Structure of the Meeting
The Preparatory Meeting of the NAVSHP New Media Council was held with the following structure:
· Follow up of the Preparatory Meeting
· Presentation by the European Commission D2 Unit (Joao da Silva)
· N2MC Framework discussion
· The long terms trends: the N2MC towards a European Technology Platform
· Discussion on the European New Media Council Initiative (ENMCI) Terms of Reference
· Setting up the workplan towards the European TP
· Planning future issues for the N2MC

Attendees
The meeting was attended by 40 experts including Standardization and Regulators in the NAVSHP field, R&D Community and Industrialists, responsible for development of R&D national programs in the NAVSHP fields as well as European Commission officers, FP6 projects representatives, and AVISTA Project Team members. The list of attendees is the following:
1. Denis Abraham (TDF - AVISTA Project)
2. Carlos Acuña (Telefónica I+D)
3. Bartolomé Arroyo-Fernández (NAVSHP Unit - European Commission)
4. Bernard Barani (NAVSHP Unit - European Commission)
5. Jan Bormans (Department heads of the multimedia sector of IMEC)
6. Jan Bouwen (ALCATEL - Strategic Project - Residential Network Applications)
7. Gillermo Cisneros (Universidad Politécnica de Madrid)
8. Giovanni E. Corazza (Chair Task Force Advanced Satellite Mobile Systems)
9. Joao da Silva (Head of NAVSHP Unit - European Commission)
10. David Daniels (British Sky Broadcasting - Senior Technologist)
11. Juan Miguel de Sande (Telvium - AVISTA Project)
12. Jean Jacques Delmas (TDF - Industry Executive)
13. Renaud Di Francesco (SONY - Director R&D Partnership)
14. Christoph Dosch (IRT - AVISTA Project)
15. Georgia Efthymiopoulou (NAVSHP Unit - European Commission)
16. Jean-Pierre Evain (EBU)
17. Antonio Fernández Paniagua (Ministry of Industry - Spain)
18. Jean Gelissen (Philips Research Laboratories Office - AVISTA Project)
19. Rolf Bjorn Haugen (Telenor R&D - Chief of Research)
20. Robert Havas (Thomson - MEDIANET Project)
21. Pierre Heinrichs (Chair CENELEC Technical Committee)
22. Thorsten Herfet (Intel - CE Standards Manager & DHWG)
23. Demosthenes Ikonomou (NAVSHP Unit - European Commission)
24. Maddy Janse (Philips Research Laboratories - AVISTA Project)
25. Juha Kaario (Nokia Research Center - Research Manager, Mobile Games)
26. Markus Kampmann (Ericsson)
27. Michel Lemonier (L-UP - MEDIANET Project)
28. Jean-Pierre Lusinchi (ST Microelectronics)
29. Marco Mattavelli (EPFL/MPEG Implementation group)
30. Ken Mc Cann (Zetacast)
31. Stephan Merires (TPS)
32. Richard Nicol (Fynntek Research Consulting Ltd. - AVISTA Project)
33. Kostas Papanikolaou (NAVSHP Unit - European Commission)
34. Stephen Pattenden (Telemetry - TAHI - SMARTHOUSE - TEAHA Project)
35. Simon Perry (Digital Lifestyles)
36. Wilfred Runde (DW - Deutsche Welle)
37. Julian Seseña (Rose - AVISTA Project Manager)
38. Helmut Stein (ISDM - International Strategies for Digital Media & DVB Project)
39. Dietrich Westerkamp (Thomson - Director Standards Coordination R&D)
40. David Wood (EBU - AVISTA Project)

Main issues addressed
1. Follow up of the Preparatory Meeting (Julián Seseña - AVISTA Project) (ppt 778 Kb)
Dr. Seseña made a presentation sumarizing the main conclusions obtained at the Preparatory Meeting held in Brussels on March 12th, 2004.
AVISTA is committed to create a High Level experts Committee to assist FP6 projects to reach their goals bearing in mind the overall business, strategic and worldwide context.
Exploratory work in parallel towards the launch of a Technology Platform Initiative is being made, thus potentially converting NMC committee as a Technology Platform Initiative.
Two alternatives are open with a deadline at some point in time between September 2004 and December 2004:
· Either, the original designed NAVSHP New Media Council (N2MC).
· Or, the more ambitious European New Media Council Technology Platform Initiative (ENMCI).
· Some guidelines to the NAVSHP TP, as proposed in that Preparatory Meeting, are the following ones:
· Public-Private Partnership (strategy-driven)
· Guiding Principles
· Focus (a few crucial themes)
· Connection to on-going initiatives
· Type of research
· Users / Customers/ Supply chain on board
· Metrics
· Identification of missing components
· Mobilization of stakeholders

