IoT-DoT — objects first, network second.

IoT entered my career through rail mobility. At YPTO, the IT subsidiary of Belgian Railways (SNCB), I set up and ran a portfolio of IoT projects — two MVPs delivered (smart parking, e-scooters at stations), mobility-as-a-service use cases, and a strategy towards a digital twin linking sensors, big data and machine learning. The thread, once again: linking an operational decision — train composition, passenger information, condition-based maintenance — to a system that makes it possible.

Then I wanted to know what was inside the box. My own developments taught me what integrators don't tell you: what a connected object can do when the network isn't there. From the circuit board to the dashboard — board design and production, firmware programming, component architecture, integrating the electronics into the object — with the help of engineers, of course, but far enough to design, arbitrate and troubleshoot.

Wubble was born of that question. It is IoT without the I of internet — objects that talk to each other with or without a connection, and that don't stop working because an operator has stopped serving them. A smartphone with no SIM, no app, no internet, no Bluetooth. Designed for contexts without a network, it opened up a field that has nothing to do with Africa and holds in a 5G world saturated with apps: WubbleSafe for parcel lockers, WubbleAccess for access control, WubbleSnow, WubbleLight. The original constraint produced a simplicity that infrastructure-rich environments had lost.