Brice Le Blévennec – Biography

Brice Le Blévennec, born in 1967 in Versailles and based in Brussels, is a self-taught entrepreneur who has established himself as one of the major figures in European digital technology. His journey into computing began at age 13 in 1980 when his secondary school, Athenaeum Adolphe Max, was selected for a pilot e-learning program featuring Control Data’s PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations) terminals. These revolutionary systems had tactile screens with tiny wires forming a one-centimeter grid, displaying vectors instead of pixels, and were many years ahead of their time. Connected to the world by rudimentary modems using a protocol that wasn’t yet TCP/IP, these terminals allowed him to play network games like Moria (a 3D labyrinth adventure game) and Dogfight (a flight combat simulator) simultaneously with hundreds of players across Europe and the USA.

His first hack was creating a program in TUTOR that mimicked the login screen, collecting passwords in a notebook from unsuspecting users. This eventually gave him access to teachers’ accounts and even the system engineer’s password, allowing him to bypass restrictions. While other students weren’t interested in the system, his imagination ran wild, anticipating 3D images as realistic as CGI and faster networks with thousands of colors. He felt there was potential to change the world.

In 1982, during a school trip to London organized by his Protestant Religion teacher, he spent all his food money to buy a Sinclair ZX81, arriving home starving but ecstatic to own his first computer. Connecting it to an old TV set in the attic, he devoured the BASIC programming manual cover to cover and fell into coding – it was love at first sight. He spent nights coding games like Breakout and Pong, copying pages from magazines, until his father cut the fuses to force him to sleep. The challenge was to get results before the power was cut, and even in darkness, he continued reading code by candlelight. Already introverted, he almost stopped talking to other human beings, writing lines of code in his notebook during class and testing them at night.

He then bought a Sinclair ZX Spectrum and started working on Z80 assembler. After trying to reimplement the Moria game with only 48K of memory, he coded a Connect Four game whose main quality was its multi-colored interface and sound effects, though the AI was so simple it was impossible to lose against it. He understood that user interface could wow players and hide flaws in simple programs. He also coded a system that scrolled messages across TV screens using large pixels with basic typography, planning to sell them to local grocers for advertising, but the unreliability of audio cassette storage killed the project.

He devoured a book about computer languages published in French by Eyrolles, discovering Fortran, Pascal, Prolog, and LISP. He did an internship at an association recovering old mainframes programmed in Fortran and developed a management system for his school’s library on a computer running CP/M. He got his first PC assembled at Infoboard with database management tools like Dbase and Foxpro, and sold his first software – an armory management system. He experimented extensively with Prolog, convinced that computers would one day simulate human reasoning.

He understood that computers gave humans superpowers and could compensate for his weaknesses. This revolution would profoundly change the world. He was no longer living in the real world or present, but in an imaginary universe modeled on reality where wonderful things were possible. He could literally see the potential of every tool, even if its performance was poor in real life.

In 1989, his mother, who ran a word processing office, bought a Macintosh SE/30 which he promptly monopolized. He fell in love with its windows, menus, and mouse that made software intuitive. He used it to make magazines with SuperPaint, printed with an ImageWriter II, then photocopied. He had replaced the print cartridge with an optical reading head – a mini scanner that allowed him to digitize photos or drawings in low resolution. For better results, he would enlarge drawings in a photocopier, scan them, then reduce the scanned image in SuperPaint, achieving incredible outcomes for the time. For professional results, he would visit their Apple dealer to print on a LaserWriter, which he thought cost more than he could ever earn.

The shopkeeper was often impressed by his tinkering. In September, when he had just graduated late from high school, the dealer offered him a job helping a company that had just bought a beautiful Macintosh IIfx with 256-color screens and Aldus PageMaker for a few days – a total dream for him. He immediately accepted, starting his career as a graphic designer at Paparazzi, a below-the-line communications agency, where he worked for 18 months. He quickly proved indispensable and converted the whole agency to Mac. While working there, he briefly studied Typography and Graphic Design at La Cambre, a Brussels school of visual arts. He then moved on to computerizing photoengraving companies with Scitex systems, connecting them to Apple ‘Tops’ networks to reduce costs and increase possibilities with early versions of Photoshop. He learned image processing, engraving, offset printing, and how to face sleepless nights.

One day, while collecting payment on a late bill at Paparazzi, the head of studio Catherine Decarpentrie offered him a job to create their little prepress office. He accepted, and that same night chose the name Ex Machina. After a period in a shared office, they established their first private office in a garage in Forest, a commune of Brussels, beginning an adventure that would require a whole book. It was a wonderful time with less than 20 people in a huge room, and he knew exactly what everyone was doing. The first 10 years were crazy – they did prepress, CD-ROMs, interactive terminals, then the first websites, and basic video editing. He was living on-site next to his servers that he babysat at night, working non-stop and loving it. His partner literally had to force him to go on holiday.

Among his first notable projects was Le Mystère Magritte (1996), a multimedia compilation dedicated to the work of painter René Magritte. At that time, he was developing interactive interfaces and digital experiences well before digital became a structured sector. Simultaneously, he became a media figure: from 1996 to 2004, he hosted the show CyberCafé21 on Radio 21 and then on RTBF, which popularized Internet and geek culture to the general public. This dual activity, both entrepreneurial and media-focused, established his role as a bridge between technology and society.

In 1998, with Patrick De Schutter and Arnaud Huret, he co-founded ContactOffice, a collaborative suite of private cloud type including messaging, document sharing, and calendar. This initiative, a precursor to Google Workspace-type services, would later become Mailfence.