2. Presentation by the European Commission (Joao da Silva) (ppt 1,8 Mb)
On behalf of the European Commission, Joao Da Silva, D2 Head of Unit, made a presentation introducing the basis, prospects and current status of the Networked New Media Technology Platform.
The key issues related to structural changes were reviewed: complexity, standards, interoperability, convergence, content and communications explosion and so on.
Some Network New Media challenges were also enumerated concerning to DRM, media format, middleware, network aspects, communications, interoperability, QoS, business models, open standards, infrastructures and intellectual property rights.
The relevance of the regulatory framework and standards was highlighted.
Regarding the NAVSHP TP, Mr. Da Silva commented that the approach is promising and recognised as important, and additionally the constituency is identified, but is still pending a number of needs:
· Need to focus efforts and define concrete goals
· Need to optimise value for money and fully justify EU intervention
· Need to ensure maximal impact
· Need to ensure early consensus on key issues (e.g. standards, interoperability, spectrum, etc)
· Need to optimise implementation instruments
· Need to think ahead

3. Presentations about 'Trends in Electronics and Microelectronics (Jean-Pierre Lusinchi - ST Microelectronics)
Mr. Lusinchi introduced a prospective analysis about the future trends in Electronics & Microelectronics aiming at their impacts in the new media and the convergence, a very important issue to be taken into account by the potential TP.
Four scenarios were analysed according to four terminal segments: the living-room, the office, the automobile and the pocket.

4. Progress on N2MC Framework Definition (Richard Nicol - N2MC Principal Strategic Advisor) (ppt 66Kb)
Mr. Nicol introduced a discussion about the Framework definition of the European New Media Technology Platform by establishing a 10 years vision big picture.
The mission, vision and methodology were presented: improve the well-being of Europeans by enhancing the competitiveness of European industry; create opportunities for European media value-chain companies to be among the world leaders; open standards, creating a common high level vision and reference architecture to allow the citizen to focus on the content; and foster the public/private cooperation and the competition by creating the optimum regulation environment are some of the main objectives of the TP.
Additionally, the Europe's position today was drawn by means of different analysis: main Strenghts, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats were presented and commented as well as an industry analysis and a regional analysis were presented.
Finally, possible criteria for the success of the TP suggested by Mr. Nicol were:
· Hours of information per day offered across all delivery means.
· Number of devices able to handle on, two or all three of the technology pillars (IPDC handsets, advanced set top boxes, media server PC's, entertainment-PC's).
· Number of audio/visual archives of content providers (e.g. broadcasters).
· Availability of infrastructure (hot spots with more than one pillar, white spots with none of the pillars).
· Role of audio-visual content in the information society, e.g. amount of audio-visual data compared to standard data (text and images) in IP- networks.
· The IPR share of European stakeholders in new standards really deployed.
· The market efficiency (i.e. market penetration) of the standard proposals or common practices elaborated.

5. Presentation on 'Reference Architecture Initiative' (Michel Lemonier and Robert Havas - Thomson) (ppt 56 Kb)
Mr. Lemonier and Mr. Havas proposed the creation of a 'Reference Architecture Initiative' together with a common NAVSHP framework. The main objectives of this initiative will be the following:
- Create an end-to-end service-supporting architecture extended to a pan-European integration laboratory.
- Focus on interworking/interoperability issues to help projects to be 'pluggable' onto the reference architecture.
- Continuous updating mechanisms for the reference architecture.
- Offer a platform for project outcomes assessment.
- Offer a platform for new possible cooperation between projects.
- Offer a common framework for assessment of technology, standards and services within a project and between projects.

6. Review of the Draft Terms of Reference
The ENMCI Draft Terms of Reference was presented as a generic and starting point document which should be arranged and enhanced with contributions from all the stakeholders participants in the N2MC. The discussion was based on the part related to vision, mission and methodology contained in the separate document "Draft Framework definition for a NAVSHP TP" (doc 57 Kb).
The ENMCI methodology was reviewed as well as the scope of activities necessary to achieve the main goals was introduced.
The membership of the initiative was additionally addressed. Broadcast organizations, telecom operators, content providers, equipment suppliers, integrators and applications developers, user organizations, research organisations and Academia, designers, the European Commission, Member States, Non-European participants (LatinAmerica, Asia, and USA), regions, European Investment Bank, and organizations like EBU, DVB, ETSI and CENELEC should be represented in the ENMCI.
As a result of this discussion, there was a general wish to continue exploring the opportunities to cooperatively work around a Technology Platform in the NAVSHP domain. However, much work is still needed before a clearer picture can be obtained towards a strong cooperation among interested stakeholders. The involvement of high level officials from key companies and stakeholders in the NAVSHP domain seems to be of paramount importance in order the EC and Member States can endorse the request from industry for a NAVSHP TP.
It was also commented that the name of New Media Council may create confusion to other external bodies and groups within and outside the EU arena. It was recommended that reference should be made to the word "Networked" in the title of the TP. A possible name, still to be defined, might include references like: "European New Networked Media Initiative" (EN2CI, N2CI, N2I, ENMI, etc.). Suggestions for final wording and acronynm to use are welcome.

