Supermonday continues its ‘ fresh’ approach to events, with another shift in format for this monday’s gathering.
There will be a single speaker session, followed by an open discussion, the subject of which will be arranged by an online vote this week.
John Colquhoun, a research assistant at the school of Computing Science in Newcastle University will give the keynote speech. John is working on a joint project with the Medical School and an NHS trust and it’s all about communicating risk. The project is developing a software tool that doctors can use in their consultations with patients to discuss the patients’ risk of cardiovascular disease and also examine the potential impact of various treatment options (more information at https://wiki.cs.ncl.ac.uk/cvr).
Section 2 of the event will have no pre-arranged speakers! On the night we will arrange the chairs in a circle and open the floor to the topic for 60 minutes! Anybody can participate and anybody can voice their opinion. This event format is high risk, but hope’s to capture the imagination and enthusiasm of the group to drive discussion!
If you havn’t already register now!
Note to self: remember not to be late again this month, don’t want a repeat of the police incident following last months late arrival locked out.
Following the Milo’s Yiannopoulos ‘Grim up north‘ article in the Telegraph, there was a bit of back lash from the region, many of us challenging Milo to come up to the North East and see the state of the tech sector for himself.
Well on Thursday he did just that, Milo spent a few hours in the ‘fourth‘ on Pink Lane, (somewhere he described as ‘Silicon Alley’ i believe) talking to start-ups from all over the region, about what its like to be start-up in the North East, public and private sector funding and support networks.
These conversations look the form of one to ones on the roof terrace, which were videoed (possibly for Tech Crunch, looking at the logo on the end credit!). See what some of our start-ups had to say for themselves, in the rough cut of the video;
I popped up to the Forth to see what was going on for myself, and there seemed to be quite a crowd in the corner waiting to have a chat with Milo, in some ways you’d think he was a visiting dignitary, rather than a journalist.
It was nice to sit and have a quiet drink and catch up with the likes of Chris and Robert (Pez) from bdaily about their new offices (and tv studio), Paul Smith (twitchhiker) and his new project ‘Feats of Tweet’, David and Paul King and the imminent launch of ’1 day later’, and to meet a few new people. I missed the likes of Ross Cooney, Kieron Donogue and Sarat Pediredla, managed to i catch up with most of them later at Codeworks and heard all about their current projects including work with with managed cloud services for creative agencies, playlist sharing for spotify, and bug tracking solutions.
Having seen the video, I’m quite glad that I chose not to have a one to one, I’m not a start-up or even really in the industry, and those of you that are and made the effort to get up there, summed it up pretty well. It would have been nice to have had the likes of Heb Kim (codeworks) , Jon Bradford (VC), James TerKeurst (digital city) and many of the other outstanding voices within the region adding their thoughts as their responses to the original post were all outstanding, but i guess were all busy people and sometimes can’t make these things.
In many ways I am very proud of the North East, its were I grew up, its where I choose to live now, and its somewhere I’m passionate about, but sometimes, just sometimes I just have to hang my head in shame; During Milo’s visit he had his wallet, containing his cash, cards and train tickets home. While he’s promised not to let this tarnish his view of us, it’s not big and its not funny and it only re-enforces the stereo type.
Final Words: Milo While I still think your original article was a little reckless! I do agree with some of what you are saying, some money is being wasted and from the video, it sounds like we could do with more private investors. Thanks for coming up, you are a man of your word, i appreciate you did taking the time to come up and meet us and you deserve respect for that. Sorry to hear that your wallet was stolen while you were here,I know its no consolation, but that really isn’t
Ps. The video looks fantastic, can’t wait to see the finished thing! I hope your visit hasn’t but you off the North too much and that we’ll see you next year at Thinking Digital 2010!
Having had the week of work this week, I decided to take a break from tech stuff and do a bit of exercise (something that i have neglected a little of late). My aim was to get out and enjoy the lovely sunshine we are currently having and to loose a few pounds. I managed to get out and do a 10-15 mile run everyday for the last 5 days, but only managed to loose literally a couple of pounds. Unlike Lucinda who has lost a stone in the last month!
On Wednesday I look the 38 mile drive to Kielder Water and jogged around the newly opened “riverside way” multi-purpose track. Having been to Kielder in the summer before, I did have my reservations, expecting to be eaten alive by the midges and having to hack through undergrowth. However I have to say that i was very impressed with the new track, sandwiched between the forest and the lake and intersected by numerous streams, its about 2 meters wide all the way around, made of a grit/dirt on hardcore (so its not too bad on the joints) and has new handrails and bridges on all the steep sections.
