The Networked and Electronic Media (NEM) European Technology Platform will have its 2008 NEM Summit on October 13-15, 2008 in Saint-Malo (France). The 2008 NEM Summit "Towards Future Media Internet" aims to be a major conference and exhibition devoted to the field of networked and electronic media and information & communication technologies (ICT) at large. The conference will address topics related to:

• Electronic Media Content

• Distributed Media Applications

• New Media Delivery Networks and Network Services

• User Devices and Terminals

• NEM Enabling Technologies

Networked and Electronic Media (NEM) is one of the European industrial initiatives, also known as Technology Platforms, established by major key European and global stakeholders. NEM addresses the convergence of media, communications, consumer electronics, and IT as a wide opportunity for future growth, by taking advantage of generalized broadband access, increased mobility, availability of richer media formats and contents, as well as new home networks and communications platforms.

Recent technological developments in media distribution are enabling an unprecedented number of innovative applications, empowering the role of the end-user and fostering the creation of new business initiatives.

Electronic media technologies are enabling new generations of media devices and services, seamlessly conveyed over ever-increasingly intelligent media transportation networks. Thanks to the emergence of flexible content representation and rendering technologies, eApplications at large, supported by secure and trustworthy authentication and payment services, will be available everywhere, any time and on every device.

The retrieval of "My Preferred Content" will be made easy by the rapid adoption of multimedia search utilities that will unleash the power of identifying objects by Audio/Video multimedia keys. The relevance of the results will be improved even more, thanks to the context-awareness capabilities of terminals. The same system will allow the user to easily share his experiences and creativity with a broad community.

The multi-modality of rich and interactive media content will greatly improve user experience, including people with disabilities, through immersive and more natural use of all human senses: the user becomes an integral part of the multi-media experience, while the terminal device itself vanishes.

The ambition of the NEM Summit is to foster the interaction between researchers and business decision makers active in this emerging market, hence annealing the outcome of R&D activities into the creation of new business opportunities. The Summit will also allow researchers to identify opportunities for international research collaboration under the ICT Theme of Framework Programme 7 (FP7).

It is expected that the event will gather 400 to 500 representatives from the industry and research ICT community worldwide to share experiences and research results, identify future trends, discuss and identify opportunities for research collaboration (including under the ICT Theme of the FP7)


Some interesting pieces of the planned agenda:

• Media and the Internet at the Croassroads – Joao Da Silva, Director of Directorate D (Converged Networks & Services) of the EC's DG Information Society and Media

• Multicast distribution of Digital Cinema – Giuseppe Baruffa, University of Perugia

• HoloVizio True 3D Display System – Tibor Balogh, Peter Tamas Kovacs, Zoltan Megyesi, Attila Barsi, Holografika

• Content Providers and the Networks – Matteo Maggiore, Controller, EU and International Policy at BBC

• Multimedia transmission in a managed P2P network: making sense? – Letian Xu, Kamal Singh, Gilles Straub, INRIA Rennes, Adlen Ksentini, University of Rennes 1

• Hybrid Fixed-Mobile P2P Super-distribution – Antoni Oller, Andre Rios, Jesus Alcober, Technical University of Catalonia

• A Service Oriented Approach to Online Digital Audiovisual Archives – Matthew Addis, Richard Lowe, Charlotte Norlund, University of Southampton

• FAMC: The emerging MPEG-4 Specification for Dynamic 3D Mesh Coding – Francoise Preteux, Titus Zaharia, Institut Telecom

To find out more, visit the conference site.