ISMAR 2011 in Basel: 26.-29.October

This year, the annual ISMAR Conference (International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality) will take place in Switzerland: in Basel, from 26.-29.October 2011. Since the time when this conference was founded 13 years ago, in 1998, as the "International Workshop on Augmented Reality (IWAR)", it has established itself as the world's leading conference on Mixed and Augmented Reality.

I was fortunate enough to have been involved for many years in this very successful conference, and I am also glad that this year I could help in selecting the papers to be published, as one of the 12 area chairs. Next Monday is the deadline for submission of the final camera-ready papers - there were many excellent submissions, but the review criteria were also very strict.

Unfortunately I will not be able to participate this year at ISMAR 2011, but I wish the organizers the very best! This shall be an excellent conference, and the participants will surely enjoy their attendance.

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.

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.