I jogged about 16 miles on a there and back again route on the North shore, so I saw 8 of the 26 miles circuit. I would describe the route as mainly trail, and as reasonably flat being around a lake, but it does have a nice gentle rise and fall, so it would be ideal for doing recovery runs after a long fell run or for road runners wanting to make the transition to hills or fells.
I can’t wait to get back when i have a little more time and have a crack at doing the whole 26 mile circuit, must be one of the nicest marathon courses around, and its practically on my door step.
Having recently read an article in the Telegraph on ‘how Grim things are in the North‘, I had thought i’d have to pack my bags and head of to London, if i wanted to do any sort of social networking. Turns out they were wrong…there are a whole host of events in June, right on our very doorstep. Who’s have guessed it, this far North?
There have already been a number of great events in June including the b.wteen conference in Liverpool, culture labs lunch bites and a business show case at Teeside University.
There is also a PECHA KUCHA night at the Live theatre on the 18th, although I believe that this sold out very quickly. Pecha Kucha Nights follow a dynamic structure each presenter is allowed 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds giving a total of 6 minutes 40 seconds for each speaker before the floor moves on.
The GameHorizon Conference organised by Codeworks and held at the Sage Gateshead on 22-23 June, is one of Europe’s leading events in the Games arena .
The two-day conference features creative, innovative and inspirational speakers from the worlds of gaming, entertainment and business. Attendee get an unprecedented opportunity to network with the experts, influencers and people driving the games industry forward.
Newcastle University and Imperial College invite you to participate in a different sort of Workshop to help shape future research into sustainable intelligent transport.
To be held at Hoults Yard, Walker Road, Newcastle from 11am -6pm on the 25th June, there is already an impressive line up of speakers including Twitch hiker – Paul Smith, James Burke, Nick Illsley – Chief Executive Transport Direct, Nick Illsley – Chief Executive Transport Direct, Building Blocks of the Digital Economy, Chair – Jennie Borg, Detica and many many more.
It’s billed as being sparky, challenging and forcing you to thinking the unthinkable. Not only that its your chance to help mold a better more sustainable transport system for the future, and to see how technology can help mobility.
This is the final event for the SIMM (Services for Intelligent Mobility Management) research cluster, a Digital Economy cluster funded by EPSRC.
The Thursdayfizz team have been at it again, finding yet another fantastic venue for this months event. Teaming up with Business Link, for this years “Marketing: the art of” event Launch party on 25th June at the North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineering, Westgate Road.
“Marketing: the art of, was the must attend Business Link marketing event of 2008 which took place at The Sage, Gateshead in November. Designed to appeal to anyone with a marketing remit, whatever the company size, the event gave delegates an insight into the full marketing mix. PR guru Max Clifford gave a keynote address, and there was also presentations from amongst others Sage plc, Barbour, Great North Run and Green & Blacks Organic.” More information about the event can be found here www.marketingtheartof.com
This will be an event you don’t want to miss, but please note there will be mainly wine to drink. They are limiting this event to 100, so please if you register and can’t make it please let them know in advance.
This month, in a break from tradition supermonday will be running the event in a ‘un-conference’ format, much like ‘barcamp’ or ‘cloudcamp’. The event takes place at Newcastle University from 6pm on the 29th of June.
The un-conference format became popular in the US, after many of those not invited to a Tim O’rielly’s event got together to host a conference of their own. The topics, speakers and format is largely decided by the attendees on the day is rather dynamic, fluid sort of way… the success of the event depends upon the imagination of the attendees!
Also in June, but slightly further a field at the Pilot Theatre York is Shift Happen’s 2.0.
Building on the success of last year’s event, Shift Happens 2.0 is your opportunity to look at the next evolution in digital technology.
Its aimed at Artists,Artistic Directors, Chief Executives, Heads of Marketing, Teachers, Students and Social Media users, it will be Chaired by Dave Moutrey, from Cornerhouse, Manchester, who’ll be presentng a fantastic line up of speakers including Charlie Leadbeater, Bill Thompson, Andy Hobsbawm, Lyn Gardner, Charles Cecil, Lucy Wurstlin, Kit Monkman, Hannah Rudman, and not forgetting our friends Georgia Rakusen from Haus Projects and Rob Colling of Internet Subtitling.
