Wearable Technologies Conference
Feburary 8, 2010
Hotel Novotel Muenchen Messe
Markus Winning, UVEX Sports GmbH
"Leading innovation in goggles and helmets made in Germany"
Markus Winning has been head of marketing at UVEX Sports since 2008. Before that, he worked in Marketing for international brands such as adidas, O2 Germany and Vitra. He has a profound knowledge of marketing with focus on brand strategy, international marketing, product management, communication, key account marketing, retail marketing and design management. The development of the international adidas retail concept for instore communication and the development of the go-to-market department of the adidas style division are examples for the outstanding projects during his career.
Stephan van Uijtregt, Cetemmsa
"Integration of sensors to obtain special performance features"
Stephan van Uijtregt has been head of Sports Innovation in Cetemmsa since 2008. Before that, he held various roles in the Professional Cycling industry, ranging from innovation consultant to event management and agent.
He has a profound knowledge of product innovation in professional Sports, Interactive Marketing, Social Media Strategies and innovative concept development. Among his clients feature some of the world’s top Professional Cycling Teams, Professional Football Teams and Sports Apparel Manufacturers.
Filomena Berardi, IMS Research
"Wireless in Sports and Fitness Equipment"
Filomena Berardi joined IMS Research in 2006 and is part of the Connectivity research group, based in Wellingborough, UK. IMS Research's Connectivity group has provided extensive consultancy and market research services on a range of wireless technologies since 1994. Customers include all of the major Bluetooth IC vendors as well as OEMs from industry sectors such as sports and fitness, personal/mobile applications, home entertainment/networking, automotive applications and healthcare.
During her time at IMS Research, Filomena has authored many market studies in the wireless field including: The Wireless Car; Bluetooth in Automotive Applications; NFC-Roads to Mass Market; Bluetooth Headsets; P2P High-Speed Wireless Technologies; and Wireless in Sports & Fitness Equipment. Filomena studied at Manchester University and graduated in International Business. Before joining IMS Research Filomena worked in a number of analyst role within different sectors.
Dirk Sandrock, O-Synce
"Flexible synchronised micro electronics"
Dirk Sandrock is the founding partner and director of MOMES Ltd. Hong Kong. He has worked for more than 20 years as a successful marketing oriented product manager in developing and marketing products for apparel, hardware and software in the field of Sport, Biking and Motor biking for the Asian, European and the North American markets. He was a competitive biker, triathlete and later on a coach in these fields.
After working for Ciclosport with the responsibility for quality and product management for almost 2 years, he quit and found MOMES LLP 2006 in Singapore. As a founding partner of MOMES GmbH Deutschland he is responsible for the product management to develop solutions for synchronizing portable micro electronics. In 2009 the worldwide trademark o-synce was established by him as a show case for marketing innovative developments of MOMES. Since then the products have been successfully introduced to the market. For example, the MINI free, a smart touch cyclometer, won the gold award for the best product at the EUROBIKE Show 2009. The NAVI2move, the first single handed remote smart navigation went into the finals of the Brand New Award 2010 in Munich.
His mission is to read any kind of vital signs and environmental signals and to analyze them in a simple portable way: “if you can read it – you can wear it”.
Dr. Hans-Walter Praas, Texsys GmbH
"New communication devices in wearable applications: 3G Video jacket and other future gadgets"
Dr. Hans-Walter Praas (45), married, 2 kids, master degree in physics and ph.D. in Chemistry started his industrial charier at Varta AG R&D Centre Germany where he collected first experience in lead acid and lithium ion battery technology. After five years he became project and team manager for Lithium batteries at the consumer battery division. As co-founder, CTO and business development manager he enlarged his professionally in consumer Lithium Polymer production at IONITY AG. After a successful business development approach in nano-scale cathode materials he started the Texsys GmbH which distribute, develops and scale up wearable technology products in health and sportive business. Early of 2008 the first full integrated battery powered telecommunication glove become real. High innovative wearable products like head jackets, solar control modules and active sensors completed his filed of activities. As senior consultant for a tier one mobile-com provider, advisory board seats in energy storage orientated technical start-up companies (automotive, industrial, and consumer) and general advisor for micro fuel business development, he gather technical and economical aspects. As advisor and teacher for energy storage training programs and editor of several papers he become professional in the battery and electronic field.
Aleks Ristic, gobandit GmbH
"Watch your track - with a GPS head camera"
After an Internet experience with one ISP in Germany in the late 90s, Aleks Ristic, CEO at gobandit GmbH, co-founded in 1999 surfID AG, a company developing solutions for mobile marketing, which was sold to a SMS provider in 2002. By end of 2002 he co-founded another start-up, Airloft Ltd., with one of his former partner to develop GPS products for sports and outdoor. In 2004 they sold Airloft to Brunswick Corp. from Chicago. Their products were implemented into the Navman GPS business under the Sport. Tool brand. In 2007 he was Director in Navionics Inc. the worldwide leader in marine electronic charts, for the outdoor mapping division, before he joined MyGuide Holding GmbH from Switzerland, where he was responsible for the company's Marketing Innovation strategy and Business Development. He initiated the take over of OneStepAhead, a German based software company and the partnership with O'Neill in developing the first GPS based NavJacket.
