Gilles Babinet (born 1967 in Paris) is a French multi-entrepreneur.
He represents France in the Digital Champions group built by the European Union.
He is also co-President of the Conseil National du Numérique, a body advising the French Government on digital matters.
Babinet dropped out from school at 15 and then graduated his French "Baccalauréat" at the age of 20 as a free candidate.
He has created nine companies since 1989 in various areas of activity:
Escalade Industrie: founded in 1989, his first company, specializes in work-at-height interoperations and had forty employees at the end of its first year. [1]
Absolut Design created with Clément Bataille in 1991, focused on public transportation, including the design of the streetcar of Bordeaux, and the design of the garbage cans of the subway in Paris. In 2000, Babinet sold what had become BETC Design to Euro RSCG. [2]
Musiwave: launched In 2000, as Musiwap, then renamed Musiwave. In 2002, it became the first company in the world to offer "hifi" ringtones, . This very year, the company also offered downloads of CD quality songs using GPRS technology, in a partnership with the English telecommunications company Vodafone. The company finally sold to Openwave, for US$139m in January 2006. In December 2007, Openwave sold it to Microsoft.
Captain Dash: [3] a product for the automatic aggregation and synchronization of all kind of business data. Its Saas solution, mixing data visualization, design and mobile devices, gives marketers a dashboard to visualize, evaluate and correlate data flows from their own ERP and external data such as the weather, air quality, car traffic, vacation periods, holy days, Google trends, political elections, TV audience, and the like.
Eyeka [4] is a free website with more than 200,000 consumers in 91 countries which offers a platform for creative contests. To date, it has launched more than 450 contests with €1,300,000 in prizes Its objective is to connect talent with leading brands to imagine new concepts, invent better products and co-create engaging content. [5]
MXP4 develops interactive music solutions that create revenue opportunities for the music, media and marketing industries. It creates a video game-like environment where consumers can play with the music.
Digibonus [6] has been helping brands build relationships with their fans since 2009 through social media experiences such as polls, prize draws, photo contests, quizzes and more.
Nowadays, Babinet has stepped down from the management of his other firms to concentrate on his role as executive chairman of Captain Dash. Along with this position, he is also a Non executive director at LinkByNet, a cloud service company as well as member of the Strategic advisory board of EY France. From 2002 until 2010, Babinet was also at the board of administrators of the Mobile Entertainment Forum, an international Association promoting leisure services on mobiles. Mr. Babinet is also an active member of the association 100 000 entrepreneurs.
He was the elected president of the French National Digital Council (Cnnum), from 2011 to 2012. [7] [8] The council is in charge of advising the government on digital economy and new technology. [9] Under his presidency, it focused on Government reform programs to boost competitiveness. The Cnnum was specially committed to the development of e-education, innovation funding and open-data.
He was appointed French Digital Champion in 2012 by Fleur Pellerin, French minister of digital technologies, and works with Neelie Kroes, European Commissioner in charge of digital technologies. This function is the follow-up of his former position as president of the French National Digital Council (Cnnum),
In June 2018, Gilles Babinet was re-appointed as member of the French National Digital Council. On July 5, he was appointed vice-President, under the presidency of Salwa Toko.
In February 2021, he was appointed as co-president of the French National Digital Council with Mrs Françoise Mercadal-Delasalles. [10]
Babinet also participated in some of the Institut Montaigne's studies :
Babinet has been a proactive supporter of La Paillasse [11] an open-science laboratory dedicated to biological and Wetware research. While helping La Paillasse to secure its initial funding from the Mayor Office of Paris, Babinet also brought in the Swiss laboratory Hoffmann-La Roche to set up and launch in May 2015 the program "Epidemium" dedicated to the computation of Data in the Oncological field.
Books
Babinet has published
– His first book in January 2014: "L'Ère numérique, un nouvel âge de l'humanité", ("The digital era, a new age of humanity") where he discusses the impact of new technologies on our societies, our lives and our institutions. Throughout his book, he identifies five areas: Education, Healthcare, the State, Knowledge, and Production, that are deeply challenged in the context of the ongoing digital revolution.