As well as inspiring presentations there will be hands-on sessions on: / Twitter / social and mobile networking / live streaming / demos of 3D-web / Second Life hands on demo / New marketing ideas / blogging and micro-blogging / And a chance to network / build your online presence on the social networking Shift Happens ning site / Plus a live PERFORMANCE of Catcher in their Eye, by Richard Hurford, directed by Suzann McLean – which is live at the Theatre and will be streamed live online too. See the full Programme now online.
Shift Happens costs £100.00+VAT (including all your meals and refreshments) and takes place at York Theatre Royal Book Now
With these kinds of events in the region who needs the Telegraph! Pilot Theatre – at York Theatre Royal 29 / 30 June 2009
How could the Telegraph publish, such a damning report, and how could a serious journalist get it so wrong? Is this really how people in the south feel about live in the North?
That was last night. This morning I woke, relieved that I resisted last night’s urge to post and instant rebuttal (that would have put me in the same league as Milo, and I credit myself with more self respect than that).
Perhaps, what got to me most about the article, wasn’t that it was poorly written, with little evidence of substance or research, but that the author seemed to revel in his own ignorance, and that he wrote with an arrogance that implied this was not only his opinion but that of the whole London Community.
I truly believe it would be just as foolish for VC’s in London, not to also look and regional talent, as it would anyone working in the regions, not to be prepared to regularly travel London.
For those people brought up in our national capitals, its not uncommon (or terribly unreasonable) to think that you’re are the centre of the universe. Much of the money, talent and conferences do gravitate towards that centre, but Washington is the capital of the US, yet Silicon Valley may be the heart of its Tech industries, were also currently seeing great start ups coming from cities like San Francisco.
Its important to realise that what made Silicon Valley a success, was a combination of factors: Start-ups that made money in Silicon Valley, reinvested that money, talent and knowledge back into tech in the Silicon Valley area, allowing a growing number of companies to prosper. They also had the space and resources to grow (The North doesn’t have some of the power issues of the South, and we are seeing increasing numbers of call and data centres as a result) and that start-ups worked with first rate educational institutions (something that we in the North are now getting very good at, Digital city in Middlesbrough being a great example – Google started with 4 people in a university basement).
Admittedly I am not a VC or an Entrepreneur, so maybe i should really leave this debate to those more qualified that i to debate, but like many in our region i am passionate about the North East. I live and work, in the North East and for the past 5 years I have been involved with organizations like Codeworks, Middlesbrough Uni’s Digital City, Newcastle Uni’s Culture Lab, groups like Supermonday’s, Thursday Fizz, The IT Director’s Forum, TuttleNorth East,Digital Marketing Debates and events like Thinking Digital, Game Horizon, the AV Festival, Barcamp,Science week,Tynetwestival and Cloud Camp, and to that end i consider myself very lucky.
Its important not to forget, that many people live in this area out of choice. Yes, there is often a cost to that choice, in that we have to travel a little more often, and that sometimes means days away from home, but its its about choosing a livework balance that works. If success is involve living in a pokey flat in the mile end road, and spending hours a day commuting, then I’m not sure I would be willing to make that sacrifice.
My work involves working with leading contemporary artists from around the world on sometimes very complex and very technical projects and i have yet to find a project that i couldn’t find a solution to locally, (often at a fraction of the price of solution from outside the region). Another lesson I’ve learnt is you get back what you put in, and that while I have very limited budgets, that talking to the local tech communities and getting involved with universities and local start ups is a great way to stay in touch with what is going on. In the last six months alone I have seen some fantastic start ups and projects. I would hate to think, that we could loose them to London because of the sort of scare mongering and poor advice given by Milo Yiannopoulos.
I have been somewhat heartened to see comment after comment, come in as the day went on, supporting the North, including declarations from Manoj Ranaweera (organiser of Sun Tech Mission 2009), Herb Kim (organiser of Thinking digital), Nick Bell of Quick.tv and comments from VC’s and entrepreneurs both from London and the North.
I can but conclude that either Milo Yiannopoulo and the Telegraph made a huge lapse in Judgement in printing such a potentially damaging article (not only to the North, but all the Regions and London itself), or that I (and many of the people i hold in high regard) are missing some hidden genius. I like the regions am an optimist and would like to end on a positive note by reiterating Manoj Ranaweera’s sentiments and saying that this is a great opportunity to come together and show what the North (and other regions has to offer) and I would encourage those London based companies and VC to get on the train and see this for themselves…you never know you may not only be surprised but also inspired!
