This past week—the 46th in 2021—saw three events relevant to the DVN community, all in Germany. Due to Covid, week 46 was packed with parallel-running, super interesting events. In normal years these events are distributed over 3 or 4 months. There was the highly successful DVN Lidar Workshop in Frankfurt; the first-since-Covid full in-puerson GTB meetings in Berlin, and the High Level 25th “Automobil Elektronik Konferenz” AEK in Stuttgart. Since the Lidar Workshop was well reported by Leo Metzemakers and Ralf Schäfer last week, I will focus to the both other events.
Let’s start with the AEK at Carl-Benz Arena which mainly dealt with the industry’s migration toward the software-defined car. Ricky Hudi chaired the meetings; the venue was covid-limited to the sold-out crowd of 499 visitors. Another 180 online participants joined virtually. The keynote speeches were clearly the highlights. ZF CEO Wolf Henning Schneider; Mercedes Benz Management Boardmember Markus Schäfer; BMW CTO Frank Weber; Bosch board member Harald Kröger; Infineon CEO Reinhard Ploss, and Porsche EVP Oliver Seifert gave their views about their paths to the software-defined car which is highly relevant for the future of car lighting, of course. Some of their slides explicitly mentioned lighting as high-customer-value; read more about it in this week’s in-depth article.
The first in-person GTB meeting in about 2 years took place at the Novotel Berlin Tiergarten in the center of Germany’s capital. About 30 delegates from all parts of Europe were in the huge meeting room, connected via internet to around 40 overseas delegates. Sound and video were prepared very well, not a single technical problem occurred (which we all know very well from many online conferences). The key decisions were taken in a tight time slot from 12 noon to 2 pm to allow North American delegates (5-8 am local) and Asian delegates (7-9 pm local) to participate in the same meeting.
At all of these events, and side-events around them, there were enthusiastic people, happy about personal contact with colleagues from all around Europe. The Covid situation unfortunately worsens now and we can only get vaccinated and hope it will be under control, so that we can have such fantastic events again.
Info concerning DVN Paris WS
Paris WS is confirmed on 1-2 February considering thecurrent local Covid rules (vaccination, masks). We will regulary keep you informed about any change (local and traveling situation), on the weekly newsletter.