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.