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For writing my thesis, I managed to schedule some interviews with people who are working on or promoting ICT as an enhancer for development. Consequently, I had the opportunity to meet very passionate and fascinating people. My meeting with Thierry Devars, Responsible of the international relations at the Information Society and Media DG (European Commission), was one of the most informative and transparent I ever had. M. Devars was a very good educationalist and we talked almost two hours about development issues. I thank him for all his advice, and for his frankness. Listening to him convinced me more than never, that ICT and development were very relevant topics, and that the future of emerging countries, specially Africa, will be closely related to these issues.

The other meeting I would like to talk about, was the one which allowed me to touch and use the controversial XO computer, made by the One Laptop Per Child foundation. As you may know, the main mission of this NGO founded by Nicolas Negroponte (MIT), consist in bringing education to rural areas in developing countries, thanks to a low-cost computer, initially priced at US$100. Finally the XO is more expensive than expected US$180, but it is a great educative tool. I wanted to personally test it to make my one opinion on this device.

Three weeks ago, I contributed to the SOLIDAYS festival in Paris as a volunteer. I worked for a friends' association created in march 2009 called SIDASOS. Its aim is to prevent AIDS, mainly by focusing their activities on the young inhabitant of Brussels. When they were still students, Gaïa and Céline, the SIDASOS historic founders, realized that there was not any significant entity which was working to avert HIV and AIDS transmission to people of their generation.

Now SIDASOS is based on an loyal and dynamic team of volunteers (like me), and we plan to organize in Brussels a big solidarity festival to prevent AIDS, FESTIVAIDS. 30 artists, playing various kind of music (Rock, Pop, Soul, Hip-hop, Electro) are scheduled and the Show will take place in the Botanique (a famous salle in BXL).

The ambition of SIDASOS is to create in Brussels an music festival as famous and symbolic as SOLIDAYS in Paris. If you want to attend to a very special event and be solidaires to AIDS patient, I give you RDV on 25 to 26 september 2009. For more information you should take a look to the website of Festivaids and stay tuned...

FESTIVAIDS - The website

Du 23 au 25 avril 2009, la prestigieuse université de Pécs, Hongrie, à l’origine du réseau des universités des capitales européennes de la culture (UNeECC), organisait dans ses murs la première édition de l’UNeECC Student Workshop. Ce colloque avait pour objectif de réunir des représentants d’associations étudiantes issues des universités membres du réseau UNeECC, afin d’impliquer les étudiants et leurs associations aux activités du réseau, qui ne cesse de prendre de l’ampleur à mesure que le titre de Capitale Européenne de la Culture gagne en prestige et en notoriété.

Pour cette première édition, l’Université Catholique de Lille était représentée par deux membres du pôle « relations internationales » de la FEDE (Fédération des étudiants de la Catho), Margaux Lugand et Cédric Pierre-Louis, qui ont saisi avec enthousiasme cette opportunité exceptionnelle d’échange et de coopération à la fois multi et interculturelle.

Let me introduce you to the LEMUR, the first commercial device runs by multitouch technology. Launched in 2005, 2 years before Apple released the iPhone, by JazzMutant a French visionary start-up the LEMUR met with great success in the "microcosm" of electronic music.

"The true innovation of the Lemur lies in its unlimited touch points. Live performers are no longer limited by a single mouse click that does one task; they can now use all of their fingers for true multi-tasking. Lemur's multi-touch technology makes it possible to use all ten fingertips to accurately control multiple user-interface objects simultaneously. The agile responsiveness and radical differentiation of the Lemur has set the standard of what a controller should be".

This short presentation from the JazzMutant website perfectly demonstrates what the LEMUR is about : an amazing and futuristic instrument for playing music in a more intuitive and spectacular way. World famous artists like Daft punk or Björk and others like Raw Hedroom, Richard Devine or Stephan Bodzin have adopted all the LEMUR with enthusiasm. After viewing some music videos featured LEMUR, you will probably understand why... For my part, I am totally seduced by this extraordinary product and I am waiting for the day when I will be able to test it for real!

Flickr, cc license, Barack Obama

Three days ago a friend of mine, an American citizen, ask me a original request; she wanted to know what I and other French people think about Obama's election. Actually she is teacher in a school for young children, and she would like to share with her pupils various points of view from around the world about the presidential election. Why? Because she would like to demonstrate to them how important is to know what foreign people think about the United State of America and its new president. She told me, she was very surprised to notice how different was the way French were considering the USA during the last presidential elections, in 2004. This revelation change the way she considered her country, her government and mainly her president.

I appreciate her open mindedness, so I wrote the following long text (click on the link below) to answer her request. Sorry, for the moment the text is in French, but I will translate it soon. Stay tuned ;-)

Hello Jill, Ça fait un bail!!! J'espère que tout va bien de ton côté. En tout cas moi ici à Lille je suis overbooked! Lol! Mais j'adore ça, donc j'assume.

