Thursday 20 August 2009

Knowledge Society - Part I

In a recent meeting the current Cenelec president, Dietmar Harting, made an excellent proposal: To start in Europe a programme "Knowledge Society" similar to the programme "Information Society" that was launched in the middle of the 90s.

Dietmar is absolutely correct: societies and economies in Europe are transforming from the information society to the knowledge society. This is can be seen as the central movement into this new millenium. And Europe should react on this and become a driver in the transformation process.

I understand that different units and directorates in the European Commission are already considering an initiative along these lines. The critical issue is, of course, what constitutes this transformation, what are key elements of the knowledge society, and what focus should such a programme have.

Over the next couple of weeks I will start a bit of brainstorming, for sure with a focus on openness and standardisation, but not necessarily limited to that. This is definitely an exciting topic. Being successful in the Knowledge Society means being successful in globalisation.

Monday 10 August 2009

Goal - Football's back

Last weekend the first round of the German national football league took place after the summer break. And what a wonderful start for Eintracht Frankfurt - winning in Bremen with Bremen 2 : Frankfurt 3. Congratulations Eintracht.

I enjoyed watching the top-game of the day live here in Hoffenheim: Hoffenheim against Bayern München. I went there with my son who recently decided to support Bayern (we agreed that he can support Bayern or any other team he likes but shall never shout against Frankfurt ;-) )

Saturday's match of Hoffenheim against Bayern was a good match with Hoffenheim being clearly better in the first half. Towards the end, though, Bayern dominated and Hoffenheim seemed to be running out of power. The match ended 1:1. However, Hoffenheim were a bit unlucky since a clear goal was not given. The referee had not seen that the ball was behind the line and the Bayern goalkeepter managed to catapult it out of the goal again. Too bad... but perhaps time for some digital help to measure when a ball has really surpassed the magic line.