There seems to be an ever-growing number of IT, technology, internet and digital groups, forums and networks, setting up in the North East. The latest such group is ‘Digital Marketing – Debates’ hosted by Newcastle University Business School. Wednesday morning saw the first meeting of this new group, and despite the early start in seemed to be very well received, with a promising turnout, made up of both familiar faces and people I’d not come across at these things before. Being an early one, it got off to a slightly slow start, with many of us barely awake at 8.am. but a cup of coffee and some interesting content soon changed that. The line up of speakers included Kay Jones and Dr Janet Ward of the University, Iain Gibson managing director of Mobious, Tom Fotheringham Online Marketing MANAGER at DFDS Seaways and Emma Cordiner Managing Director of Denalli Recruitment. While I found all of the presentations interesting, I found Iain’s and Tom’s most especially useful to me, as they were closed to what I’ve interested in, in terms of digital communication. Iain, obviously an old hand at giving this kind of talk, began his direct marketing career client side, before moving to agencies, and eventually setting up his business ‘Mobious’ in 2002, now one of the fastest growing agencies outside of London. Here are a few of the things on email marketing that Iain shared with the group: Relevance is king. The subject line in can be the difference between an email being opened and being binned, the subject line should contain a reason to open the email – mention the offer. Concentrate on Click throughs, have one primary prominent call to action. Design both the html and plain text versions, make it easy for users to forward to a friend. Use sample cells, to constantly test and analyse. Tom has over ten years experience, and a substantial knowledge of online advertising, sales, site building, social media, search engine optimization, pay per click and affiliate marketing. He came over as being a very hands on, kind of guy, having developed and build his own ecommerce sites as well as working with developers and agencies. Here are a few of Toms words of wisdom; Use a combination of search optimization and pay per click for the best results. Know your market. Use Behavioural targeting. Know when to use more aggressive short term black hat optimization and when to use slower white hat. Concentrate on relevant content, quality linking and strong structure. Poor linking can damage your Google rank. Register subdomains to manage your crisis PR – they come in above PR. If I were to criticise anything, it would be the time keeping. The talks overran by a good hour, leaving little time for chatting with speakers or networking afterwards, with many people having to rush out to rescue cars. The next meeting is planned for the 10th September, so if you have an interest in online marketing get that date into you diary and …. join the debate!
Northern Film & Media, Northwest Vision and Media and Screen Yorkshire have been working in partnership to create an online database showcasing crew, facilities, creative and digital talent from all the northern regions. The northern-exposure.info website holds details of over 3,000 resources, companies and freelancers working in the media production and creative industries available within the region. The aim of the site is to bring film makers and creative talent together, and to encourage the production of projects within the region. I found the site to be both elegantly design, and easy to use. Essentially they are sticking to doing three things, but doing them really well: getting crew listed on the database, finging resources in the database and giving information about the regions covered. As far as I could see, there is no charge for being listed or searching for resources. You do need to registed to search the database, but it only took a couple of seconds to do that. When you sign up, you’ll be asked for details of the project that your working on needing resources, and granted access to a limited time to allow you to find the recourses you need (I was given access until september when I signed up – so 3-4 months access). I was lucky enough to be invited to lunch recently with the BBC and several of the regions key players in the the creative industries to discuss how we could make the most of the BBC’s move to the North. The ‘North’ being Manchester, which caused a lot of debate in itself. At that meeting, we discussed the need for the agencies within the region to work together, so its great to see some signs of this already. While we recently, have had some critisism for not producing as much in the region as we once did, we do have a long tradition of producing some outstanding film, television and media. I for one, hope this project will create some great partnerships, and am look forward to seeing lots more going on up here.
There is a strange feeling of satisfaction in reading something that you have written in newsprint. I’m not quite sure what it is, but there is definitely something very special about the experience. When Lewis Harrison of Codeworks, asked if I fancied having a go at writing the Technotes column for the journal, I wasn’t sure where it would go. That was about a year ago, I written another four columns since.
Writing for Technotes, is a really interesting experience, the journal has a readership of around 110,000 with 32,859 copies sold a day, 65 % of its readers ar ABC1′s, with 26% aged 55-65, so its nt an audience i’m used to talking to. You only get 450 words to introduce your subject and get your message across, which can be a bit of a juggling act between making an article accessible to the majority or readers and actually making the point you want to make, but I’ve never been one to back away from a challenge.
Working with Lewis is great, firstly to bounce ideas off about what readers may be interested in, but also from an editorial point of view, seeing what tweaks and changes he makes to my raw material is a great insight, and the man has the patience of a saint when it comes to correcting my grammatical errors.
For those of you that are interested, here are the links to the five columns so far.
