Planning the Virtual Runner Project

After sending an email to the Google Group of our Leeds Met Centre for Creative Technology about the successful bid to Connect Yorkshire for the Virtual Runner Project, I have received several responses:

• Duncan Mullier would be interested in working on software development of this project. He would participate in writing core components.
• Mark Dixon has expressed interest in the software development activities.
• Patrick Ingham has been suggested to be involved, because of his dual expertise in software development and computer graphics.
• L3 students Abraham Smith has been suggested by Duncan, and I spoke to him: he would be interested, but feels that this may be slightly above his expertise.

Furthermore, I met with Simon Thompson who needs funding for purchasing Apple IPhones for some related development activities. I will explore if this VR project can support his exploration of using IPhones for an initial component development.

Cancelled Talk at St.-Aidans High School

Weeks ago, Steve Wilkinson had asked me to deliver a talk at the St.-Aidans High School in Harrogate. So I prepared a talk about robotic driverless vehicles, which I thought would be interesting and entertaining to those high school students. Also Paul Emery agreed to give a talk there. But on this Thursday morning, the roads were full of snow, with ice underneath. I drove ok on the A61 towards north, and I would have made it in time to be at the school at 10:00. But we got a call from the school that this event was cancelled, because only a few students had made it to the school under these adverse weather conditions.

The talk will be given at another time, probably in the New Year. This meant that I could give my scheduled MSc lectures (Mobile Wireless Computing) here at Leeds Met without the cover that Steve Wilkinson had offered.

Faculty Leadership Team

At lunch time, the Innovation North Faculty Leadership Team met today in the Old School Board. After the usual reports from other meetings were done, I gave there a brief summary of the India project, and I told the news about winning the bid to Yorkshire Connect.

Won Bid!

I met Andrew Marran in the James Graham Building, and he told me the news that he had gotten a phone call from Lloyd, telling him that the panel had approved our proposal, and that we would receive the funding from Yorkshire Connect!

We would still wait for an official letter, before we post it officially on the web.

Bid Presentation to Yorkshire Connect: Virtual Runner Commercialisation

This Tuesday afternoon, Prof. Rod King, Andrew Marran, and myself gave a presentation to a panel from Yorkshire Connect for obtaining a grant for commercialisation of our joint TQEF developed "Virtual Runner" prototype. We pitched only the angle of developing this as a learning tool, as advised by panel member Lloyd Snellgrove (Director of Yorkshire Concept Proof of Concept Fund, Yorkshire Universities) who has spoken to Andrew. We figured that this would show a solid potential, as we already had an informal business contact through the textbook publisher.

We were able to cover our presentation in the allotted 10 minutes: 3 minutes for Rod to talk about the physiology, 2 minutes for me to cover the technology and show a presentation of our prototype, and 5 minutes for Andrew to cover the commercialisation and the market - the panel had asked to spend 5 minutes on this market topic.

We believe that the meeting went successful, as we noted that the panel was quite excited about our project.

Finalising Bid to Yorkshire Connect

Prof. Rod King (Carnegie Faculty), Andrew Marran (Commercialisation) and myself have prepared a bid to Yorkshire Connect for commercialisation of the TQEF Virtual Runner project. The deadline had been 5.11., so this was done in my absence while I was in India.

Next Tuesday, 2.12., we are scheduled to give a presentation to the panel which will decide if we will be given this commercialisation grant.

Creative Networks: About Technology Strategy Board

On Thursday evening, another event was organised at the Leeds College of Art and Design in the framework of "Creative Networks" (CN). This evening, Sian Brereton from the Technology Strategy Board gave an overview on the upcoming funding opportunities. Steve Smith did the moderation. Present were also Bill Boffin and Stuart McFarlane, both from Yorkshire Forward.

Pitches at this event were given by Peter Learoyd (Imagiclee), Kate Jones (Gillies Jones), Mark Longbottom (Platform58), and Edward Ryder (Biskit).

Creative Networks is jointly presented by the Leeds College of Art and the Elsie Whiteley Innovation Centre in Halifax, and is sponsored by the West Yorkshire Lifelong Learning Network (WYLLN). It offers a key networking opportunity for creative professionals across West Yorkshire, including the opportunity to 'pitch' your business to other delegates.

(2 days off sick)

Some kind of "bug" has been causing me to cough and sneeze since my first week in India. 3 weeks have passed since then, and it is still not gone, and I started feeling slowly worse. Therefore, I stayed at home on Monday, 24.11., and Tuesday, 25.11. Back at work on Wednesday.

