10/11/2007

http://subotron.com/556-sa-101107-subotron-electric-meeting-location-based-games/

Adam had a contagious energy that gave us all a sugar high http://www.interactiveontario.com/news/view/66

uk trade and investment

I spent a wonderful week at MMD in Denmark as a guest lecturer for their week long event called Innoevent. It was so much fun! The students had just 1 week to produce new prototype ideas to be used in hospitals, and there was a lot of innovation and creativity. Here is a video, in Danish (but with English subtitles):

I gave a total of 3 lectures. Here is a quote from the student website that describes my mid-week presentation:

Last night at the conference hall was an inspiring evening; Adam Montandon showed us a world without grounds and limits, one with bright ideas, innovation and just a little bit of insanity (the good kind). His work has taken him all over the world working on different projects in different surroundings and in his opinion; different is good. It seemed like most people that had not seen him before got inspired and it was obvious that those who liked his presentation on Monday came back last night. The hall was filled with students and business people. After the presentation everyone got a chance to talk to Adam.

Silly ideas are ok!

Here are some highlights from an interview session:

We wanted to know a little bit about you and how you got to start HMC?
- I started 6 years ago with some friends from university. We all worked really really well together and we created a computer game called Hardcore Monkey Crash, which is where HMC comes from. We liked the game so much that we wanted to turn it into a real company and we started doing more fun and unusual things with technology and as the years went by we made more and more exiting things to work on projects all over the world.

We heard that you have left HMC. Are you working on your own?
Thats right – after 6 years I decided it was time to do something different. I love encouraging young people to get involved with technology so maybe you will see me around a little bit more.

What is your role here in the project this week?
-This week I have been doing lots of presentations, one on Monday, one on Wednesday and then one on Saturday. So far it has been a lot of fun inspiring everyone and getting people very interested in the possibilities of technology.

What do you think is the biggest challenge when you are trying to combine technology into health care?
-The biggest problem that you guys are having is the time span. You are being asked to do things so fast and so quick that it means you are really going to have to make some quick decisions. The other challenge is that everybody is different and just because we, as multimedia designers, are used to deal with multitouch interfaces, screens and iphones than it does not mean that the people that work the health care world are used to using those things. They may not want all the excitement of the fancy interfaces that we like, so that is also a big challenge to look out for.

So what are your expectations for this week? What do you hope that you/we get out of this project week?
-My expectations are very very high. I really want to see a lot of fantastic new concepts and I really really hope that some of the best ones will be selected and be put in to production. And then maybe in the few years time we will see these ideas being used in hospitals in Denmark.

What do you think of the project so far? We are still just getting started, but how do you think we are doing so far?
-There is a lot of excitement and you can feel the buzz. Everyone is working really hard and I am very excited to see how the projects end up on Saturday. I am really looking forward to that.

Have you ever participated in a similar project?
-Actually nothing quite as crazy as this. This is really fun to just have a short amount of time to create a solution to a really important problem. I have never worked with this many students that are working this intensely on something so I am excited.

I know you have some crazy ideas on how you inspire people to work together and to get them a little out of their shell. Could you give us an example of that?
-One of the things that we did, in our studios in the UK, is that when we wanted to inspire people and make them try new things while having fun then we had this bright yellow inflatable bouncy ball that was really really huge. We insisted that anyone that would come into the office had to throw himself at this big yellow ball and hang on for dear life. We call it the ball of fame so anybody that successfully manages to hang on to the ball for 5 seconds gets to write their name on it. The nice thing about this is that when you let someone do something that is fun and playful all of their previous ideas of boring business stuff sort of drift away and they start to think that it is okay to have fun and it is okay to experiment. It is perfectly okay to do something even if you think it is the silliest idea in the world because you will never know where it will take you.

So is that your best advice to the students here?
-Be as creative as you possibly can and believe in your ideas. That is really important because you need to believe in your ideas and you need to be able to see them in your mind from start to finish. I you can do that and if they are new then you could become a great success.

