nugg.ad officially launches Incubator Program – € 100,000 available to entrepreneurial businesses who develop user orientated services based on nugg.ad data- Econitor wins start-up prize in the Data Pioneers competition
- More than 300 guests show up to discuss big and good data at the sold-out Data Days event
Berlin, 9.10.2012: Deutsche Post targeting subsidiary, nugg.ad, announced the launch of its Incubator Program at their successful Data Days 2012 event that focused on “Big Data” on 1st and 2nd October.
The entire conference is available to view at: www.youtube.com/DataDaysChannel
This program sees nugg.ad offering € 100,000 to those entrepreneurial businesses that are able to develop products that successfully aid consumers’ experience online – whether that is data protection, control tools or services that offer consumers added value – based on nugg.ad data. The objective is to create an online ecosystem of benefit to consumers, and as it gains more traction, to advertisers.
At Data Days in the discussion with Florian Heinemann of Project A, Tobias Seikel of Hanse Ventures, Nico Lumma of Digital Pioneers and Jens Spyrka of bmp media investors, nugg.ad’s CEO Stephan Noller highlighted how nugg.ad’s incubator stands out from other similar programs: “We’re not interested in money in the form of fast exits: as the founders don’t have to hand over any shares, they remain wholly independent” He continued: “What we want to do is build up an ecosystem of useful services that are clearly aligned to the user, but also go hand-in-hand with our targeting technology.”
Separately, start-up Econitor won a first prize in the Data Pioneers competition at Data Days – a competition designed to encourage the creation of creative and innovative data business ideas – and a share of € 10,000 prize money. This was for its development of a software solution based on big data that is used for measuring and evaluating energy consumption both for the consumer and for industry and energy providers.
The start-up competition was launched after an inspiring keynote entitled “Forget equality” by Teresa Bücker on the subject of gender equality in the industry. Eleven start-ups presented their business ideas to an independent jury consisting of digital expert Teresa Bücker, Lisa Green of the Common Crawl Foundation and Matt Turck of Bloomberg Ventures.
Overall, Data Days was a huge success. Over 300 guests from the online industry, politics, data privacy and culture attended the event where, for the first time ever, the topics of data algorithms and their effects were not just discussed in an industry or IT context, but were taken to an international, cross-social level– a level at which opening speaker Christopher Steiner from New York also believed they should be discussed. There is a good reason why the name of the bestselling writer’s current publication is “Automate This – How Algorithms Came to Rule Our World”.
“Data Days 2012 far exceeded our expectations. We’re not only proud to have hosted the many renowned guests who attended and shone both in keynotes and on panels, but also the audience, who provided countless ideas and suggestions to make the conference a wholly interactive event. As a result, we managed to connect industry, politics and technology,” said Stephan Noller, CEO nugg.ad.
The social and economic role of data
Topics discussed at the Data Conference on 1 October included theoretical issues such as the social and economic role of data. Over 25 national and international speakers provided interesting and highly provocative food for thought. In his opening talk at the Nhow Hotel Berlin which is situated on the former border strip. Stephan Noller emphasised that algorithms were perfectly capable of “building new walls in society” – but likewise just as capable of positively shaping society as a whole. Accordingly, the first keynotes and panels such as “Data” and “Relevance” were dedicated to issues such as the responsible handling of data and algorithm ethics. It soon became clear that new criteria had to be created in order to address the subject of data and society more closely. “So what happens when everybody is Big Brother?” asked presenter Spencer Reiss of WIRED, neatly summing up the important consequences of an association between the available data flow and the democratisation of technological processes.
After all, we no longer talk of gigs or terabytes, but of “Capital D Data”, as Lisa Green of the Common Crawl Foundation stressed. A resident of San Francisco, Green called for data generally to be made public as “Open data” and available for the common good. Other speakers such as Marc Guldimann of Enliken in New York defined their understanding of “Good data”, i.e. data that could verifiably be used by the actual user for many different purposes.
The top-quality data privacy panel was also seeking solutions that would provide protection in data law for the tremendous innovation potential without hindering it. The American data protector Ashkan Soltani provided an interesting comparison with his thesis that data privacy would in the future be just as important as caring for the environment.
Brian Eoff of bit.ly sided with data and algorithmic recommendation mechanisms in his keynote. He believes the reasons for people’s fear of new technologies, such as algorithms, lies mainly in their concern that technological predictability is a threat to our belief in individuality. So the key to changing their thinking is to encourage people to accept fallibility – their own as well as that of algorithms. “No data and no technology will ever be able to replace an intelligent human being,” he said.
The entire conference is available to view at: www.youtube.com/DataDaysChannel