The future is near - Bell Labs Belgium Open Day

Unleashing Immersive Experiences was the theme of the Bell Labs Belgium Open Day (October 18th).

As one of the few attendees with a non-technical background, 2 speakers caught my particular attention.

John Dollin (BSKYB) offered some interesting insights into anthropological stimuli such as socialization, entertainment, refreshment and their relevance for future technological developments.

Alex Glass (ThePlatform) talked about the opportunities unleashed by TV Everywhere, from customer engagement to increased consumption of video services across existing and new platforms.

There seemed to be consensus that the current business models in both the broadcasting and content production industry will cave in further and that the creative sector will have to rethink its relation with the user.

Lots of interactive and interesting demos

The Open Day not only presented cautionary talks, though, but also lots of interactive and interesting demo’s that offer a glimpse of what the future might offer. They made it clear that anyone of us will be enabled to think up new apps supporting very personalized views on what’s useful in our lives, from counting the cookies taken out of the jar to an alert when your kids decided to stop reading and put the lights out so you know they’ve gone to bed without leaving your comfortable chair.

You will be able to peek around in the TV show you’re watching, unrestricted by the program’s director choices or hold a virtual meeting with an almost face-to-face feeling to them thanks to a combination of live video streams with a virtual environment.

Nicolas Staelens winner of the Student Competition

We are of course proud that not only Bell Labs researchers but also a large number of IBBT researchers have been involved in these developments, thanks to the strategic research programs carried out in the Joint Lab.

The strategic relevance of IBBT’s research was once more confirmed when Nicolas Staelens turned out to be the winner of the Student Competition with his paper on Real-Time Visual Quality Impairment Detection in Encoded Video Sequences.

Nicolas Staelens obtained his Master's degree in Computer Science at Ghent University (2004) and started his career as an R&D engineer at Televic Healthcare. In 2006, he joined the IBBT-IBCN research group (Ghent University) as a PhD student.

From left to right: Nicolas Staelens, Danny Goderis, Danny De Vleeschauwer
Copyright: Krzysztof Piatkowski (Alcatel-Lucent)