On Wednesday 29th July 2009 I was part of a panel discussing the future of the 30 second spot, and the new forms of advertising that are starting to replace it at the wonderful Rushes Soho Shorts festival. The event was at Soho Film Labs and was chaired by the Colin Marrs, Editor of Digital at Campaign Magazine, who did a great job of wrangling us and the audience into a great discussion of where things are going.

Contentertainment is the digital strand of the Encounters International Short Film Festival that celebrates entertaining content. We explore the latest ways in which short films are used across multiple digital platforms, focusing each year on a different emerging digital trend. Contentertainment invites influential content creators to share their secrets, preview their upcoming work and discuss how they have shaped the digital landscape.

In previous years, Directors such as Joel Veitch and speakers from the BBC, Nickelodeon and Aardman Animations
(to name but a few) have been invited to look at themes ranging from virtual worlds to pervasive media. This year Contentertainment will bring the best of Bristol to Rushes Soho Shorts to share their fresh thinking, innovative content and predictions for the future.

Developing Digital Diversity Conference Programme:

Conference speakers and panel members:

Laura Jordan Bambach – Head of Art, Glue London
As Head of Art at Glue London, Laura Jordan Bambach brings together an experimental and innovative use of technological advances and a deep understanding of the functionality and direction of online media.
Laura cut her teeth as a key figure in the infamous ‘geekgirl’ hyperzine in the early nineties, and has been involved in the design and implementation of many of the world’s most cutting edge digital work for international brands as diverse as Levi’s®, Renault and T-mobile.
After a stint as a lead creative at deepend Sydney, she arrived in London for the deepend head office in 2001, and has worked at a senior level at Lateral and I-D Media London before coming to glue after being impressed by their wealth of outstanding talent and commitment to good design.
She lectures and travels extensively, speaking on net art and the cultural implications of the internet, as well as teaching dynamic lab-based and technical digital media classes at major Universities and centres of excellence.

Richard Barbrook – Imaginary Futures
During the early-1980s Dr. Richard Barbrook helped set up Spectrum Radio, a multi-lingual station operating in London, and published extensively on radio issues. In the late-1980s and early-1990s, Richard worked at the University of Westminster on media regulation in France which inspired his book: ‘Media Freedom: the contradictions of communications in the age of modernity’ (Pluto Press, London 1995). Between 1995 and 2005, Richard was coordinator of the Hypermedia Research Centre at the University of Westminster and course leader of its MA in Hypermedia Studies. In 1997, he was one of the founders of cybersalon.org and is now a director of the
Cybersalon trust. In the late-1990s and early-2000s, Richard wrote a series of influential articles exploring the social and economic implications of the Net, including ‘The Californian Ideology’, ‘The Holy Fools’, ‘The Hi-Tech Gift Economy’, ‘Cyber-communism’ and ‘The Regulation of Liberty’. During the last few years, he has completed ‘Imaginary Futures’ – a book about how ideas from the mid-twentieth century shape our early-twenty-first century conception of artificial intelligence and the information society – which will be published in English by Pluto Press and in Russian by Ultra.Cultura in early-2007. Recently, Richard helped to set up the Creative Workers in a World City group and wrote its first publication: The Class of the New (Mute, London 2006). He is now engaged in further research projects in this area.

Bhaskar Bhatt – Primus Telecommunications Ltd
Bhaskar Bhatt works as a Senior Systems Architect at Primus Telecommunications Ltd, Primary responsibilities includes developing new products for the Telecommunications market and managing critical IT systems. Bhaskar holds a Masters degree in Product Design from Indian Institute of Technology New Delhi (India) and a bachelor’s degree in Engineering. He has mainly worked for Finance, Mobile, Web and Telecoms domains. He is an independent design researcher who believes in the fact that appropriate use of design can help in making everyone’s life easier and happier. His writing supports the inclusive design philosophy and advocates that the benefits of the advancements in technology should reach the grass root levels.

Adriana Cronin-Lukas – The Big Blog Company
Was released from Balliol into the community in 1996, serving her time as a management consultant with a Big Five firm in Central and Eastern Europe – ‘management’ and ‘consultancy’ meaning something to businesses in those parts of the world. All this came to an end in 2002 when it became obvious that blogging is much more enjoyable than real work. Since then, the blogging has become the main preoccupation and a route to regaining sanity lost somewhere on the fourth floor of a tall, marble-encrusted building in the City. Adriana has applied her analytical powers to the potential of blogging and would like to make sure that companies also understand that markets are conversations. Occasionally she gets accused of problem-solving.

