PALO ALTO, Calif. -- A year after opening its doors, AT&T Foundry held a small reception to show off some of what it's been doing.
Mostly, Wednesday's media event was a look at what AT&T Labs has been up to, with engineers and executives from around the country showing off their latest works. Some were fairly common ideas, such as a distributed antenna system for stadiums. Others seemed novel, such as ambient communications, a collaboration tool and work-in-progress that looks really cool, if nothing else.
The Setup
Most of the apps were shown off in this common room. The room is usually furnished with chairs and tables -- but everything is on wheels, so the configuration can change depending on who's using the Foundry that day.
The Foundries -- there are two others in Plano, Texas, and Tel Aviv -- are meant to be community hubs for nurturing new ideas. They do happen to be AT&T's vehicle for working with startups, similar to the incubators and venture funds that other operators are setting up.
The lack of startups at Wednesday's event was disappointing, but the point was to show off the general innovation plan, which includes a pipeline for advancing employees' ideas and for helping other companies commercialize AT&T Labs's inventions.
You can click the photo above to launch a slideshow -- or, follow along, page by page. We've added some narration to explain a few of the demos in depth, starting with the sleek Ambient Communications.
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— Craig Matsumoto, Managing Editor, Light Reading
