On 5 and 6 September 2008, the high-level conference “talk the future®” took place in Krems, Austria. Internet gurus Don Tapscott and Andrew McAfee, as well as a further 17 top speakers, demonstrated how companies can utilise the new media and communication technologies popular among “kids” for their own success. Bret Swanson, author of the bestseller "The Coming Exaflood", gave a lecture on the flood of data in the Internet generated by YouTube and 3D games. Around 300 web swavvy participants from across Europe, including CEOs, decision-makers and those in charge of IT, gathered at the “future congress” organised by the IMC University of Applied Sciences Krems and the software company Fabasoft.

“E-Mail is yesterday”
Don Tapscott, bestselling author of “Wikinomics” and “Growing Up Digital”, impressively convinced the audience that the “new generation” of under-30s, and their needs and know-how are the key to a successful business. The founder and chairman of the innovations company nGenera, whose name is derived from the term “new generation”, researches how companies are able to utilise Web 2.0 applications, such as Wikipedia, Facebook, YouTube or Second Life, for themselves. The “New Web” is today – E-Mail and “dotcom” belong to yesterday, according to Tapscott, who regularly develops business models with 12-year-old kids since “the Net generation is in the process of changing the world.” His new book “Grown Up Digital” is appearing in November. 

A company of the future: Enterprise 2.0
In his enthralling presentation, Andrew McAfee, Harvard professor and the “godfather of Enterprise 2.0”, demonstrated how “social network platforms” can work in the business practice. Enterprise 2.0 technologies open up new, innovative ways for business success and make it possible to address new groups of people, who could never be reached via normal networks. Internal structures of an “Enterprise 2.0”, such as function, workflow or information management, are not predetermined but can be modified by the users or employees, respectively. If a company wants to become an Enterprise 2.0, it must make fundamental changes in the company culture, according to McAfee, who envisages a great many more innovations to come in the next years.

The Coming Exaflood
Bret Swanson, the father of the “Exaflood” is senior fellow and director of the Center for Global Innovation at The Progress & Freedom Foundation. He gave an overview of his calculations about the increasing IP traffic. An upsurge of technological change and a rising tide of new forms of data are working a deep transformation of the Internet's capabilities and uses. In this third phase of Net evolution, network architectures and commercial business plans reflect the dominance of rich video and media traffic.

From YouTube, IPTV, and high-definition images, to "cloud computing" and ubiquitous mobile cameras - to 3D games, virtual worlds, and photorealistic telepresence - the new wave is swelling into an “extraflood” of Internet and IP traffic. An exabyte is 10 to the 18th. We estimate that by 2015, U.S. IP traffic could reach an annual total of one zettabyte (1021 bytes), or one million million billion bytes.

Best Practice & Gartner Panel
Spectacular case studies from forward-looking companies, including Wikipedia, Apple (iPhone SDK), salesforce, BMW, T-Mobile, Fabasoft and Cisco were presented by leading personalities. In the star-studded Gartner Panel, named after the globally leading IT development and consulting company, discussions were held by McDonald’s vice president and CIO Europe & MEA Frank Ellermeyer, voestalpine IT strategist Rudolf Schütz, as well as Raiffeisen informatics CEO  Hartmut Müller, among others, on far-reaching future changes in work and the economy through technological innovations.                                

Helmut Fallmann, chairman of the software company Fabasoft, who – together with the University of Applied Sciences, Krems – made “talk the future®” possible: “At ‘talk the future®’, there was a deal of discussion about work and business. Now it is up to all of us to quickly put these exciting new findings, ideas and proposals into practise or to further develop the 2.0 tools that are already in existence in the own company. We are returning home highly motivated and are already looking forward to ‘talk the future®’ 2009.”

Wine & Dine
On Friday evening, the Minorite church was transformed into a unique gala location. The “talk the future®” guests enjoyed a five-course gala dinner of regional delicacies, which were accompanied by top wines. The lower Austrian winegrowing president, Franz Backknecht, personally presented the select white and red “grape juices” Grüner Veltliner and Riesling, as well as Roter Veltliner and St. Laurent from top regional winegrowers.

FABIT - press contact:
Ulrike Kogler
Phone: (+43) 732 60 61 62
office@talkthefuture.com