Jan 27 2012

by Brice Le Blévennec

English version of a comment published in Datanews.

I surf a lot, the digital universe is my passion. Lately I’ve grown particularly fond of applications to feed my insatiable smartphone, but I still pass a lot of my time every day hooked to a huge screen, to ‘watchdog’ evolutions in technology, explore the web, dig up the latest innovations, sniff at new trends, in short to be inspired.

I must say I’m supercharged with suggestions from my 350 colleagues, who post daily links on our wiki, or exchange them through various email lists, that drive our working groups. As I’m too curious, I signed up for all our groups and I cannot resist exploring each new link I find there.

The experience it offers is broad: from online high impact experiences to sites with creatives’ portfolios, apps integrated with Facebook, interactive videos, games in 3D with CSS3, WebGL or Flash, new frameworks for web development or HTML5, new social networks, fresh online services, with API’s that allow us to do digital magic tricks, etc.. In short, each day of my life is packed with discoveries and I’m a very lucky person.

Yet when I scan the wiki, I notice a peculiarity. There is hardly any link to be found leading to exciting Belgian online work. The Belgian web is desperately boring. There are not many innovative projects. Few e-commerce sites. Rare original mini-site experiences. No Web services or  API’s of interest … In short, there’s not much happening on the web in our kingdom at the heart of Europe…

Yet our creatives are highly respected in the international advertising world, as are our engineers in the field of information technology and communication. How can we explain this striking poverty?

In fact, Belgium is a victim of its size, of the linguistic and cultural fragmentation of its population and of the high cost of Internet subscription and Mobile Internet.
A bit like Switzerland or Luxembourg.

Most sites have to be available in French, Dutch, often in English too and even in German. This complicates the creation and updating of sites. The CMS must be configured with workflows that take into account the availability of translations of content, often increasing costs of implementation and slowing down updates.

This fragmentation of audiences has a large impact on projects based on communities, like networks and social media, when they feed on written content generated by users. It increases their costs of managing and moderating the participants. Very few community projects have reached a decent national size, or else they had to ‘balkanize’ their public by language, as Netlog did.

The small size of our audiences slows down risk investments. To be a profitable venture, investment in design and development must be returned by interaction with a large enough audience, a market of a sufficient critical scale.
For example, to achieve the same ROI on a project In  the french-speaking part of Belgium, the penetration ratios must be ten times higher than a similar project in France.

Imagine the same project with equal ‘traction’, an online service capturing 1% of the Internet audience. In France, it could be a huge success, generating sufficient funds for the startup to develop and grow. With the same 1% adoption rate in Belgium, that initiative would not even cover the development costs; the project could easily collapse.

This may explain a certain reluctance of venture capitalist in this country. They tend to invest in projects that have already proven their business model abroad, rather than betting on real innovations.

Finally, the high cost of Internet subscriptions, especially mobile internet subscriptions, and – although the law allows it – the fact that mobile operators all strangely agree not to subsidize the terminals, combine to slow down the adoption of the Internet and its frequent use.

So in short, if you are a web entrepreneur, think from the initiation of your project to (also) attack a market outside of Belgium.

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Jan 27 2012

AIDS is a gift we all want to avoid. To increase awareness of Belgians and motivate them to get tested, the advertising agency Emakina created a series of actions for Sida’Sos, using original, unconventional media.

We decided to convey our message in the same way as the disease spreads. We developed media carriers that can be transmitted unknowingly.

Our media campaign centered around 3 unexpected channels:

-          Stickers on coins: hundreds of coins were distributed during events this summer, on festivals, and at the city ‘Apéros’, casual outdoor get togethers.

-          Free Hug Stickers: at various events, people who enjoyed a good hug, carried a Sida’Sos sticker.

-          Wrapping paper: an original and especially designed wrapping paper was created to wrap Christmas and New Year’s gifts. The paper contained a small message, cleverly repeated in the design. This information was only discovered when paying attention and looking at the wrapping paper up close.

