Futur en Seine On Tour’s last stop was the Digital Content Expo, Tokyo, 14th – 17th October.

A trade fair of world repute in the country of high tech, what better place to end Futur en Seine’s Asian journey?

Futur en Seine On Tour has contributed to the worldwide reputation of the festival for digital life and creativity after an immensely acclaimed first edition in 2009. This three stop tour of Asia put forth the creativity of participating Parisian companies and schools, that truly made it into the limelight: almost all of them engaged in R&D or commercial deals on site. The quality of exchanges, the diversity of contacts and the sheer thrill experienced in Shanghai, Seoul and Tokyo make us feel confident that Futur en Seine 2011 will be a highly international event, built on diverse programme contributions and welcoming an audience from all over the world.

Futur en Seine On Tour’s first step towards the East was a show at the Shanghai World Expo, 3rd to 10th of July. The festival was promoted in the context of a delegation of SMEs related to ICT and sustainable city technologies, on a journey organised by the Cap Digital, Advancity and SYSTEM@TIC business clusters, the Paris Chamber of Commerce and the Paris Region. Futur en Seine was on show at the Paris Region pavilion, taking part in an event attracting 73 million visitors.

The festival for digital life and creativity stirred up a wave of excitement at the Seoul Design Fair, 27th September – 1st October. This stop of the Asian journey took place in connection with the French design promotion campaign called Rendez-vous@Seoul 2010. Futur en Seine Seoul gathered VIPs, journalists, over a hundred Seoulites and SMEs, that came to admire the know-how and concepts of Parisian design agencies.

Futur en Seine On Tour hits Tokyo

Futur en Seine On Tour’s third and last stop took place at the Digital Content Expo, Tokyo, 14th to 17th of October, in the stunning Miraïkan National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation. The event counted 26000 visitors and was covered by 229 journalists.

Thanks to the commitment of the French Trade Commission in Tokyo and support from the Paris Region Economic Development Agency, the DGCIS, the City of Paris and the Paris Region, close to fifteen prototypes and services were showcased:

– Aldebaran’s Nao robot,
– Parrot SA’s AR Drones,
– Logorama (2010 Oscar for best animated short movie),
Рthe Smart City solution by Thal̬s,
Рaugmented reality innovative solutions: a game developped by Dassault Syst̬mes K.K. and a project for a local information billboard presented by Maria Laura Mendez (ENSCI),
– the luminous blind by Marine Rouit (ENSCI),
– the Oz smart alarm from Les Gobelins,
– the Mü early learning board from Les Gobelins,
– Uti, a game designed for mobile phones by Les Gobelins,
– EVA, a virtual agent from IIM,
– applications by Abstrakt, Actialuna, Golaem, BVS, and the FICAM.

The 200m² Futur en Seine booth could be seen from the museum’s entrance thanks to a giant screening of 2000 lumens. It hosted a total of 13 Parisian organisations in the field of digital content and services, of which:

- 2 multinationals (Dassault Systèmes, Thalès),
– 3 schools (Les Gobelins, l’École Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle, l’Institut International Multimédia),
– 5 SMEs (Aldebaran Robotics, Brain Vision Systems, Golaem, Mikros Image, Parrot SA),
– 2 Start-ups (Abstrakt, Actialuna),
– 1 trade union (Fédération des industries du Cinéma, de l’Audiovisuel et du Multimédia).

A B2B day organised by the French Trade Commission in Tokyo allowed players of the digital arena from Paris and Japan, with help from translators, to exchange ideas, share projects and tie bonds. In this respect, the Japanese Dassault K.K and Parrot SA teams met their French counterparts as well as many other names from the Parisian digital content and services industries.

Futur en Seine On Tour received broad media coverage in France as well as in Japan: interviews, press articles, blog posts, web videos and other formats. Demonstrating particular fondness, the Japanese press dedicated over ten pieces of news to Futur en Seine’s presence in Tokyo. The event was equally well transmitted over the internet, the AFP’s press review having been used twice by the Amaury Press group (Le Parisien newspaper).

A Closing evening at the French Embassy in Tokyo

Cherry on a nicely iced cake, even though Nao wasn’t tailored specifically to light up the dance floor, the small guy honoured his Japanese hosts by delivering a short but flawless performance of the choreography tried during the Shanghai World Expo. The evening brought together around a hundred  French and Japanese representatives of the digital industries, putting an end to a tremendously fruitful, enlightening and unforgettable Asian tour, which stands out as an extremely promising prelude to the coming edition of Futur en Seine:  rendez-vous from the 17th to the 26th of June 2011 in Paris and the Paris Region!