Dr Paul Coulton – University of Lancaster
Paul Coulton has over 10 years’ research and development experience in mobile systems and applications and is based within the Department of Communication Systems at Lancaster University. Paul has published extensively in this area. The main focus of his current research surrounds innovative m-commerce solutions with a particular emphasis on mobile entertainment, such as games. Many of the research projects encompass novel uses of the latest technologies such as RFID/NFC, an example of which is the mixed reality game PAC-LAN. Paul is also a Director of university spin-out company m-ventions ltd which provides a commercial avenue for his expertise and many of the innovative researchers with whom he works.

Jemima Gibbons – Technical Change
Jemima co-founded media consultancy iKnowHow in 2002 to help companies and individuals, especially those in the creative sector, develop digital media skills. She has worked on strategy for Fulcrum TV, RDF Media and CSV Media, and has produced events and workshops for the UK Film Council and Pact. She is a visiting lecturer on leadership and innovation at Cass Business School. Since 2005, she has run Women in Film and Television’s Technical Change mentoring scheme, backed by ESF EQUAL and UIP, which provides mentors for women in technical areas.

David Dunkley Gyimah – University of Westminster
David is the International and US Batten Award Winner for Innovations in Journalism 95-96 singularly beating off multi-million pound organisations such as Newsweek, The New York Times and USAToday. He is a senior academic at the University of Westminster. A broadcast professional with 18 years experience, He is a member of Chatham House, and a Director of the Broadcast Journalism Training Council. He was a contributor to the Olympic 2012 Think Tank on Culture and Arts under Jude Kelly OBE. David is an international panellist on digital programme making and broadbandcasting.

Richard Harris – Two Worlds
Richard Harris is the principal of Two Worlds. His academic background was in Behavioural Ecology and Computer Science and he has more than twenty years experience as a visionary, strategy and technology consultant, writer and architect and developer of online and interactive knowledge-centered services.

Khadija Khan – Science Museum
Khadija Khan has just joined the Visitors Research Group as the New Audience Advocate at the National Museum of Science and Industry. She has worked there since 2002, and in her previous role at the Museum Khadija managed and coordinated the community outreach team and other special events inside the museum. Up until recently Khadija spent three years a trustee at the Ragged School Museum which is based in the heart of Tower Hamlets. Before joining the Science Museum, her experience mainly reflected community development within the adult and life long learning sectors.

Dr William Kramer – Senior Fellow from the World Resources Institute in Washington DC
William J. Kramer is Deputy Director of the Development Through Enterprise program, and a Senior Fellow, at World Resources Institute. He is involved in all aspects of the Institute’s work on pro-poor business strategies.
Prior to joining WRI, he founded The Knowledge Initiative, Inc., a non-profit organization which explored the relationship of new knowledge creation and economic development. Through the NGO, he did extensive project field work for three years in South Africa, Cote d’Ivoire, Kenya, and Central Europe.
Mr. Kramer’s work in the non-profit arena follows a 30-year career as an entrepreneur, principally in the book industry. He owned and managed Sidney Kramer Books, the world’s leading bookstore for politics, economics, and area studies for over 50 years. He established Daedalus Books, a leading distributor of remainders and sale books. He founded, and remains president of, Kramerbooks & afterwords, the original bookstore/café, in Washington, D.C. His multiple enterprises in retailing, wholesaling, and publishing have served professionals and general readers worldwide. He was more recently a principal in several companies that served colleges and universities with web-based applications for campuses, including portal development, e-procurement, digital printing and publishing, and course management tools.
As a consultant on development issues, Mr. Kramer has worked with global companies, NGOs, and think tanks. He has served on numerous boards for local, regional, and national organizations. He is the author, with his wife, of a guidebook to Washington, D.C., published by Random House, which went through six editions in the 1980s and 1990s. He is a principal author on the forthcoming book, Tomorrow’s Markets:Poverty Profit and Unmet Human Needs, to be published in October 2006 as a joint publication of World Resources Institute and the International Finance Corporation. Mr. Kramer served as co-director of the seminal conference on business engagement in low-income markets, “Eradicating Poverty Through Profit: Making Business Work for the Poor,” held in San Francisco in December, 2004.

