Mr. Hermés Piqué

► Hermés Piqué earned a degree in Computer Engineering at the University of the Republic of Uruguay while writing his first children’s stories and comics. He has 15 years of experience in web technologies and made the leap to mobile devices with the first version of Android. His first app, A Comic Viewer, has become the most popular Android comic viewer, with more than 2 million downloads.

In 2010, Piqué founded Robot Media with the aim of democratising the production of graphic novels and children’s books. With Robot Media he has produced hundreds of digital titles, with more than four million total downloads, co-productions with Random House and HarperCollins and two awards for digital innovation from Digital Book World New York. He currently works at Storybuilder, a tool for creating children’s books for tablets and mobile devices.

Creating children’s books for tablets and mobile devices with Storybuilder

► Thanks to tablets and mobile devices, children’s books have transcended paper and are currently leading innovation in digital content. But authors and publishing companies do not have good tools to create this new content, tools that remove the barriers of technology and distribution to focus on the creative process. With this aim in mind, the company Robot Media has created Storybuilder, an application to create interactive children’s content that has already been sent to thousands of authors in the beta phase, and whose results will be presented at BDigital APPs 2012.

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► Jorge García Caballero earned a degree in Occupational Therapy from the University of Saragossa’s School of Health Sciences in 2005, then obtained his first Master’s in Neurorehabilitation at San Antonio Catholic University (Murcia, Spain). His professional career began in the field of rehabilitation for the elderly and he later worked to rehabilitate people with neurological injuries for the company Gesto SL in Saragossa. At the end of 2010, he founded his own company, Limbika Assistive Technologies, where he still works as Manager, as well as Development Coordinator in the area of health and social services.

PiktoPlus: communicator for people who cannot speak

► Imagine for a moment that you cannot speak and that you cannot think in words. Imagine that you don’t know how to say ‘I love you’, ‘Come here’ or ‘Give me a kiss’. There are hundreds of thousands of people in the world with communication disorders, in which the words autism, cerebral palsy and Down syndrome predominate. We developed PiktoPlus, a communication tool based on 2D and 3D pictograms that helps many people to communicate through images. New technologies, the platforms that support them and the app format are opening a window on the world to help everyone with a communication disorder.

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Ph.D Javier Sánchez Sierra
R&D Director
Raylight Technology Solutions
www.raylight.es

► Javier Sánchez holds a PhD in Industrial Engineering from the University of Navarre. In his industrial phase, his activity centred on the design of products, prototypes and advanced 3D models. From 2008 to 2011, he was a visiting professor at Stanford University (USA), where he collaborated on many multidisciplinary projects related with art and technology. For the last three years, his activity has focused on developing apps for mobile platforms. He collaborates on various projects as an independent designer or as a partner (iLoowi, Xculpture, Lingualia, DressApp, among others) and is Technical Director of Raylight.

► Mobile devices are increasingly adding accessibility options, making it easier for people who are blind or have low levels of vision to use them. Likewise, more and more apps are becoming available (though the graphic interface is still oriented towards sighted users). At Raylight we have created a new platform called iLoowi, with controls and gestures specifically designed for use by people with low levels of vision. This suite includes the most common apps (daily planner, contacts, clock, alarm, geolocation, weather, music player, etc.) and a bookshop with these controls so they can be used by third parties.

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Ph.D

► Daniel Villatoro is a researcher at Barcelona Digital’s Mobility and Energy R&D&i Group and an Associate Professor at the University of Barcelona. Daniel holds a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (IIIA-CSIC) and from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), a Master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and a degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Granada. He has developed his research experience in collaboration with the University of Tulsa, the Laboratory of Agent Based Social Simulation (ISTC-CNR) and King’s College in London.

His scientific interests centre on self-organised systems and on social networks, focusing on the development of virtual bodies for human interaction and support. His research has led him to interact with experimental economists and cognitive scientists. He currently upholds scientific interests as an active member of the community by participating in different technical committees and complements them with a more applied approach to artificial intelligence techniques.