At the "We Love Technology" Salon, Huddersfield

On Thursday afternoon, I drove to Huddersfield to take part in the We Love Technology salon, which was organised by Lisa Roberts from BlinkMedia. I had teaching obligations, and so was not able to attend the first half of the event. I arrived around 16:00, just in time for giving my presentation: "From GPS to Artificial Mind". The 20 min talk basically was about using GPS for creative purposes and about the possibilities of Creative Technology in the true sense (artificial creativity).

Also from Leeds Met present were Linda Broughton and Ben Dalton. There were many artists and technologists from the region. Also a group of international students attended and gave a brief overview on their work and interest. I talked with Anaeli Kihunrawa from Tanzania, who has a multimedia business there and was very interested in the opportunities and possibilities for creative technology. I offered him to visit Leeds Met, and explore using our motion capture facilities for a project that he envisioned: capturing African folk dancing for 3D character animation.

India Project

I am back from the travel to India. It has been a very rewarding activity, and I am very satisfied with the outcomes. The other participants in the project also have achieved their goals:
- several new poems and writings have been created by the workshop participants from both the UK and India, with the theme of environmental change at rivers, linked to spirituality and cultural heritage
- several paintings have been produced in this context, about river goddesses and impact on nature.

My own work has been done in the following areas:
- recording activities of the group in the workshops and interviews, by photography, video clips, GPS tracks.
- experimenting with immersive recording, using a head-worn camera and in-ear microphones, for a subjective recording of experiences.

I have organised the setting up of a live video-conference during the stay, linking our activities there in Gujarat with activities in Yorkshire (Sagar Street Gallery, Castleford). Further, I have setup and updated a development blog in which I reported about our daily activities related to this project: http://gujarat-yorkshire.blogspot.com/

I have given access to all the material I collected to the International Faculty, for use in their marketing of the International Week. I also have published an International Reflection and have provided material for a news release for the INN public web site.

Attending a Creative Networks Event

On Thursday evening, an event was held at the Leeds College of Arts and Design, organised by the "Creative Networks" organisation. Facilitator was Steven Smith (Leeds College og Arts and Design) who had also participated in the round table consultation meeting in York 2 weeks ago. There was also Bill Boffin from Yorkshire Forward. Furthermore, from Kooji Creative there were Johnny Gallagher and Katherine Moss (our partners in the "Virtual Runner" project with Prof. Rod King).

The evening program started with 4 pitches: Timande Gustafson (AXIS), Andrew Earnsha (Message4It), Diane Crossley (Peripheral Partners), and David Mawdsley (Mawdsley Williams Furniture). The main talk was given by Gary Townsley, from the Business Outreach and Education Dept. of the IPO: he talked about various issues re. copyrights and trademarks.

Conference Paper Reviews for CHI

I had been asked to be in the review committee for the international conference CHI 2009. Three reviews were due by 29.10., and I was able to complete them in time.

Virtual Runner Commercialisation

This Wednesday I had a meeting with Prof. Rod King (Carnegie), and we discussed the changes and additions which I had put into the bid documdnt which we will submit to Yorkshire Connect. The deadline which Andrew Marran (Business Development Manager, Leeds Met) had been negotiated with Yorkshire Connect, is 2.December. In the meantime there will be a meeting the textbook editor who is interested in publishing this TEL tool.

Ideas Factory: Putting Leeds Met on the Map

Today I had a meeting with Rana Gangari who had been working on the Virtual Tour of Leeds Met. I discussed with her the porting of those 32D models into Sketchup, for use on a web site with Google Earth. She will explore this and let me know how fast this is possible.

The next step would be to convert all 3D models into the Google Earth format and then prepare a few templates and Javascript functions for allowing to place the models on a map.

Meeting; C3KE Conference Planning

On Tuesday a meeting was held in Huddersfield, in order to discuss and plan a conference which would conclude the C3KE activities. This conference is supposed to be the final project in the C3KE, as a final milestone, showing sustainability and involvement. Participants in the meeting were: Derek Hales (U.Huddersfield), Patrick Allen (U.Bradford), Freda Shafi (U.Bradford), myself.

There is a potential to host this conference here at Leeds Met, together with the Staff Development Festival - this needs to be explored further.