Because of the bank holiday, this months ‘Super Monday’ was somewhat strangely on a Tuesday, and to confuse us still further, it was in a different part of the university. …but regarless of the day it lived up to its regular high standards.
We were lucky enough to be invited to the ‘Culture lab’. Headed up by Atau Tanaka, this a unique research facility with academics and practitioners working alongside artists, creatives and scientists developing innovative research and digital tools. I’m not altogether unfamiliar, with this part of the university having been amongst the first people to use its resources (I was involved in the recording of Candice Brietz “working Class hero” project for BALTIC in 2006), and I’ve made several visits since.
The normal teas and coffee’s part of the evening took place in ‘space2’on the ground floor, where we had an opportunity to meet some of the culture labs residents and see some of the projects they are working on, from gadget enabled ‘ambient kitchens’, design to aid people with a wide range of medical conditions, to internet enabled jewellery, and multi touch control surfaces. There were also an opportunities to take a closer look at some of the latest technologies like the fantastic 3d printer.
Much of the research itself looks at the interactions between users and technologies, and in someways the people I spoke to weren’t that bothered by the actual technology itself. Many of the projects in fact used surprisingly simple technologies, but used it in incredibly clever ways. I looked at two projects in particular that were very interesting to my work at BALTIC.
The first dealt with the problem of interpretation material. One of the problems that galleries generally face is, visitors often have different levels of art knowledge, and artists don’t generally like having too much information on display next to the artwork – as this can be very distracting. So it was interesting to see how both rfid and scan able labels could be used with mobile phones, image readers and kiosks to provide information points.
The second interesting project involved a homemade ‘surface’ like touch screen. It would seem that a major problem with multi touch technologies is keeping track of multiple users, the solution involved using multiple cameras to track not only the touches, but also users between touches. Some of the possible applications were quite interesting, allowing visitors to collaborate in new , innovative and creative ways.
The second part of the evening took place upstairs in one of the lecture theatres, with a more formal talk from Patrick Oliver and Dr Jayne Wallace on some of the bigger projects taking place in culture lab.
The final speaker of the evening was Andrew Waite, Andrew introduced us to the concept of ‘honeypotting’. As an IT manager, network security is really interesting to me, so I for one found Andrews talk fascinating. Andrew uses Nepenthes, a low interaction honeypot which emulates several known vulnerabilities to security, allowing him to monitor and detect attacks on his systems. The ultimate goal is to capture live malware samples, in the safety of the honeypot, which he can then be examined to get an insight into what they are doing and how they work.
While I normally only blog about technical stuff, I thought I’d make a little exception for this once. Dan Howarth invite Lucinda and I to join him, his girlfriend Lindsey and 12 of their friends for a session at the newly opened GoApe in Matfen.
GoApe, an outdoor pursuits company, set up in 2001 by Rebecca and Tristram Mayhew, after they were inspired by a tree-top adventure course in France. GoApe working with the Forestry Commission, now operate twenty two sites throughout the UK. The courses described as high wire adventure courses, consist of trails through the forests linking tree top platforms with rope ladders, zip-lines, rope bridges, trapezes and swings.
I’d heard about the GoApe course at Grizedale Forest Park, but hadn’t managed to get around to. getting over there. So I was thrilled to discover that we now had our very own, at Matfen. The course opened on 22nd May and is open daily, until 31st October (closed Tuesdays term time).
While it still needed a little work, (the paths are due to be gravelled next week, and the toilets are currently portaloos), all the courses are open, the French install team having done a fantastic job.
According to their website, GoApe’s motto is “creating adventures, encouraging others to live life more adventurously” and they appear to be very good at doing just that. Our instructor for the day was John. After checking he’d fastened up our harnesses correctly, he ran us through a 20 minute training programme, showing us the state of the art self belay equipment, using simple colour coding and phrases like ‘red loves a tree’ to remind us that the red karabina should go onto the red tree side lines as soon as you reach a platform. Once John had seen us all use the equipment safely, we were allowed to explore the various trails in our own time, choosing the different grades of route (like sking the trails are graded by difficulty from green to black). Most of our group had never done anything like this before and some didn’t have much of a head for heights, but we worked as a team and help each other out, and i’m pleased to say that everyone in our group, managed to get around the first trail.
The course is suitable for adults and children over 10. Its may be slightly on the pricey side at £25 for Gorillas (over 18′s) and £20 for Baboons (10-18 year olds), but it was a fantastic experience, that i would do again! (in fact i’m already thinking who’s coming up to visit, and when can we go again) It would also be ideal for parties, and corporate team building exercises (they’re even in the process of building a special cabin for groups).