► In this presentation, Dr Daniel Villatoro will describe what Commutio is. In the sphere of smart cities, we notice a clear need to increase apps that allow users to turn into an additional sensor, helping to complete urban optimisation tasks through data capture. In the case of Barcelona, we focus on commuters and how information coming from them can help us to build a more efficient public transport network. We developed Commutio so it would become the communication channel through which the general public provides data, but also employ the incentive of gamification so users keep using the application.

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►  Pere Millán has a degree in Computer Science from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia. He is a professor at the Computer Engineering and Mathematics Department at Rovira and Virgili University (URV). He is a founding partner of the technology-based company W3IS2 (a spin-off of the URV), where he works as manager of R&D&I, and invented the patent on which the Wai? Yah! System is based (patented in Spain and under development in Europe and the USA). In the field of development for mobile devices, he has specialised in location-based systems and QR code applications. He teaches courses on Android device programming and is head of the development team at Wai? Yah! Android.

► The availability of information from a smartphone user’s surroundings is one of the areas covered by location-based systems (LBS). Wai? Yah! is an LBS that provides multi-lingual information for tourists and the general public on nearby points of interest, businesses, activities and bargains/deals. Wai? Yah! uses its own patented technology to provide information and geo-positioning without the need for an Internet connection or GPS signal. We will present the technologies that support Wai? Yah! and are already being used in Berguedà (Barcelona) and Cambrils (Tarragona), as well as the next innovations that we’ll be adding.

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► José Antonio Lorente has more than 30 years of extensive experience holding different posts at companies and agencies in the field of information and communication technologies (ICTs). Before founding Orizom, he worked at PeopleSoft, SSA, Granada City Council and Gillette Española, where he led both technical and commercial teams. His most prominent responsibilities these days include developing and launching Apps4u.

► The enormous scale of the establishment and use of smartphones, together with their powerful technological capacity, make these devices a highly versatile and valuable tool for users. As such, the tourism, culture and leisure sectors are becoming vehicles for generating business. Our product Apps4u will allow users to generate virtual guides and assistants applied to these strategic sectors. I will cover the technical and operational capacities of Apps4u and will discuss a few success stories, as well as possible sectorial applications.

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Mr. Jordi Termes

► Jordi Termes holds an Executive MBA from ESADE, an MBA from Instituto de Empresa, a degree in Computer Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia and a degree in Technical Systems Engineering from the University of Girona. He is the founder and CEO of Mobetia, a company based out of the 22@ district in Barcelona that is aimed at developing solutions for businesses in the area of mobility. Before joining Mobetia’s team, he held different executive positions at Everis, including in management and banking assessment, and was also responsible for Zurich Connect at the insurance company Zurich. He spent more than five years at Everis. Prior to that, he held the post of Project Manager for more than six years at Thales Information Systems.

► The impact of mobile applications on the hotel-based tourism sector. Analysis of the new rules of the game. Presentation of the “HallSt” success story, where a hotel sector company took advantage of the possibilities of mobile technology to offer guest rooms to users and customers in a totally different and innovative way.

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Ph.D

► David received his Ph.D. degree from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL - Switzerland) in 2007, in the field of Computer Vision and Augmented Reality. He has long experience in technology transfer and project management. David holds several patent applications and papers published in Tier 1 congresses. In 2011, he was a Speaker in Mobile World Congress.

Prior to co-founding Catchoom he was a Project Manager in Telefónica R&D. During the four years at Telefónica, he has held several management and engineering positions. During 2011, he was leading the pre-commercial launch of a strategic global WiFi product for Telefonica.

In 2010, he was the coordinator of the MobiAR consortium funded by the Spanish Government. Since 2009, he has also worked on the product development (both technology and business) of Mobile Augmented Reality & Mobile Visual Search services. He has also been responsible for license management of IRIS (visual search project codename inside Telefónica R&D).

►Catchoom is a cloud-based visual recognition solution for developers and integrators who want to offer fast, reliable apps to customers in sectors such as advertising, publishing, eCommerce and gaming.

End-users point & shoot from a smartphone camera at any logo, ad or inanimate object and in half a second Catchoom pulls up relevant images from a custom-built database. A Catchoom-powered app then instantly connects these images with related services like offers, add-to-cart functionality, or digital rewards.

Catchoom is an award-winning VC-funded spinoff of Telefónica Digital that provides its solution to Augmented Reality leaders like Layar.

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