Meeting at the OBH

Rebekka Kill from the Faculty of Arts and Society has been very active lately: an article of her was published in the Times Higher Education, she had written a reflection and was referenced by the VC, and she had visited the FLT meeting a few weeks ago. Now Peter Cullen (INT) with whom I had worked on a TQEF bid for exploring the MAHARA software, had pointed me towards her, as she would also be interested in MAHARA.

Rebekka is setting up a new MA: Creative Enterprise. For this she wants to use 4 case studies, and she has obtained funding for this. The students working on these case studies would have to report and share their work - and MAHARA seems to be a very positive platform for this. So we agreed that I would mention her project in the meeting with Ruth Pickford which I will arrange in 3 weeks or so, to clarify the TQEF bid.

Guest Lecture: DARPA Grand Challenge

This Monday I gave a guest lecture in John Elliott's Master class for Artificial Intelligence. This was the 3rd time I did this lecture in the past 3 years. I gave a viewpoint from a practical application-oriented perspective, showing the applications of AI in autonomous driving. From my past experience as a participant in the US DARPA Grand Challenge 2004, I showed video footage to demonstrate examples of autonomous vehicle behaviour.

Yorkshire Forward: Consultation on "Creative Britain"

On Wednesday evening, Yorkshire Forward had invited people from the region to a roundtable consultation regarding a recent government report (Feb. 2008) "Creative Britain - New Talents for the New Economy".

The discussion went from 17:50 - 20:00. Among the participants were the following people which I knew:
Bill Boffin (Yorkshire Forward), Derek Hales (U.Huddersfield, Director of C3KE), Philip Morris (U.of York), Gavin Wilson (Screen Yorkshire, also MSc student in the MA Screen Media Cultures module).

The discussion went around how in the creative sector industry and academia can collaborate. It began with the statement that industry complains that students do not have the skills necessary for working.

My contributions to the debate:
- It is important to analyse the industry's complaints: these complaints could be just superficial, requiring students to be familiar with certain topics and work practices. However, it would be actually the task of the industry to train students and work place beginners to get the required specific work place skills. But it also could be that the complaints are deeper and address the issue that students are not able to learn, adapt, and display those academic skills and soft skills which are an essential element of academically trained staff. In that case, universities must ask themselves if they in fact do enough to teach properly.
- Knowledge transfer needs not only to be one way (from academia to industry), but academia also needs to benefit. I referred hereby to past KT work where we worked with companies who employed students in their MSc thesis phase, so that they could solve an academic problem that would benefit the academically justified research.

MA Screen Media Cultures - Seminar

On Monday, 20.10., I gave a 3-hour presentation in the MA module "Screen Media Cultures". I had been invited by the module leader Lance Pettitt from the Faculty of Arts to be involved in this module, and it turned out to be a quite sucessful talk. Among the students is Chris Nriapa (BBC) with whom I already had contact in the past years regarding the BBC Big Screen. He asked me if I could be involved as a supervisor in his Master dissertation project next semester, and I tentatively agreed.

My talk was about the technology of TV, displays, and film: historical development and technical principles. I also addressed the topic of Augmented Reality and showed a few videos from the recent ISMAR conference.

This presentation has strengthened the collaboration between our two faculties, and I look forward to further collaboration with Lance.

Virtual Runner: Bid to Yorkshire Concept

I participated in a meeting with Prof Rod King (Carnegie) and Andrew Marran (Commercialisation) about the bid to Yorkshire Concept for commercialising the TQEF Virtual Runner software.

It was decided that a UK patent application appears to be a "long shot" and would not be pursued for now. However, a patent application in the US might be a feasible thing to do, granting protection for further commercialisation.

India project

John Willott sent me info about possible funding for creating awareness of climate change through the organisation APE - Artists Project Earth. The deadline is next Monday, 20.October - bids can be for up to £5000.

We had a meeting at the Old Broadcasting House on Tuesday evening, where we discussed this bid and finalised the schedule for the travel.

KT Practitioners Forum

Since summer 2008, the organisation "Yorkshire Universities" organises a set of workshops for exploring ways of re-shaping the Knowledge Transfer activities. I had been invited to this workshop series, but had not been able to attend the two previously held workshops (July and September).

This Tuesday the workshop was targeted towards discussing companies which would be good to visit, to learn about their way of dealing with knowledge transfer. Ceri Williams, Director of Knowledge Transfer for the Yorkshire Universities, had asked participants to select up to 3 suitable companies from a list which the participants had compiled at the last workshop. On top came "Smith & Nephew", followed by "Reckitt Benckiser". As the discussion revealed, these companies are examples of well established KT schemes. However, workshop organisers had more in mind to visit a company which "did things differently". Possibly a museum would be a good choice, also Opera North was a strong contender.

