoT has resulted in a great need for energy efficient smart devices. Dr Dimoulas shares some of the problems and insights with their research on these hard to develop materials like graphene, Weyl fermions and others. He then reveals how crystals could simulate a “particle accelerator” and test some of the fundamental principles and assumptions in high energy, elementary particle physics and cosmology. This could result in discovering new interesting properties and being able to integrate them faster in electronic devices, capacitors and transistors, in the hope of impacting emerging Quantum Technologies. Interviewed by Sakis Triantafyllakis for Tech Talks Central.