Telstra Technology Day 2013

I attended the Telstra Technology Day 2013 which was a show case of technology solutions by eight of Telstra's technology partners. The exhibiting companies were:

* Ericsson * Motorola * IBM * Alcatel Lucent 

* Netgear * Microsoft * Cisco * Accenture

Alcatel-Lucent had an impressive booth (with chocolates and lollies) where they were showcasing a customer self help solution. It is web portal where users can enter the fault (eg: Broadband not connecting, Foxtel picture breaking up, T-Box not connecting to net) and follow steps to go try and resolve the issue. The portal also allows users to modify various usage settings. I asked the question of how long it takes to develop a walk-through for a new product, and they said its quite quick because they base it on existing customer service workflows. I am sure this had some more capability, but I was not able to spend much time there.

Connected Vehicle - The ALPR camera is below
the steering wheel, towards the right side.

I spent some time at the Motorola booth as well, and they were featuring their Police In-Car system. It
involves a touch screen, high-speed Automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR) system, data recorder and comms system. The ALPR system automatically scans plates against a pre-loaded database. As the squad car drives around the cameras would read plates, and the officers will be alerted if a 'wanted' plate is found.

Microsoft's entertainment offerings which did not seem to gain much interest among the visitors. Other featured solutions included a supermarket stock recorder, a comms system for mining indistry and cloud based products. Ericsson were promoting its 'Connected City' concept, a close collaboration with Telstra.

Resilient City - Proactive City - Greener City

Telstra Connect 2013

Observations and some images from the Telstra Connect 2013 Exhibition (Coming soon)

It was a good showcase of modern and future technology innovations by Telstra's partners.

Connect 2013 - Melbourne, Australia - July 2013

One of the interesting innovations I saw was on 'work spaces of the future'. These are technology enabled, new-concept work spaces to accommodate present/future work trends and to save on expensive office space. I spoke to a rep from Steelcase who explained to me a novel concept they had promoted to Telstra.

SteelCase solution - the portable trolley cabinet 

Taking the Telstra head office as an example he said that they have assessed that of the 3000 (from memory) assigned there, only 60% are at their desks at a given time. The solution involves open access desks with monitors, power and data connections, and each employee getting a portable trolley cabinet for their belongings. Employees would then book a seat (presumably on-line), collect their cabinet from a storage area and push it over to the booked seat. He mentioned that this method would enable 30%+ more staff to be assigned to a building, there by saving rental, energy and other costs.....

[Time to think].....

Interesting. Some practical issues can be foreseen, and employees would have limited opportunity to 'personalize' their workspaces. However, an interesting idea never-the-less.