Following Gary Hamel's and Bill Breen's book "The Future of Management", it was disscussed how KT can be organised in new ways, allowing a more market-oriented and democratic process, involving all stakeholders.

At the next meeting on 19.November, the selection of the company to visit will be finalised.

Commercialisation of Virtual Runner (TQEF)

Since summer 2007, Prof. Roderick King and myself have been leading the development of a software simulation of a runner for education, funded by the TQEF. We have recently completed the prototype and have demonstrated it at the ALT day during the Staff Development Festival 2008. Now we are looking towards commercialisation:

• A few weeks ago, an editor from a text book company has seen a demo of this software and was very keen to use it for GCSE textbooks. This would provide a commercialisation in the educational sector. The software could be adapted for a wide range of educational levels, up to graduate studies.
• Three weeks ago we had a meeting with IP specialists who advised us regarding commercialisation of this product. They recommended that a patent for this product in the US would be more suitable than a patent in the UK.

Today Rod and myself had again a meeting, with our Leeds Met Business Development Manager Andrew Marran, who pointed out an opportunity to receive funding from Yorkshire Concept. The application would need to be filed by 28.October. Possible funding would be 35k.

We are going to explore this opportunity and have agreed to meet again next Tuesday.

Meeting at the International Faculty

On Wednesday I met with Sue Curland and Peter Cullen. We had sucessfully bid for a TQEF project, targeted towards creating a learning object for some of their courses. This project has been included in the pitch to INN L3 students, who could provide advanced animation in such a learning object. Further we discussed how to pitch the software MAHARA to the TEL team: we had submitted another TQEF bid, related to testing MAHARA for supporting the individualised learning by postgraduate students. Mahara is an open source software, targeted towards enabling PG students to blog, network, and create a portfolio of their research and work. Our TQEF bid has not been funded, but has been viewed as a project which could run, provided we can convince the TEL team about the usefulness of this tool for students. Peter and myself created a one-page summary which we will present at the TEL team, to pitch Mahara at Leeds Met. Mahara is already used by many institutions worldwide, among them by some of our partner universities.

More info about MAHARA is at www.mahara.org/.

Meeting re TQEF Projects

On Tuesday I had a meeting with Prof. Claudio Vignali from the International Faculty. We discussed his work in our TQEF-funded project, in which he developed an approach for an automatic analysis and recommendation of marketing strategies for companies. The tool runs in Excel using internal macros. The next step would be to inform the TEL office about the progress and conclude the project, which would then enable us to extend the project for another period, with additional functionality.

L3 Student projects

At the networking event in the Gandhi Hall, I presented a pitch of seven projects which I would be able to supervise or advise. These projects were:

• Augmented Reality (AR): Develop a game using AR as the main framework. This is very much related to latest advancements in gaming, using head-worn displays.
• Leeds Met on the Map: Following my Ideas Factory Award, I proposed to students to develop 3D models of the Leeds Met campus buildings specifically for the web interface.
• Learning Object: For the International Faculty, develop a cultural simulation for the module "European Business Culture and Practise", linked to a TQEF-funded project.
• VR in Psychology: Develop an interactive tool for use in physiological investigation.
• Soccer Game: Link with Engagement project of Health Faculty, using video of goal keepers' view.
• Yorkshire and Gujarat: Create multimedia experience for the project on Climate Change Awareness.
• Promotional game for movie: Peter Kershaw's new movie project "The Last Coiner" needs a promotional interactive game on the BBC Big Screen.

These projects have the overall aim to link students to ongoing research and development activities. All of them are listed on the Innovation Bank web site.

Another project was later added:

• DVD about Student Placement: students who undertake placement, are being interviewed, and a video/DVD is created from these interviews. This project is linked to the International Faculty.

Meeting re. Climate Change Project

Today I had a meeting with John Willott from the International Faculty. He had been cc-ed on the approval of my international travel authorisation, as he is interested in climate change and its consequences. He and Paul Wetherly (also International Faculty) are leading the TQEF funded project "Embedding Climate Change in the Curriculum", and he was interested to hear about the project in which I was involved. I explained the scope of the project "Voices of Yorkshire and Gujarati Rivers", and he was keen to provide some of his vugraphs about climate change.

