Day: 17 December 2017

The 13th edition of the Bain de Noël took place Saturday morning at Larvotto’s Rose des Vents beach as nearly 200 festive polar bears braved the 15°C water for a good cause.

Organised annually by the Association les Amis du Bain de Noël de Monaco, money raised is donated to a different association each edition, which this year was in aid of the Monegasque association L’Amicale d’Entraide et de Prévoyance des Fonctionnaires de la Sûreté Publique, which helps children of the police force.

As they did last year, Amade Monaco, the association started in 1966 by Princess Grace, will double the funds raised from yesterday’s swim.

On-site registration, €10, included a raffle ticket, croissants, coffee and mulled wine – and a special bonus this year, a coupon for a free hot chocolate from Stars’n’Bars.

Kate Powers, co-owner of the American-style port eatery, commented post-swim, “I loved this. What a great morning and for a good cause.”

Dressed up as Santa, Anette Shine, Founder Sunshine Yoga Monte-Carlo, enthusiastically led the warm-up with a group Zumba on the shore and the event’s emcee was again the enigmatic Pierre Frolla, Monegasque free-diver who is a triple world record holder in Free Dive. (Pierre also features heavily in the new The Prince and the Sea documentary.)

For Laetitia Mikail, Director of Business Network Events 2017 at the Monaco Junior Chamber of Commerce – which is hosting Business and Communication in Sport: the Monaco Basketball Project on December 20 – Saturday’s Christmas swim was a first and she brought along pal Benoîte de Sevelinges, Deputy Director at Princess Grace Hospital. Laetitia, who, like many of the other swimmers, dressed up in Christmas attire, summed up the experience: “I’m so glad I came. It was a blast.”

Article first published December 17, 2017.

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A day in the life of the Prince

Jean Castellini, Minister of Finance and Economy, was a guest Friday morning at a breakfast conference organised by the Junior Chamber Economic.

Held at MonacoTech’s Zone F, the theme of the December 15 event was: “Pitch Time: Discover the startups of MonacoTech.”

During his speech, Jean Castellini recalled the various stages of the creation and launch of MonacoTech, the government’s incubator and accelerator startup program, inaugurated on November 8 by Prince Albert and Xavier Niel.

The Minister emphasised, “MonacoTech is at the same time a place ideally situated in Fontvieille, an exemplary cooperation between the State and Monaco Telecom, and dynamically managed by a young Monegasque, Fabrice Marquet.”

He added, “This structure is a wonderful means of communication to say innovation has a place in Monaco.”

Fabrice Marquet, Director of MonacoTech, then spoke of the many challenges, including having real innovative industrial projects, giving projects time to develop and creating a real community of entrepreneurs.

This year, MonacoTech selected 15 startups – 10 incubators and 5 accelerators – out of 172 applications. Four of them were chosen to talk at the networking event to 80 members and friends of the Monaco Junior Chamber of Commerce (JCI) who were in attendance.

Kee System, Wealth Management Solutions, started off the presentation, and was the only accelerator in the morning’s program. Surgisafe (Instant Detection Smart Cannula), Coraliotech (Coral Products Technology), and Teale (Data Driven Building Efficiency) also answered questions from the audience.

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The Urban Planning Department has installed a portion of solar roadway about fifty metres long on the Avenue des Papalins in Fontvieille. The section of special roadway has been built in cooperation with the company Colas. The electricity produced by the panels is injected into the SMEG network.

Wattway slabs are laid and glued directly onto the road. Only a few millimetres thick, they include photovoltaic cells 15 cm apart, constituting a very thin sheet of “polycrystalline” silicon. Coated in a substrate composed of resins and polymers, they are sufficiently translucent to let in sunlight and strong enough to withstand heavy truck traffic.

These slabs have a yield of 15 percent, similar to that of conventional photovoltaics. Twenty square metres of Wattway roadway is sufficient to supply an average household with sufficient electricity, excluding heating.

“This is a huge increase in the number of solar panels designed to transform the traffic lanes into renewable energy support,” said Jean-Luc Puyo, Director of Urban Planning. He added: “Tomorrow, we can imagine other ways in which the Principality can support our policy in favour of renewable energies”.

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The Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation, the German Ocean Foundation and the International Boat Show – Boot Düsseldorf – have come together to launch the “Ocean Tribute Awards.” The prize will reward selected projects in three areas: Business, Industry, and Science. Boot Düsseldorf will be held from January 20 to 28, 2018.

HSH Prince Albert II, who participated last year at the Ocean Symposium, as part of Boot Düsseldorf, said: “The marine environment is now deeply threatened. There is, at the foundation of this Prize, the importance of mobilising as much as possible around this cause, and to draw the attention of our contemporaries to this requirement which must all bring us together. (…) I wanted my Foundation to join this beautiful project.”

The members of the Ocean Tribute Award jury, which met in Düsseldorf on November 22, are Monika Breuch-Moritz, meteorologist, President of the German Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH) and member of the Advisory Committee of the German Ocean Foundation; Werner Matthias Dornscheidt, Managing Director of Messe Düsseldorf; HE Bernard Fautrier, Vice-President of the Prince Albert II Foundation; Dr Hartmut Graßl, President of the Federation of German Scientists and President of the German Ocean Foundation; Dr Michael Orbach, Anthropologist, consultant at Duke University, founding member of Surfrider Foundation and member of the advisory board of the German Ocean Foundation; and Robert Marx, President of the German Water Sports Association and Boot Düsseldorf.

Seabob, the luxury sea toy maker, will award a prize of €1,500 to each winner. The “Blue Motion Night” awards ceremony will take place on January 22, 2018, in Düsseldorf.

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A study of mobile telephony coverage in the Principality has found that while improvements in quality of service have been made across the board, Monaco Telecom and Orange continue to provide the best quality of service.

The study was conducted in the first half of 2017 by the Electronic Communications Department. A total of 120 measurement points, exterior and interior, were used to test mobile phones using the IOS and Android operating system at different times, including during off-peak hours.

The study found that Monaco Telecom and Orange, whose network is actually provided by Monaco Telecom, provide excellent coverage and a high quality of service, while the performances of the other three operators Bouygues Telecom, Free and SFR – while inferior, have improved since 2016, following a request from the Minister of State. For telephone calls, made or received, the coverage rate of these operators is today greater than 98 percent when made outside buildings.

However, the quality of internet connections and the throughput offered by these three operators remains much lower than those of Monaco Telecom and Orange.

It also appears from these measurements that the experience of customers often depends on their smartphone. Notable differences are seen between different models which do not have the same sensitivity and the same performances on the same network.

Based on the audit conducted by an independent provider, the study demonstrates the high quality of the mobile services provided by the national operator.

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Prince inaugurates MonacoTech

The regional council of the neighbouring region of France, currently known as Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur, or PACA for short, has decided in favour of a name change.

Meeting on Friday, December 15, the elected council members voted in favour of a name change to Region Sud Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur. While the new name is even longer than the rather clumsy acronym PACA, the hope is that the simple “Region Sud”, or “South Region”, will soon enter general use.

One of the members of the council, Roland Giberti, who represents the Bouches-du-Rhone, said that the word “South” conjures up a very positive image of a high quality of life, beautiful countryside and sunshine.

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