Silicon Sentier Living Lab
Silicon Sentier is a Paris-based non-profit specialization gathering more than 150 enterprises (start-ups, SMEs) working in ICT innovation in the Ile de France Region. Silicon Sentier is composed by four main entities answering corresponding to SMEs, startups, and self-entrepreneurs needs.
Support communities’ cross-fertilisation: La Cantine : La Cantine is a 240m2 space situated in a “Passage” in the heart of Paris. La Cantine is an open and transparent place: from the street everyone can see what is happening inside and enter. La Cantine is first of all a Co-working Space where people from different domains gather to work in a shared space and exchange ideas about their projects. The space is designed to support the cross-fertilization between different thematic communities (open-source, social innovation, robotics, UX, mobile developers ...) and users. La Cantine organizes a series of open and participative events and initiatives in which different communities meet. Over the last two years, La Cantine succeeded in becoming the Reference space for all the events in the digital innovation domain. Since 2008, it hosted 1500 events.
La Cantine bootstraps both local initiatives (OpenDay, CleanTuesdays, Social Innovation Meetups...) and local chapters of international events (Social Media Club France, Mobile Monday, Crisis Camp Paris, TEDx, FLOSS…). The main results of this lively and dynamic environment are to bring together users and entrepreneurs, stimulate the emergence of new collaborative projects and the creation of strong communities in the field of Digital Innovation. This replies to the micro Living Lab approach, not designed directly to create jobs, but of which the natural results are led workers to create their own jobs by meeting a solution to their needs.
La Cantine thus ANSWER THE NEEDS OF SILICON SENTIER TO FIND A PLACE WHERE TO SHARE THEIR KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE and where to meet regularly with their users. Moreover, since 2010 La Cantine started a network of National (Rennes, Nantes, Toulouse, Toulon) and soon International (Turin) Cantines.
Accelerate Start-up development: Le Camping : In 2011 Silicon Sentier Living Lab launched Le Camping: an accelerator program for start-ups located inside the hold Paris Stock Exchange building. Twice a year, Le Camping welcomes 12 start-ups that receive an intensive acceleration program and are coached during six months by 40 mentors. The program is completely free for start-ups and open to international participants. Its main goal is to speed up the development of promising technologies and improve the skills of their teams. Le Camping answers the need of reducing the time to market of promising start-up technologies.
Promote Digital Culture: Silicon Maniacs : Silicon Maniacs is our Digital Media team. Its role is to analyse, promote and disseminate Digital Culture through a series of Media initiatives (reportage, web documentary, live coverage) published on the web.
Conduct User Research and Experimentation: Silicon Xperience : Most central to Silicon Sentier Living Lab activities is Silicon Xperience (SX), Silicon Sentier User Research and Experimentation department is the catalyser of SiSe Living Lab initiatives. Silicon Xperience continues Silicon Sentier experimentation activity started in 2007 the program “Quartier Numérique”, the first ENoLL Living Lab in the Paris Region. The goal of Quartier Numérique was to serve as a test-bed for mobile internet services in a Paris area covered by Wi-Fi infrastructure. Between 2007 and 2009, 44 projects were tested at Quartier Numérique. The objective of SX is to conduct Beta-tests, Field trials and Open Innovation initiatives bringing together users and enterprises. SX is conceived as both a Platform and a
Process:
- As a Platform, SX is an online platform for recruiting participants willing to participate in Open Innovation initiatives (developing within La Cantine users’ dynamic ecosystem) or take part in agile on-line beta-tests. The first user base is composed today by the 160 start-ups that submitted a project for the first year of Le Camping and the 15.000 users (experts and not) that are part of the Silicon Sentier contact base. Our main concerns are the assessment of Usability and User Experience and the drivers and drawbacks of User Engagement in co-innovation initiatives. The platform will be open to ENoLL Living Lab and SMEs wishing to engage in cross-border piloting activities.
- As a Process, SX acts for creating synergies between actors and users inside and outside SiSe LL. SX is the interface and the facilitator for all sorts of test and piloting activities involving SiSe LL user base and all the actors wishing to develop a collaborative and open approach towards ITC Innovation. The first action in this direction has been to involve the Camping start-ups in testing their services with La Cantine user community.
SX team has an eight years experience in conducting National and International R&D projects inside and outside Silicon Sentier. Only in 2011 SX has been organizing more than 30 experimentations with both start-ups (Cashew, Comuto, Bankeen …), national and international corporations (SNCF, Google). SX participates to national R&D programs (Encre on real-time collaboration tools, Turbulences on a-centric social networks, seniors and Interactive Tablets).
