IP: Stockholm Diary #1

[David Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

In keeping with the great tradition of IP and my trips, this is a 
report from Stockholm.

I am here for two activities. They are:

On Friday as a participant  at a meeting at the KTH IT-University, 
Dept of Teleinformatics at the Electrum,in Kista,

The Swedish government has proposed a public EU institution with the
mission to identify trends in user requirements and initiate public
procurements as means to satisfy user requirements and at the same time
stimulate the industrial transformation.

The purpose of the workshop was to discuss ways to identify user
requirements and the importance of entrepreneurship and startups to
stimulate industrial transformation. I commented on: "Stimulation of 
industry, the importance of entrepreneurship"

The second on Monday is as the [a] foreign participant at the 
evaluation of the Swedish Internet technology programme SIRIS. This 
is a major investment in doing R&D for future (5 year) networking 
technology.

I arrived at Stockholm via San Francisco. I had n opportunity to try 
out United Airlines new first class seats (I upgraded from business 
class. They give you the equivalent of a small room with a seat that 
converts into a bed and lets you sleep flat -- even on your stomach. 
I slept several hours. Great addition!!

I arrived in Stockholm in the early evening and checked into the 
Sheraton Hotel. The Sheraton is bringing to Europe the great American 
tradition of not inluding breakfast in their rates. They "hope" to 
start a trend in Europe. I hope they fail. Seems the US keeps trying 
to bring such great ideas such as our views of privacy and 
cryptography  to Europe.

Anyway, Stockholm is chilly -- 8C in  the day and colder at night. 
Good wind also. It is a nice city. Good eating. Last night I eat at a 
small bar at the Opera with a reporter. It was great -- real Swedish 
Meatballs, good solid food and lots of interesting other customers.

During the Friday meeting an interesting "fact" was presented by the 
Swedish Government person -- that Sweden has a higher penetration of 
PCs, networks etc per capital than does Finland. They claim Finland 
has much better Press Relations. BY the way both are very high. They 
are arguing for first rather than second.

On the other hand I was surprised that when you hand at the airport 
no network terminals, the hotel has a modem plug and an ISDN jack in 
the room. you can call into an ISP if you happen to know one.

While the big department store NK has a IT area with terminals there 
is no earthnet jackl in sight for visitors.

On the other hand KTH Teleinformatics area has WAVELAN coverage and 
it worked like a charm

More after Mondays meeting

Dave