Christian Hofmann, Fraunhofer IIS
"Motion analysis for sports and rehabilitation"
Christian Hofmann, born in 1978, studied Electrical Engineering at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen. Major subjects were analog and digital circuit design, control engineering and high frequency. During his semester abroad he studied at the Universidad Politécnia de Madrid in Spain with focus on communication technologies and medical signal processing. Since fall 2005 he is working at Fraunhofer-Institute for Integrated Circuits in Erlangen as scientific employee in the Department for »Image Processing and Medical Engineering«.His activities cover medical sensor design, embedded systems programming, digital biosignal processing and short-range wireless data communication such as Bluetooth and ZigBee. In addition to the technical operation he is involved into project management for several research and development projects on national end European level as well as into assistance to industrial customers.In 2008, Christian Hofmann became Group Manager for the development team of »Medical Communication and Sensors Systems«. He is responsible for the scientific and strategic coordination of the team, including project management, customer care and PR.
Dr. Hartmut Strese, VDI/VDE-IT Innovation + Technik GmbH
"Opportunities with smart textiles - what is possible in the field of materials?"
Dr. Hartmut Strese studied Mathematics in Berlin. He joined VDI/VDE-IT in 1991 as a Senior Consultant. Since then, he has been involved in programme management, coordination activities and consulting on regional (German 'Länder', e.g. Bavarian R&D programme for ICT), national (e.g. InnoNet), and European levels (preparation of AAL Joint Programme). He organized several workshops with researchers from institutes and industry in the fields of field bus systems, sensor networks, smart textiles and intelligent buildings in Germany and China. For the AAL JP he is the National Contact Person.
Andreas Röpert, Interactive Wear AG
"Active Lighting - New Applications for Sports, Outdoor and Fashion"
Andreas Röpert holds degrees in mathematics from the University of Hamburg, Germany. Throughout his career he has worked for several international high-tech companies. He has extensive experience in the launching and marketing of innovative technologies and expertise in the IT, telecommunications, telematics, security and logistics sectors. Before joining Interactive Wear as co-founder and chief execution officer (CEO), he worked as an IT and business consultant. Interactive Wear AG took over the wearable electronics activities of Infineon Technologies in May 2005, and is a leading system integrator for wearable electronics.
Kristofer Skantze, HeiQ Materials AG
"Anti-smelling fabrics via nanotechnologies"
Kristofer Skantze is Head of Sales and Marketing at HeiQ Materials AG in Switzerland since 2007. Engineer by trade, Kristofer began his career in the field of IT in the Swedish company Anoto and its innovative digital pen and paper technology. He was for several years responsible for the technical development in large system customer projects which transitioned into a sales and market oriented role. In year 2005 Kristofer moved to the US to build up and grow the US operations of his Swedish start-up company into a today profitable organization counting 10 people. In year 2007 Kristofer transitioned into the textile chemical business with responsibility over sales and marketing for HeiQ Materials AG. During Kristofer’s presence at HeiQ the company has launched two highly innovative textile chemical products Pure by HeiQ and Barrier by HeiQ and established the company as an innovation leader in its field of leading textile chemical companies. His mission is to create high performance effects to textiles with market leading sustainability and to put HeiQ on the world map of high performance textile effect companies.
Steve Leftly, Fibretronic
"CONNECTEDwear Apparel Remote Control System"
Steve Leftly is the CEO of Fibretronic Ltd, supplier of soft electronic component solutions. He is a world-leading expert in the field of electronic textiles and has worked as research scientist in the smart textiles field for over 15 years. Steve worked as research leader for the international textile technology firm Canesis for 12 years developing highly functional textiles. During this time he the co-invented Softswitch technology, set up the Softswitch Ltd company and has also authored many other electronic textile technology patents. In 2004 Steve was tasked by a US investment team to set up a new company, Fibretronic Limited, to develop and manufacture leading textile electronic solutions. Over the last 6 years Steve has been working with many global garment brands, such as Levis, Nike, Adidas and the North Face, to develop and commercialise their first wearable electronic product solutions including the world’s first garment integrated electronics. Steve has expanded Fibretronic into the wearable controls market leader, developing volume component solutions for the smart textiles market.
Brad Poorman, COCONA
“Using a natural solution for evaporative cooling and UV protection”
Mr. Poorman has 25 years of technical textile marketing, sales and product development experience. His career encompasses value-added clothing technologies that have comfort and protective benefits to consumer, industrial, home and military markets. Mr. Poorman was the Vice President of BHA Technologies, the manufacturer and marketer of Event™ fabrics, a new ePTFE, waterproof/breathable membrane. Mr. Poorman previously held positions of Vice President at the Warrington Group, and Physician Support Systems and was a Product Specialist/Business Leader at W. L. Gore and Associates. He has served as an officer and on several NFPA and OIA committees; he is a frequent speaker at Trade Shows, Textile, and Fibers conferences. Mr. Poorman as CEO is architecting the commercialization of COCONA’S technology into the most strategically important markets. He is a member of the Board of Directors of COCONA, Inc and attended Washington and Lee University.