Hannah Marston – University of Teesside
Explore guidelines for the design of computer games for older ad
ults. The overall aim is to identify the current game playing habits and preferences for older adults in the UK and possible future trends.

Sanjay Mistry – EA Games
Sanjay Mistry is a leading creative for computer games experts EA. He has worked for Alias, a major 3D software developer within the film & games industries for seven years and has an in-depth knowledge and fantastic in-site into the use of animation in films and visual effects. Within his time at EA he has become a member of BAFTA and holds a place on the BAFTA Games Advisory Council. Game credits – Harry Potter, Burnout, Madden and Battlefield

Adam Montandon – HMC
Adam Montandon is an expert in Digital Futures, a specialist in cyber-architecture and its relationship with the Cyborg reality. Adam co-founded the interactive agency “HMC Entertainment Systems” in 2004 and in 2005 he founded the HMC MediaLab Organisation, a future focused digital arts community that involves over a thousand “interesting people doing interesting things”.

Michael O’Neill - Adobe

Node-London
Node-London works to raise the visibility of media arts practice in and around the capital, NODE.London [Networked, Open, Distributed, Events. London] has worked as an open organisation, using consensus decision-making and pooling ideas, resources and even people. It has sought to fortify existing media arts networks and to encourage production and experimentation, whilst assisting in the articulation of such innovative artistry to a wider audience.

Rejane Spitz – PUC-Rio University
Rejane Spitz is an Associate Professor and the Head of the Department of Art & Design at PUC-Rio University, Brazil. She has been working with computers in the Arts since 1983. Rejane has been also worked as a curator of exhibitions on Electronic Art, and has written extensively on social and cultural issues related to the use of computers in developing nations. She coordinates the Electronic Arts Unit, an experimental research laboratory working with art and technology at PUC-Rio, Brazil.

Ian Thilthorpe – Senior Manager, Tyne and Wear Museums
In the last 16 years Ian has worked on a range of gallery and display projects, including managing interactive galleries, developing innovative ICT projects and project managing a variety of key major developments. Until recently he was responsible for managing TWMs’ outreach, volunteer and ICT and web provision, currently on secondment to the TWM senior management team and responsible for museums in North and South Tyneside.

We had a really great session lasting around 3 hours, and I showed lots of brand new and exciting projects, as well as some classics. You’ll hopefully see some video from the session in the next few weeks, and some brand new project videos and behind the scenes info will be popping up soon.

Interactive table on BBC's Songs of Praise

Interactive table on BBC's Songs of Praise

Interactive table on BBC's Songs of Praise

Interactive table on BBC's Songs of Praise

Interactive table on BBC's Songs of Praise

The interactive table I programmed was designed by my friends over at audio and visual agency Newangle and you can see it for free at the Royal Observatory in London at the Astronomy Galleries.

On Friday from 12:15 to 13:00 I will be on the panel for the EUROPRIX Winners’ Specials: “Life After The Awards – Success stories by EUROPRIX Nominees & Winners”: with Dawid Marcinkowski (PL), Adam Montandon (UK), Jakob Leitner (AT), Ruairi Glynn (IRE);

Then on Saturday I will be hosting the Gala night awards show, giving out the awards for the best in European digital media!

I’m so excited and I’m looking forward to seeing all my old friends, and seeing all of the new projects.

So, here I am in the beautiful city of Graz in Austria getting ready for the Euriprix awards 2008. I’m really excited to be a part of such a fantastic award ceremony.

I arrived in Graz last night, and I bumped into Oliver Card on the flight over. His project is called Everlast and its a sweet 2D game in a 3D world, in the style of a platform game. His website has video footage and a download of the game he made with the Unity engine.

I also had dinner with the team behind MU from France. They are working with multi-touch environments in the classroom for storytelling and fairy tales.

I’ll be updating with plenty of images as the weekend progresses.