For the first time ever the ESA Telepresentation Tool has extended the audience of the Applications Workshop. Around 50 attendees at remote sites in ESA/ESRIN (Italy), University of Aberdeen (UK), Cast4All (Belgium), Elis (Italy), CNES (France) as well as University of Graz, University of Salzburg and G.C.S. GmbH (all Austria) were able to follow the workshop online due to the satellite IP multicast technology. The ESA Telepresentation Tool is an evolution of the DistLearn software, initially developed by the University of Salzburg and a software development enhanced and supported by G.C.S. GmbH under ESA contract.
The variety of the ESA Telecom Applications projects was widely presented. The areas covered included telemedicine and medical education, infrastructure/platform, B2B/B2C, relief of disaster/emergency, community information services as well as distance learning.
The main focus of the Applications Workshop was networking. Therefore a lot of opportunity was given to all companies to exchange information and offer support to others. The market situation for start-ups and smaller companies in the Satcom field is rather difficult at this time, the workshop offered the opportunity to look for new partners and see how other companies are coping with similar problems.
This is the first time that the User Support Office (USO) has been introduced to users. Offering support from the preliminary definition to market development, the USO should become a valuable tool to support the companies that are under an ESA Telecom project.
Apart from the presentations, an interactive session was hosted by Francesco Feliciani, Head of the Applications Section at ESA/ESTEC, with the overall message: Please help us to help you . With the focus being on market development, all participants were invited to join in the discussion on the next steps forward. Experience has shown that the gap between Project end and commercial roll-out can still be big. The discussion therefore concentrated on: What can be done to bridge the gap? - a discussion that will no doubt continue outside the workshop. The next workshop - IP Networking over Satellite will be held on the 12th and 13th of May 2003.