These three actions clearly raised awareness of the AIDS issue in Belgium, reaching over 1.000.000 contacts and increasing the number of people tested in the country by several thousands.

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Jan 26 2012

C’est avec un grand plaisir que j’ai accepté la demande de  Zend de témoigner sur La sortie de Zend Server pour Mac. C’est une excellente nouvelle pour nos équipes de développement qui souhaitent utiliser les Jobs Queues sans pour autant avoir à mettre en place une machine virtuelle pour le faire fonctionner sur un OS différent. Ils peuvent désormais utiliser Zend Server nativement sur leur Mac et optimiser les temps de chargement de leurs pages, et fournir ainsi une expérience utilisateur améliorée pour nos sites Web.

Zend Server est un serveur d’application Web professionnel conçu pour exécuter, gérer et déployer les applications PHP qui nécessitent un haut niveau de fiabilité, de performance et de sécurité. Zend Server apporte de la valeur tout au long du cycle de vie applicatif : Développement, déploiement, performance, optimisation, supervision et résolution des problèmes. Il contient un environnement PHP complet, testé pour le déploiement et la production, permet de déployer rapidement et avec consistance.

Nous utilisons Zend Serveur dans nos projets pour déléguer les taches pouvant dégrader l’expérience utilisateur. Par exemple sur un site e-commerce, un client souhaite accéder à son compte client. Lors de son identification, le traitement doit contacter  un outil de gestion commerciale (ERP) afin de vérifier si son carnet d’adresse est à jour ou si les statuts des commandes ont évolués. Si l’ERP réponds lentement ou ne réponds pas, le client ne peut pas accéder à son compte. Ce n’est pas envisageable pour nous.

Pour résoudre se problème nous utilisons le Job Queue de Zend Server. Ainsi la tache de synchronisation des commandes entre le site et l’ERP est faite de manière indépendante. Lorsque le client se connecte, l’application fait une demande de tache à Zend Server et pendant ce temps là, le processus d’identification continue et donc le client accède à son compte. En parallèle Zend Server exécute le traitement de synchronisation des commandes.

Zend Server offre une solution de haut niveau permettant de disposer d’une application performante et garantissant aux visiteurs une expérience de qualité.

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Jan 25 2012

Electrabel a lancé la première solution en Belgique pour recharger les véhicules électriques. Dans le cadre de cette initiative, Emakina a développé la plateforme pour contrôler  à distance et gérer la consommation des véhicules. Le site dédié permet aux clients de planifier leurs rechargements et de récupérer les données de consommation dans des tableaux et graphiques.Le but est d’accompagner le client dans une gestion optimisée de l’autonomie du véhicule.

Emakina a également développé des applications mobiles pour iOS et Android ainsi qu’un site mobile pour permettre aux utilisateurs en déplacement de  contrôler l’autonomie de leur véhicule n’importe où, n’importe quand.

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Jan 24 2012

ING Belgium is always looking for new talent, especially for its IT and commercial departments. In collaboration with Emakina, the company now upgraded its careers website. The site is like a brand new suit, tailor made, including twenty videos to strenghten the key messages.

Based on their desire for a stronger foothold in the digital world, ING Belgium has started modernizing its website for potential future employees. As part of this effort, the twenty videos place the spotlight on employees of the bank. Emakina was responsible for the production of the video testimonies and the visual modernization of part of the site. In videos on the homepage, a succession of ING Belgium talents sit in the design orange chair and share their experiences at the bank.

The testimonies of the staff also explain the process of developing an IT project – the IT project lifecycle. This way, the bank clarifies this complex process, highlighting that each professional plays a key role in it and is an important link in the lifecycle chain.

With the renewed site, ING Belgium once more confirms its innovative vision, while adressing the wishes of its future collaborators in a more precise and direct way. In 2012, ING Belgium wants to hire about 135 IT profiles and over 300 sales staff for its Retail department. Last year, the company already hired more than 300 profiles both in IT and commercial jobs.

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