Pour en revenir à ta requête, je tiens d'abord à te dire que l'analyse de ta copine Héloïse fait un peu "café du commerce", sans vouloir être désobligeant à son égard, je trouve ce genre de propos très irritants... Obama n'a pas remporté les élections grâce au soutien de George Clooney ou de Will.I.am. Ni parce ce que "ça fait cool de voter pour un noir". Les temps sont durs (deux guerres qui s'enlisent, une grave crise financière et économique, des expropriations en cascade, une hausse record du chômage et de l'endettement des ménages, des défis environnementaux sans précédent, un système de santé inefficace et injuste, un leadership en berne, etc.) et c'est une insulte à la personne d'Obama et aux électeurs qui lui ont accordé leur vote, que d'affirmer qu'il a été élu non pas sur son programme ou sa personnalité, mais juste parce que c'est le candidat des stars. D'ailleurs les républicains ont utilisé ce genre d'arguments contre lui ("The One"), avec les résultats que l'on connaît... Ce genre de discours est souvent formulé par des personne qui n'ont jamais pris le temps d'écouter le moindre discours d'Obama et qui n'ont pas vraiment suivi la campagne...

Most of you probably do not know him, but the man who are on this photo with me is Marc Davis, the Chief Scientist of Yahoo! Connected Life. He did a really fascinating presentation about current and future progress in the social network technologies, during the New Industrial World Forum in Paris (october 3th & 4th). I really appreciate his keynote and his californian accent. From the few I knew about him, he seems to be a nice guy and a very brilliant scientist who studied in the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Have a discussion with this kind of people is always rewarding. By the way, thanks for the coffee, Mr Davis.

As you know, I spent one entire year in Spain - I miss my life and my friends there - and I finish this amazing experience by doing an internship in the spanish "subsidiary" of the famous NGO, Oxfam International. I worked there as a marketing assistant, and it was really educative and interesting. I will tell you more very soon.

As I wrote it in my CV, I DO LOVE music. I am not only a music addict, I am also singer, song-writer and (digital) musician. Thanks to my flatmate Miguel, I start to learn playing guitar and I hope I will be able to play quite well before I leave Spain. Now I want to make you listen to our current main project ; since December Miguel and I have started to compose a mix between his Flamenco musical inclination and my Reggae-Soul vibes...and the following extract is at the moment the most interesting part of the song. Enjoy it!

More photos of our "band" : Jus Soli

There is something I really like about the University of Valencia; that is the incredible number of subjects available. Just a quick look in the “asignaturas de libre eleccion”/optional modules shows you the vast range of choice; for example you can study "Empresas y negocios en China" (Business in China) Or "Marketing on-line" (as I will study it in June) And some courses are taught both in Spanish and English. The only problem is that maybe there is a lack of information about all the opportunities offered by the University. The very worst informed about this are more often the ERASMUS students, but maybe most of us are not really interested.

Anyway, a few months ago I was checking my mail and I discovered a mail which invited students to subscribe to an interesting subject : “Gestión de la producción en el sector del automòvil”. As I like to learn new things I subscribed, and I think it was a really good idea! During 3 weeks we received intensive courses (5 hours with some short breaks) from various executives working for the Ford factory in Valencia, among the teachers we had the privilege of having the Director of production himself during the first session. And I have to admit that you quickly realize why is the Boss ; his presentation was the clearest; the most interesting, the most fascinating: definitely the best in fact.

But the best part of this module was visiting the factory in Almussafes (a village close to Valencia city), in one word: impressive!!! I think we were all like kids with wide-opened eyes, just amazed by what we discovered. I could not help asking myself how human beings could build such big and sophisticated thing. The manufacturing process of a car is really amazing: every 25 seconds a car was produced, in 270 hectares factory where work everyday 7300 people; we are talking about a real city! In 2006. The Ford plant in Almussafes was the one which produced most cars in Europe : 420 000. To conclude with figures, the Ford Motor share of the Valencian Community GDP was about 8,2%.

It was a really educational trip. No regrets. The next plant I want to visit: An Intel’s microprocessor factory. Can someone in the audience help me?

You know what? I just realized yesterday I was a lucky & happy « AiPhone » owner! In fact, since Tuesday 24th I have been in France for Easter holidays so I have decided to spend some days in my flat in Lille (North of France). The other day, while my friend was ringing my intercom so I would open the door for her, I noticed for the first time the brand of this such trivial device and consequently the name of the company which manufactured it ; it was such a surprise when I noticed that I already had an Aiphone ;-) Furthermore, the same day by coincidence I learnt that Apple had been negociating since last year with Aiphone, Japan’s largest intercom maker - based in Nagoya, in order to find a satisfactory agreement for both companies to use the name iPhone fairly (the pronunciation and the spelling are the same in Japanese), when the "Jesus Phone" will be released in few months on the japanese cellphones market. As a present for you I have taken a shot of my revolutionary and ultra-sophisticated Aiphone GF-1MD... Please, don't be jealous!!!

The global website of Aiphone

Apple secures Japanese iPhone naming rights - 3G release all but certain now