CCI Mayenne has been a partner of Laval Virtual for many years.
Crédits photos : Laval Virtual / Prisma
As a loyal partner of Laval Virtual exhibition, CCI Mayenne is a key player in the department’s economic landscape. As part of its mission to support and educate, it organizes guided tours during Laval Virtual for the companies it helps on a daily basis. We spoke with Jean-Luc Gressier, Industry Advisor at CCI Mayenne, who talked about the organization’s actions at the event, immersive technology initiatives and plans for 2025.
Laval Virtual and CCI Mayenne have a long history together. How do you contribute to the exhibition?
CCI Mayenne has been a partner of Laval Virtual for several years now. We’re still committed to educating and supporting companies in technological developments. At Laval Virtual, we offer them the chance to discover what immersive technologies can do for their business, whether in virtual, mixed or augmented reality. We therefore organize guided tours of the exhibition. This year, all of the different sessions are full!
The guided tours are back again this year, with the same successful format. Can you tell us more about the objectives of these tours?
With these guided tours, we assist companies who are often new to the exhibition and these technologies, by highlighting rather pragmatic applications. For example, we show them what these technologies can do for them in terms of design, manufacturing and promotion of their products or services. We also show them that these technologies are useful for training purposes, whether ahead of the start of a new job, to develop skills for ongoing training, or to train their customers in the use of their products. Finally, from a commercial point of view, they can discover that augmented reality goggles or virtual reality headsets enable their future customers to visualize and immerse themselves in their products under near-real conditions. In short, these guided tours are there to show that with VR / AR, companies can design, train, manufacture, control, prevent and promote.
How do these visits work in practice?
We prepare a visit itinerary in advance. We choose exhibitors and solutions that are relevant to businesses, with an accent on booths with demonstrations. This allows participants to test products during their visit. Afterwards, they are free to explore the exhibition and deepen the discussion after the visit according to their needs. Both our companies and the event’s exhibitors love this format!
Who can take part in these guided tours organized by CCI Mayenne?
These guided tours are often attended by senior managers. But the CCI Mayenne also invites engineering and design department managers, quality-safety-environment managers and HR managers to take part in these sessions. The audience is quite diversified, and sometimes a company comes with 3 or 4 representatives of different functions. Last year, the entire management committee of a large company came to visit us. Besides being a time of discovery, these visits can also be a moment of cohesion within teams.
But generally speaking, this is a first-time audience. For the most part, they are discovering the event and the technologies for the first time. For them, the tours are a time to discover and learn. Some participants are immediately aware of the interest and benefits they could gain from using these technologies.
For these novice companies, guided tours are the first step in the process, helping to democratize the use of immersive technologies.
“Democratize” is an important word. For a long time, immersive technologies seemed relatively inaccessible, complex and expensive. For several years now, the Laval Virtual event and its exhibitors have been demonstrating both the affordability and ease of use of these tools. Depending on needs and challenges, there are obviously always complex, expensive and technical applications, but there are also tools that are highly accessible and highly operational. There are an increasing number of flexible and versatile solutions, some of which have been designed by Laval and even Mayenne companies.
Speaking of the local ecosystem, is CCI Mayenne involved in any immersive technology initiatives outside Laval Virtual?
Our mission is to support businesses from their inception through to their sale or transfer, i.e. at every stage of their development. The CCI is particularly active in raising awareness of technological developments. There are a number of transitions that companies need to make, whether digital, environmental, energy-related or technological, and we’re here to help. Guided tours at Laval Virtual are one way of doing this, but we also offer other initiatives throughout the year.
On the one hand, companies have access to tools and services dedicated to these topics. I’m thinking, for example, of the DINAMIC+ Accelerator, a support program focusing on a number of topics, including the industry of the future. This program enables companies to evaluate their current situation, and identify the challenges and objectives they need to achieve in order to get ahead of technological evolution. They then benefit from external expertise and training to implement their transformation.
As a structure at the core of the entrepreneurial world, I assume you join forces with other local players?
As part of our mission to support companies, we work closely with players in the Mayenne economic development ecosystem. For example, once or twice a year, we organize meetings with Clarté at the Laval Virtual Center to present immersive technology demonstrations. A session will be held after Laval Virtual in mid-May. We’re also working with French Tech and French Fab to organize breakfasts, because industry and technology are worlds that need to meet and network. A motto shared with the leaders of these two networks is “putting fab in tech and tech in fab”.
For three years now, CCI Mayenne has been a referent for the regional EDIH DIVA Pays de la Loire program, which encourages the integration of artificial intelligence and helps companies to make better use of their data.
We offer a wide range of services! It’s also part of our mission to bring together different areas of expertise, so that the companies we work with can make confident progress on crucial issues. These interventions take the form of consulting sessions, as well as financial support and training courses, depending on the subject.
Finally, what’s on the CCI Mayenne’s agenda for 2025?
First of all, the CCI Mayenne is part of a national operation dedicated to artificial intelligence in 2025. The DIVA Pays de la Loire program contributes to this objective. On this topic, we are launching new training courses on the uses and discovery of artificial intelligence, in particular generative AI.
Then, of course, we’re pursuing our efforts to raise awareness and support companies in their skills development, particularly in the areas of cybersecurity and responsible digital approaches. We are well aware that these technologies have significant environmental and energy impacts. We offer companies opportunities to improve their practices, reduce these impacts and work better with these new tools. We are carrying out these actions in partnership with the Mayenne ecosystem.
