This week, the consortium is convening at NPO in the Netherlands for a general meeting! Luckily, we managed to get an interview with Alexandru Stan, Innovation Manager at IN2.
Hi Alex! Could you please tell us a couple of things about yourself, your role in the project and your current work at IN2?
Hello! My name is Alexandru Stan from IN2 and in MARCONI, I am responsible for the communication & exploitation work package, leading and coordinating the activities there. I do have a technical background as well, having been involved in the technical implementation of several R&D and commercial projects after having graduated with a degree in Computer Science in 2010. Because of this I am also involved in the MARCONI developments related to the social media services and prototyping.
“MARCONI is unique in that it brings together under the same tool very heterogenous ways of communicating with the audience and at the same time provides the automation services to efficiently respond to many more individual conversations with the listeners.”
At IN2, I manage the innovation and research activities that we are undertaking. We are a dynamic and modern SME which means that we are constantly looking for new ways to improve and deliver customer-oriented solutions for managing, accessing and publishing content. Recently, I have been working with communication and marketing experts from the tourism, events and publishing sector, building a platform for efficient content and social media management and storytelling. I am also responsible for initiating new international collaborations, just as MARCONI, so I am in close contact with many research and innovation departments throughout Europe and try to keep up with the latest developments. Luckily this fits well with one of my hobbies: travelling.
What would you say are the most distinctive features of the approach proposed by MARCONI?
I think that one of the most important aspects of MARCONI is that we aim to enhance live broadcast radio, rather than to destructively disrupt it (as has been the case with many recent applications in this domain). People love radio and the fact that they get to discover something new every time they tune in with DJ's and shows. Building the digital communication mechanisms to allow listeners and radio makers to come closer together and interact with one another can be very impactful. From the radio maker’s perspective, MARCONI is unique in that it brings together under the same tool very heterogenous ways of communicating with the audience (e.g. email, social media, app messages, sms, telephone) and at the same time provides automation services (like chatbots, smart analysis of photos, videos, text and social media data) to be able to efficiently respond to many more individual conversations with the listeners. I am really excited about the next phases of the project where we will prototype and pilot the technologies with real users – I am sure we will then discover even more ways in which we can enrich the experience of radio.
