Per Jomer, Vice President of Group Strategy at Ericsson, along with sixty or so other participants from various companies, authorities and universities, had been invited to Grand Hotel in Stockholm to hear more about Umeå as an IT region, and the special venture InfoTech Umeå, that Uminova Innovation is behind.
- It was an eye opener, Per Jomer continues and mentions, among other things, the lectures about the company Oryx Simulations and Umeå Institute of Design as particularly interesting.
Derny Hägström, vd för Oryx Simulations utbytte erfarenheter med Per Jomer, vid Group Strategy på Ericsson.
- I found many things fascinating to hear, not least the combination of so many different disciplines within the university, such as design and technology, Peter Schuller, HP, agrees happily.
Umeå holds a high ranking as a creative city
Most of those who had come to the day seminar about the IT venture Infotech Umeå seemed to agreed that Umeå as an IT region is a tenable brand.
- Umeå is characterized by a young population with a high education level, as well as by a culture of openness, creativity and fresh thinking, said Martin Wiklund, business coach and director of the venture. Martin himself was recruited from an interesting consulting job in New York in order to contribute to the Umeå initiative.
- Umeå is actually ranked as one of the top cities in one of the world’s most creative countries, according to professor Richard Florida, who analyzes cities and countries based on social and economic theory, Martin Wiklund emphasized.
The emergence of a new IT generation
Richard Florida coined the expression “creative class”, and he ranks cities and countries based on the availability of talent, technology and tolerance in a society. According to Florida, Umeå distinguishes itself in a very positive way on this type of scale. One of the reasons for this is that today you can see the emergence of a new IT generation in Umeå, according to Martin Wiklund. The New IT Generation could become an expression characterizing Umeå’s ability to bring out the best in people, technology and innovations even more, claimed Wiklund.
Nokia head became principal of Umeå Institute of Design
This could be one of the reasons that Anna Valtonen, former head of design research at Nokia, could be convinced to come to Umeå as the new principal at Umeå Institute of Design. During the day she was keynote speaker, and it was obvious that many of the participants hung to her every word.
During her lecture, Valtonen presented a summary explaingin how the view on design has changed over the past fifty years.
- In the nineties we made a distinction between the design of services and product design, but today they are equally important from day one, Anna Valtonen underlined and explained that the big difference is that we today, to a greater extent, look at the whole context in which we find a product or a service.
Fascinating lecturers
The list of speakers for the day was long. Derny Häggström spoke about vehicle simulators from Oryx Simulations, and the virtual learning platform Algodoo from Algoryx. Mikael Wiberg, research director at Umeå Institute of Design, took the participants on a journey through the world of contemporary research about architecture and design. Professor Erik Elmroth, from the department of computer science at Umeå University, talked about what new expressions like “cloud computing”, the cloud, and virtual services will mean for companies and individuals in the future. Professor Haibo Li showed the audience what world-leading research at Umeå University could mean for face recognition as a security method, but also as entertainment.
Charlotte Wiberg, CEO of Creative Camp, challenged conventions with her visions of how exercise can be combined with IT, and Martin Rosvall, physicist, showed how work with information maps can make a substantial mass of data understandable.
A new collaboration between Umeå University and Datametrix, a subsidiary of Tele2, was also made public during the day seminar, as well as news of Microsoft Innovation Accelerator, a new concept for innovation collaboration in the Umeå region. More information about these two collaborations to follow in future articles on InfoTech Umeå.
In the spotlight at Grand 2010
Sixty or so participants from companies, authorities and universities had gathered at Grand Hotel in Stockholm to hear more about Umeå as a growing and creative IT region.
Cecilia Johansson, Vinnova, and Hans Hentzell, Acreo.
Martin Rosvall, Umeå University and Nils-Olof Forsgren, Uminova Innovation.
Peter Schuller, HP, Roland Winqvist, HP, Thomas Spångberg, Microsoft, and Jan Snygg, InfoTech Umeå.
Fredrik Lundberg, Danske bank, Roland Carlsson, Umeå Municipality, and Mikael Wiberg, Umeå Institute of Design.
Marie Wall, Vinnova and Cecilia Uebel-Blomgren, Bearing Consulting.
Jan-Olof Eriksson, TietoEnator, Derny Häggström, Oryx Simulations, and Bengt Möller, TietoEnator.
Niklas Lovén, Tele2, and Anna Olofsson, Umeå Municipality.
Mats Falck, Umeå University, Charlotte Wiberg, Creative Camp, and Ingela Hjulfors Berg, Infotech Umeå.
Ulf Edlund, Umeå University, and Nils Stadling, Microsoft.