We agreed that it might be a good idea to bundle the activities at Leeds Met regarding climate change, considering that environmental issues are high on the agenda at Leeds Met. We discussed the idea to create a kind of working group, maybe with an online repository to make resources and information about climate change (e.g. data, references) available to all interested people.

Networking at Rugby Match

I had been invited to join a Rugby game on Sunday afternoon: Leeds Carnegie vs. Manchester. Also other guests have been invited, to have informal lunch nibbles in the Hirst Rhodes suite. Among them was one of the Directors of CISCO, responsible for partnerships and educational activities. We talked about technology and possible collaborations. Also present at this meeting was also a consultant who is working on a project regarding the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sotchi.

"India Project"

On Saturday, Brian Lewis and I visited the sources of the river Aire in Malham, to create a few items of documentation for the project "Voices of Yorkshire and Gujarati Rivers". I took pictures, especially with respect to the creation of photosynths, and filmed a few video clips of the scenery.

I plan to involve L3 students in this project, by proposing at the networking day on next Wednesday a student project which would create multimedia material from all the video clips, pictures, and head-related audio segments.

Meeting with IP Specialists

Together with Prof. Rod King (Carnegie Faculty) I met with two intellectual property consultants to discuss the project "Virtual Runner" and its commercialisation. We discussed implications of publication and analysed the various methods of bringing this product to the market. One immediate way is to use it as teaching material for a text book. This would not require any patent protection. Another way of commercialisation would be to file a patent on potentially more advanced uses in training.

European Doctorate: Collaboration with International Faculty

Today I had a meeting with two PhD students, both of whom participate in the European Doctorate program at the International Faculty (contact: Claudio Vignali). My role in this PhD program is to provide general research methods guidance, and provide the German language expertise (as their thesis will be written in German).

ISMAR conference: 15.-17.9.2008, Cambridge

The annual ISMAR conference resulted back in 2002 from the merger of the Japanese ISMR conference (about Mixed Reality) and the ongoing ISAR conference (about Augmented Reality). In 1998, the first IWAR (International Workshop on Augmented Reality) workshop was the predecessor of this ISAR (International Symposium on Augmented Reality) conference, and I am one of the three founders of this workshop / conference (the other founders: Dave Mizell, and Gudrun Klinker).

This conference was the 7th event. I am in the steering committee, but am retiring as an active member, since I had been in this committee for 10 years. This year, I was the finance chair of this conference. The conference had single-track presentations, poster sessions, demonstrations, and an industrial tracking competition.

Specific notable highlights, relevant for Leeds Met:

• Paul McIlroy, Technical Director of the company HawkEye gave a presentation about their tracking sytem for sports games (tennis).
• Diarmid Campbell (Sony) gave an impressive demonstration of the Sony Playstation with software using computer vision tracking and augmented reality gaming.

I used this opportunity in Cambridge to meet with entrepreneur Alan Barrell who attended the Cambridge Enterprise Conference. He introduced me to two investors from the Cambridge Capital Group.

Ideas Factory Award

At the Staff Development Festival Launch, a "Not-The-Dragons'-Den" event was held as a competition for the Leeds Met "Ideas Factory". Submissions for this Ideas Factory had been requested a few months ago, and each faculty had selected two entries. Mine had been a project about using Google Maps to enhance our Leeds Met website. At Innovation North there had been 14 entries, and originally my idea had not been selected to be among the two going forward.

However, in mid-August I got a notification that I now should submit my entry, and that it would be presented. As it turned out, at the actual Ideas Factory event there were 4 entries from Innovation North, and only one other entry (from the Faculty of Health).

In the end, my pitch won the Ideas Factory award. I assume this had to do something with the fact that the European Director of Google was in the jury... a fact that I had not known before, when I formulated this idea!

About this Blog

It occured to me that in communicating my work and progress, the standard reporting is insufficient: reports (e.g. travel reports) sent by email, end up somewhere, and relevant people who should know about them may not have access to them.

Therefore, with the beginning of this new academic year, I have created this blog, solely for writing about work-related topics which I deem interesting and relevant for sharing with Leeds Met management. This blog is for now not public, which means that an invitation is necessary to be able to read the entries, coupled with a login through a Google account.

I hope that this blog will fulfil its role in me effectively informing relevant management about my work and about opportunities for moving Leeds Met and Innovation North ahead.