Fun with the Skype team and the President of Estonia today.

Just after my talk, we had a panel on the Skype phenomenon and E.stonia: “What is it about Estonia, with an obscure language and unenviable weather that produces more startups per head of population than any other country in Europe?”

I felt especially proud to hear the President speak of two-factor authentication as the underpinning of federated identity management, the key requirement for e-healthcare adoption. You don’t often hear from a President that has been programming since the age of 13. (He connected via Skype video from his summer home in the countryside. When his dog barked, we all thought it came from the stage somehow and checked our phones).

photo by Indrek Kasela; Update: the video of the panel just went online

4 responses to “Skype Estonia Panel”

  1. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    A nice lady from Estonia lent me her smart ID card to play with, and she plans to see if I can get one as an honorary/virtual ambassador. The Estonian flag has been hanging over the stairwell of the Sunnyvale Plug & Play Center for years… for appreciation today:
    photo_2

    "Estonians today vote online and pay tax online. Their health records are online and, using what President Ilves likes to call a "personal access key" – others refer to it as an ID card – they can pick up prescriptions at the pharmacy. The card offers access to a wide range of other services." — BBC "How Estonia became E-stonia"

    And then we signed the wall… and I added the drawings =)
    photo[1]

    And a slide I showed from 2004, with Taavet Hinrikus, Skype employee #1 second from the left, and to my right on stage today:

    Skype Reverie

    Vaba Skype rant (set Skype free).

    Reply
  2. Ramones Karaoke Avatar
    Ramones Karaoke

    I tend to cheer for Estonia during Eurovision. Unless they are terrible. Just thought I’d let you know.

    p.s. it was pretty clear the choreography for this year’s entry was crowdsourced / microtasked …

    Reply
  3. jurvetson Avatar
    jurvetson

    Heh… I don’t even know what that is, but it sounds fun.

    Meanwhile the video of our panel just went online

    Reply
  4. eikimartinson Avatar
    eikimartinson

    Thank you very much for your talk Härra Jurvetson! I was the one in the front row that asked about possibilities for a hardware development scene in Estonia. I also felt pride towards Estonia’s president and particularly loved his line about "If you do a chi-squared analysis on this data, you will come to the conclusion that this is completely impossible!"

    Reply

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