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.