7. Setting up the workplan towards the European TP
Aiming at provoking a definitive finding with respect to the establishment of a private-public partnership around a NAVHSHP Technology Platform, a short term work-plan was agreed, which should result in a definitive decision to be taken at the September meeting of the N2MC.
Three Working Groups were defined and their convenors proposed:

7.1.- WG 1: Key issues and problems for EU intervention. Why we need the ENMCI? For each one of following themes defined, a description of the problem and the situation today and the potential benefits if cooperation in a Private-Public Partnership is set up, should be described in a document, bearing in mind the overall high level goals of a TP (Growth, etc.). Deadline: 7/8 June at the time of the Concertation meeting in Barcelona. This document will summarize outcomes from each individual Theme description.
Convenor: Avista Team (Richard Nicol- Coordinator), richard.nicol@btinternet.com
Deadline: 1st June 2004. Work by correspondence. Each Convenor should draft the baseline description of the topic by 15th May and circulate to all attendees to the N2MC for comments. A Final document (1 o 2 pages length) should then be circulated by 1st June 2004.
1. Theme 1.1: DRM.
Convenor: Simon Perry (DIGITAL-LIFESTYLES).
2. Theme 1.2: Metadata.
Convenors: Jean Pierre Evain (EBU), evain@ebu.ch and Dietrich Westerkamp (THOMSON), dietrich.westerkamp@thomson.net
3. Theme 1.3: Media formats. Content Competition. Mobile delivery.
Convenor: Torsten Herfet (INTEL), torsten.herfet@intel.com
4. Theme 1.4: Reference architecture.
Convenor: Robert Havas (THOMSON), Robert.havas@thomson.net; and Stephen Pattenden (TAHI/CENELEC), telemetra@telemetra.com
5. Theme 1.5: The New Media Value Chain.
Convenor: Renaud Di Francesco (SONY), renaud.difrancesco@eu.sony.com
6. Theme 1.6: Application Interfaces.
Convenor: Christoph Dosch (IRT), dosch@irt.de
7. Theme 1.7: Interoperability issues. Convergence.
Convenor: Denis Abraham (TDF), denis.abraham@tdf.fr
8. Theme 1.8: International cooperation within EU and beyond. Convenors: Avista Team and EC., jsesena@rose.es/bernard.barani@cec.eu.int

7.2.- WG 2: Membership of the ENMCI.
Convenor: Jean Gelissen (PHILIPS), jean.gelissen@philips.com. Deadline: 15th Sept 2004.
A preliminary list of ENMCI members should be set up by 1st June 2004, aiming at checking the willingness of stakeholders to be represented at the highest possible level.

7.3.- WG 3: Draft ToR of the ENMCI.
Convenor: Avista Team, jsesena@rose.es
Deadline: 15th Sept 2004

Additionally, the official Launch of the ENMCI was tentatively set up on November 2004 (IST 2004).

7.4.- Next Steps
As mentioned above, the following milestones towards the NAVSHP New Media Council Technology Platform were agreed. Stakeholders expressed the view to be pro-active in assisting for the shaping and configuration of the future NAVSHP TP:
1. Working Group 1 deliverable:
· 7/8 June 2004
· Working Group 1 Themes 1.1 to 1.8: 1st June 2004.
2. Working Group 2 deliverable:
· Preliminary membership list: 1st June 2004.
· Final Membership: 15th September 2004
3. Working Group 3 deliverable:
· 15th September 2004
4. Official Launch of the ENMCI
· November 2004 (IST 2004)

During the progress of the meeting, a lot of suggestions and ideas were proposed by the participants regarding the content and wording of the Framework document and the Terms of Reference to the New Media Technology Platform. These documents will be re-drafted during the next months bearing in mind all of these points of view from the different stakeholders.
AVISTA Project Team assumed the commitment of sending an e-mail to all the participants to this meeting in order to present the structure defined for the Working Groups and their responsible and to gather comments to be included in the documents to be prepared for each of the Themes proposed. Working by correspondence is encouraged in order to meet the deadlines set up.