Gilles Babinet is a French multi-entrepreneur. He represents France in the Digital Champions group built by the European Union. He is also vice-President of the Conseil National du Numérique, a body advising the French Government on digital matters.
Biography
Babinet dropped out from school at 15 and then graduated his French "Baccalauréat" at the age of 20 as a free candidate.
Career
He has created 9 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. 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. 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: 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 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. 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 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.
French National Digital Council
He was the elected president of the French National Digital Council, from 2011 to 2012. The Council is in charge of advising the government on digital economy and new technology. 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, In June 2018, Gilles Babinet was re-appointed as member of the French National Digital Council. In July 5, he was appointed vice-President, under the presidency of Salwa Toko.
Institut Montaigne
Babinet also participates in some of the Institut Montaigne's studies :
June 2011 : "How to develop our small and medium size companies", a report giving concrete solutions to develop the French network of small companies inside and outside France.
March 2013 : "For a digital New Deal", a report presenting 10 propositions to promote France as a major actor of the digital transition.
April 2015 : "Big Data et Objects Connecté, faire de la France un champion digital ; a report that focuses on the optimal regulation to ease the development of the digital economy.
June 2017 : "" a report stressing on the need for Universities to reform themselves in order to remain competitive at the digital era.
La Paillasse
Babinet has been a proactive supporter of La Paillasse 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.
Writing
Books Babinet has published – His first book in January 2014: "L'Ère numérique, un nouvel âge de l'humanité", 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. Articles
