Thierry Van Landegem Chairman, GreenTouch, Vice President, Global Operations, Bell Labs
Members Meeting: Passion. Progress. Results.
12 December 2014
Those members who did not attend our last face to face meeting in Melbourne missed a lot. During the opening plenary two projects demonstrated their results: CEET and Bell Labs showed in real time their redesigned point to point optical transceiver, and, INRIA demonstrated live their virtual home gateway implementation. And if that in itself was not enough, we got a preview of some upcoming project results that will be demonstrated next year. It simply was great to see the enthusiasm and passion of those researchers showing their achievements, results they achieved from hard work! Congratulations to the teams!
The two live demonstrations were actually also the topic of the announcement we made to the world during our face to face meeting. Both Thierry Klein and myself had several press and analyst briefings prior and during the meeting, but overall the feedback was very positive. As one of the analysts put it, the world was kind of in a wait-and-see mode when GreenTouch was announced, but given our regular and continued announcements they see that the consortium approach with this bold and ambitious goal is actually working! Several of them therefore asked to be informed and invited when we will announce our final results next year. Again, all of this wouldn't be possible without the hard work of all of you.
But let me come back to the meeting for a minute. Not only the opening plenary was great, all the work group meetings and committee meetings were moving at full speed. There is an eagerness to make it to the final event … because everybody is watching us. Also the open forum was a success: great speaker line up and also a pretty packed university theater. Let me take this opportunity to thank again the organizers of this meeting, Kerry, Rod and Kat, and our Virtual, Inc. management team. It was flawless and powerful. Thanks again!
Let me end by saying that we are on a good path towards our final event: letting the world know that we have that set of architectures, protocols, technologies and a roadmap to achieve our bold goal of improving energy efficiency by a factor of 1,000. Showing the world through a set of demonstrations that this is more than 'just' paper work. There is still a lot of work to do – but those that were here in Melbourne have seen a great glimpse of it. So to all, mark your calendars because June 18th 2015 will be the date! So be there in New York City to join that event.
All the best, and enjoy the holidays!
Thierry Van Landegem
Chairman, GreenTouch Executive Board