Over time, Ex Machina’s cutting-edge technological innovation attracted prestigious clients including Belgacom, Coca-Cola, Electrabel, Apple, and Swatch. Proposals to buy out their little agency came pouring in, but he was not ready to give up his independence and freedom. In 2001, Denis Steisel, Philip Palaz and Edouard Janssens who had founded in 1998 Emalaya, an e-business agency, proposed joining forces to found Emakina. This became reality on April 1st, 2001. This merger marked a turning point: Brice Le Blévennec oriented the company toward ambitious international expansion and established himself as one of the promoters of digital marketing in Europe.

From 2001 to 2021, he led Emakina as president and CEO, building it on the philosophy of being “The User Agency” – putting strategy, technology and creativity at the service of users. He always tried to use technological innovations creatively to generate value for clients, with the ambition to exploit technology in pursuit of new, creative applications. He loved throwing “world firsts” out into the middle of the office. Understanding that the world is big with many people brighter than him, he was unlikely to invent anything that didn’t already exist somewhere. But by exploiting the latest technological innovations in very creative and original ways, with clear objectives, strategy and good planning, it was possible to create unique new services, applications or content that create value for customers, ex nihilo.

Under his leadership, the agency transformed into an international group. Since that day in 2001, they never stopped growing, and in 2006 Emakina went public on Alternext Brussels, a rare feat for a digital agency. The confidence of the market gave them means to undertake an international adventure, first in Europe, then in Asia, the USA and Africa. They became present in 20 countries on four continents, with 25 offices and more than 1,100 employees. The company established itself as a major player in e-business and interactive communication.

Emakina’s corporate culture has been based on innovation, user experience, and trend anticipation since day one – believing in progress through putting strategy, technology and creativity at the service of users. This culture underpins everything they do: investments, recruitment of talent, and discourse within the market. If their projects are innovative and creative, they are adopted by users, making clients successful. If clients are satisfied, they continue partnerships. It’s a virtuous circle.

During the Covid-19 crisis, he published analyses and reflections on organizational resilience in the Belgian economic press (Libre ECO). In 2021, after twenty years of growth, Emakina was acquired by American group EPAM Systems. Brice remained as “Chief Visionary Officer” starting in 2022, a position dedicated to foresight and strategic innovation.

Alongside Emakina, Brice pursued a career as a serial entrepreneur. In 2007, he co-founded Tunz, a company specializing in mobile payment by SMS, which was acquired by Ogone in 2012 and then integrated into Ingenico in 2013. He filed patents in the field of electronic payments. In 2009, he founded Zingle, then in 2011 Zin.gl, an online dating platform that raised $600,000 from business angels. He also participated in the creation of the P2P Foundation with Michel Bauwens and James Burke in 2007, as well as other initiatives like Objekten Systems (industrial design) and Kwater. These projects, sometimes ephemeral, reveal a constant: his taste for experimentation and his ability to identify opportunities ahead of their time.

Beyond his entrepreneurial activities, Brice Le Blévennec is a regular speaker and author.

In 2021, celebrating Ex Machina’s 30th anniversary, he published Visions of a Better World (Visions d’un monde meilleur), a prospective essay imagining the evolution of society by 2051. Naturally asking where they would be in 30 years, the book explores what might happen between 2021 and 2051 in 30 articles devoted to 30 areas. Each article begins with a short fiction – in their agency language: a User Experience consisting of a situation lived by one imaginary character (or more). Then they share their vision of a possible future, starting with insights to establish foresight. Finally, they examine technological trends and recent innovations that make these stories more or less plausible, with full online references provided.

The articles are ordered from most probable to craziest, placed on a scale from Science to Fiction:

• Science: Articles fairly close to the state of science whose advent is highly probable
• Innovation: Articles anticipating fairly logical innovations that are fairly likely with current acceleration
• Disruption: Articles exploring possibilities depending on radical innovations still at research stage
• Vision: Predictions disconnected from feasibility of available technologies, but human inventiveness has no limits other than physics
• Fiction: Articles taking concepts to extremes, imagining wildest possibilities where today’s physical barriers have been broken by discoveries yet to come

Written in collaboration with about a dozen consultants from Emakina, the work seeks to inspire decision-makers and citizens with an optimistic and mobilizing vision of the future.

To stay ahead of the curve, they must look at users, anticipate their needs and wants to be ready for clients. They must constantly imagine a positive future to build the path leading to it. There are several approaches to this. Futurists develop scenarios based on present innovations. Unfortunately, the world is in crisis, and basing themselves on the present leads to rather catastrophic scenarios.

They chose to start with a user experience in the future in the form of fiction, then come back to the present – to its scientific publications, innovations, trends – in the form of an essay. They found their North Star and built the path to go in its direction. It’s a new genre combining fiction and essay that he calls “Applied Science Fiction.”

Since the sale of Emakina, he continues his role as an innovator and explorer. In 2023, he founded Zoetrope, a startup that offers a digital art frame using artificial intelligence to generate and display interactive and evolving artworks. This project illustrates his desire to link art, technology, and aesthetic experience, extending his trajectory at the frontier between creativity and digital innovation.

His career is marked by several distinctions. In 2009, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), recognizing his contributions to digital marketing. In 2014, Emakina was awarded “Top Agency” at the Horizon Interactive Awards. These awards consecrate his role as a pioneer and his lasting influence on the digital sector.

Today, Brice Le Blévennec defines himself as a “tech trendsetter, über geek, visionary, author.” Father of two boys, passionate about music—jazz, funk, synthesizers, and electronic production—comic book enthusiast and video game lover, he claims an insatiable curiosity and permanent immersion in technological culture. His journey illustrates the possibility of transforming an individual passion into a collective and international adventure. Through his companies, projects, books, and interventions, he embodies a model of creative, bold, and prospective European entrepreneur.