Telefónica – Open Research Day

Today was the Open Research Day in Telefónica, a nice opportunity and a good moment to be acquainted with what is going on in the Internet and Multimedia group in Barcelona.

There were several talks together with an area with exhibitions and posters of prototypes and research applications. Possibly the talks were the most interesting part, because the group is quite new and still forming.

However, the talks revealed quite a lot. They were centered on the interaction with the user, subjects like personalization, recommendations, incorporation of context and knowledge in search and recommendations, etc… I especially liked the presentations of Nuria Oliver and Xavier Amatriain and also the one of Pablo Rodriguez and the summary of Carlos Domingo. Among the demos, let me highlight the one of Josep M. Puyol on social collaborative search.

What was possibly more interesting is the Open Day itself, the willingness to be open and collaborate.  Let’s see how much Telefónica allows this group to fly and be open, but it they do, it looks like poisoned to do some really nice work. Big kudos to them!!