– In March 2015 : "Big Data, penser l'homme et le monde autrement", a book that aims to explain what is the concept of big data and what type of usages it can deliver. The book also addresses the ethical issues of machine learning and automation.
– In December 2016 "Transformation Digitale, l'avènement des plateformes" a book to explain how companies should transform themselves in order to thrive in the digital era.
— In June 2019 " Transformation digital 2.0" (preface)
— In November 2020 : " Refondre les politiques publiques avec le numérique" Guide on how politicians and government could and should uses digital tools in public politic.
Articles
Openwave Systems Inc. is a division of Enea. It provides video traffic management and 5G mobile products.
Havas SA is a French multinational advertising and public relations company, with its registered office and head office in Puteaux, France.
Edmond Couchot was a French digital artist and art theoretician who taught at the University Paris VIII.
Legrand S.A. is a French industrial group historically based in Limoges in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region.
IONIS Education Group is a private, for-profit, higher education group in France. It was created in 1980 and by 2023 had more than 35,000 students and 100,000 alumni. There are 29 further education colleges in the group.
Inwi is a telecommunications company in Morocco. One of the three major Internet service providers in the country, it is a subsidiary of the group SNI and the Kuwaiti group Zain.
Henri Verdier is a French entrepreneur and digital specialist who has been serving as the country's ambassador for digital affairs since 2018. Previously he was the French State Chief Technology Officer (CTO) from 2015 to 2018 and, before, the Head of Etalab, the French Agency for Public Open data.
The Conseil national du numérique is a French independent advisory commission created on 29 April 2011 by the French presidential decree n°2011-476. It was reorganized and expanded by another French presidential decree on 13 December 2012, to expand its spectrum of actions to all the questions set up by the development of the digital in society and economy. The council issues independent opinions and recommendations on any question relating to the impact of digital technologies on economy and society. The government can consult the council on new legislation or draft regulations.
Nicolas Princen, was the technical advisor of French President Nicolas Sarkozy from 2007 to 2012. He was the manager of Nicolas Sarkozy's online campaign during the 2012 French presidential election.
Éric Carreel, is a French engineer and serial entrepreneur. He is the founding president of Withings, Sculpteo, Invoxia and Zoov. He is a graduate of ESPCI ParisTech, holds a PhD in engineering from the Pierre and Marie Curie University, and has authored over 50 patents.
BETC is a French advertising agency founded in Paris in 1995. The name of the company stands for Babinet, Erra and Tong Cuong, the founding members.
Institut Montaigne is a think tank based in Paris, France, founded in 2000. Institut Montaigne makes public policy recommendations to advance its agenda, which broadly reflects that of the large French companies that fund it. It contracts experts from the French business community, academia, civil society, and government.
Guy Mamou-Mani is a French columnist for the French language edition of The Huffington Post, and president of Syntec Numérique.
Mounir Mahjoubi is a French entrepreneur and politician of La République En Marche! (LREM) who served as a member of the National Assembly from June to July 2017 and from 2019 to 2022. From 2017 until 2019 was the Secretary of State for Digital Affairs in the government of Prime Minister Édouard Philippe.
The loi pour une République numérique is a French law first proposed by Axelle Lemaire, Secretary of State for Digital Affairs, voted on 7 October 2016.
Cédric O is a French politician of La République En Marche! (LREM) who served as Secretary of State for the Digital Economy in the governments of successive Prime Ministers Édouard Philippe and Jean Castex from 2019 to 2022.
Salwa Toko is a diversity and digital literacy activist. She is President of the Conseil National du Numérique (CNNum).
Angélique Gérard, born Angélique Dilscher in 1975 in Fontainebleau, France, is a French business personality specializing in telecommunications.
Arskan was a computer software company that was based in Lyon, France. It was founded in 2016 and developed technologies that allowed the visualisation of 3D data.
Marie Ekeland, is a French entrepreneur specializing in start-up financing. She is the co-founder of the Daphni investment fund and the founder and president of the 2050 fund.
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