Hoping to fuel innovation in digital penmanship with a free one-year membership for start-ups and nonprofits in the digital ink-enabled space, this ecosystem clearly hopes to write it own ticket to success.
The Digital Stationery Consortium (DSC) has announced that it is “accepting promoter member applications for a free, one-year membership from digital stationery-focused developers within technology start-ups as well as academic entities exclusively".
This initiative is designed to allow "young and developing companies to participate in the DSC’s technical and educational efforts via the consortium’s work groups”, and if approved, “the promoter membership fee is waived for the first year".
This organisation says the “free membership initiative comes at a time of accelerating momentum for the DSC, with a growing number of contributor members joining Wacom at the board level including industry heavyweights Fujitsu Client Computing Limited, Montblanc, and Samsung.”
{loadposition alex08}Masahiko Yamada, DSC chairman, and president and chief executive of Wacom, said: “We’re pleased to offer this special promoter membership opportunity to start-ups and academics interested in joining the DSC. As our membership growth momentum continues, we recognise the essential role that this development community continues to play in harnessing the power of digital ink.
“Their innovation and experience will help the DSC identify and create new digital stationery use cases where everyone can freely capture, shape and share new ideas beyond the boundaries of technology, ecosystems, industries or countries.”
Notably, neither Apple nor Microsoft is on the list of members, and presumably both seek to “inde-pen-dently” encourage as much digital innovation and, I suppose, a bit of “inknovation” within its own developer community, but hey, competition is good, and one can only imagine that Montblanc, Samsung and Fujitsu are confident that the pen is mightier than the word that speaks of free one-year memberships.
Inde-pen-dently is clearly an inde-pun-dently denting the brains of some people reading right now, so let’s just move write on, as it were.
The DSC has more information on its membership here, and information on the Connected Ink event in Berlin, here.
Here’s the DSC’s corporate video – more info below, please read on.
DSC promoter membership
The DSC says that “companies who meet the qualifications will be joining the DSC as promoter members with the membership fees waived for the first year. Promoter membership benefits include the ability to participate in DSC meetings as well as participate in one of three work groups. As part of the DSC, members will work to establish digital ink as universal, open and smart content format based on the Wacom Ink Layer Language.
“WILL’s digital ink technology ensures cross-compatibility of ink data, allowing businesses and consumers to freely communicate and collaborate across digital devices, operating systems, hardware platforms and cloud services," the DSC says "Other benefits can be found here.”
Thought leadership at Connected Ink Berlin
At the upcoming Connected Ink event in Berlin on 31 August, we are told that “the DSC chair Masahiko Yamada will welcome the new members and present on the DSC vision. Following the presentations, DSC representatives will be onsite to discuss membership and market opportunities during a networking reception. Individuals from DSC member and non-member companies are invited to register to attend and participate in this event and reception.”
DSC membership benefits
The DSC says that “membership levels, contributors and promoters, are open to companies across any business vertical, including technology, design, education, automotive, Internet of Things and more. Members receive access to Wacom’s WILL technology as well as the opportunity to become involved in various membership initiatives and member-only meetings.”
The Digital Stationery Consortium, founded by Wacom, “is an association of global industries and thought leaders with the shared mission to advocate the value of human creativity and to lead the creation of a new market category of smart digital stationery solutions that are serving any creative minds in a most natural and intuitive way".
The consortium says its “focus is to establish digital ink as a universal, open and smart content format and a common framework for sharing and collaborating with ideas based on WILL digital ink".
Clearly, where there’s a WILL, there’s a Wacom, Samsung, Montblanc and Fujitsu fighting it out with their collective WILLpower against the Apples and Microsofts of the world, so let us indeed hope that the pen is mightier that the Word – or the Pages they’re written on.
