Brussels Minister-President Boris Dilliès spent his Voka summer internship day with Zensor on Wednesday September 9th. We proposed not to do it at the office — desks and screens say very little about what we actually build.
So we went to see real work: the DoubleTree by Hilton near Rogier, a SOCATRA and Denys construction site, where one of our systems is monitoring the structure. The challenge: building a hotel on top of a live metro tunnel. The Minister-President also helped moving one of the sensors installed to a new location.
Four things we wanted him to take away:
- Brussels has high-tech companies.
- Those companies make products that also address Brussels' own problems. A congested city where you cannot simply close streets and rebuild, and a budget under long-term pressure. Monitoring what already exists, and knowing precisely when it needs work, is a direct answer to both.
- They sell internationally. Our sensors sit on steel mills in Ohio and Georgia. The reference for Brussels technology is being written abroad.
- The strongest support instrument for technology startups a government has is its purchase power. When the region buys a Brussels product, the company gets revenue, a reference case and a public problem solved — three birds with one stone...
