Digital Awards

In case the Innovator/09 competition below isn't your cup of tea we've just opened the nominations for the 2009 Yorkshire Digital Awards!

This year you can either nominate yourself for a category, or nominate another company that you work with which you feel deserves some recognition. We've heard from previous winners that the competition has a really positive effect on sales due to all the free promotion your company receives so I *really* recommend entering if you can. Especially at this time of year when you don't want to start a whole new project but need something to keep you busy for your last afternoon in the office ;-)

Anyway, categories are:

Best Web Design Company

Best IT Consultancy

Best Business to Business Website

Best Business to Consumer Website

Best Application of Internet Technology

Best Digital Start Up

Best Game

Best Entertainment Site

Best e-Learning Initiative

Best Application of Mobile Technology

Best New Talent

To enter all you have to do is fill in a form which can be found on the website:

http://www.yorkshiredigitalawards.com/

If you're feeling flush with Christmas cheer there are also still a few categories that need sponsoring, in which case just drop me a line.

Finally, even if you're not entering and not sponsoring, don't forget the actual awards ceremony itself. A great craic and with over 300 people attending it's a good way to meet some interesting people (including a few of us lovely Yorkshire Forward folk). Be warned the tables fill up really fast so if you want to go you need to book your place pronto!

Date: Thu 7th May, 2009

Venue: Saviles Hall, The Royal Armouries Museum, Leeds

Barcamp Sheffield Update

Oops! Took a little longer to get to this post than planned!

Barcamp Sheffield was fabulous, a thoroughly enjoyable experience even though it meant working over a weekend :-) Everyone I have spoken to who attended agreed that it was a very positive event. The competition is still ongoing. The idea behind the competition is that attendees should create 'something' online that is promoting either Sheffield, Yorkshire or Barcamp Sheffield and whoever drives the most traffic *and* is the most creative wins!

I shall most definitely be posting a link to the winner on here.

I'm now hoping there may be space for some more Barcamps around the region, maybe York, Hull etc so will have to start subliminally putting ideas into the right peoples head :-)

BarCamp Sheffield

So this time it's Sheffield's turn to host a BarCamp. I won't explain the concept again, I did that when I blogged about BarCamp Leeds.

Sheffield is looking very exciting! It's from Friday evening until Sunday evening so quite a long one, meaning of course that they can pack loads more in. I know they've sold out tickets for Friday and Saturday but I understand there are a few left for the Sunday so if you're around I recommend you attend:

http://barcampsheffield.net/

We shall be holding a competition this time with a prize and everything, as soon as the details are released I shall add some info on this blog. I shall also take some photos of the 'agenda' on the day to give a better feel of the type of session that's covered, but people are already making suggestions on the forum so you can have a look. Of course you never know what will actually happen until you get there!

Victor Watson - Print Yorkshire

It may seem like I spend my whole life at events but I honestly don't! However, I was lucky enough yesterday to attend the book launch of The Waddington's Story by Victor Watson (President of Print Yorkshire).

Victor gave a very interesting speech. The part I have dwelled upon most is his statement that he considers his success in business to be due to the fact that he has always trusted people, he may have been taken for a ride a couple of times, but still feels that trust in individuals is the most important thing. He then added that most people underestimate the importance of personal relationships in business.

I thought this was partcularly good to hear as this is what we're all about at Yorkshire Forward and specifically my role in supporting industry through networks. Sometimes individuals don't immediately understand the importance of a network to help businesses to grow and prosper but it is through networks that important relationships are estbalished and the ripple effect is often surprising.

Victor obviously sees the advantage of networks through his involvement with Print Yorkshire, a network for the print industry in Yorkshire and Humberside. More information about Print Yorkshire can be found at:

http://www.printyorkshire.com/

Information about Victor Watson and his book launch can be found at:

http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/businessnews/Victor-by-name-and-victor.4589286.jp

Digital 20/20

Monday I was at the launch of Digital 20/20.

It's a project with two strands, one covers digital and ICT skills and the other strand covers business adoption of ICT.

Both are a partnership of public and private sector and the fantastic turnout at the launch event from both sides shows how many people are already committed.

Firstly, looking at the skills strand. The 12 key themes are:

Current Workforce:
1. Next generation user skills
2. Higher level skills
3. Business ICT adoption
4. e-Learning habit

Future Workforce:
5. Specialist curriculum
6. Digital skills across the curriculum

People outside the Workforce
7. Digital literacy – citizens & jobseekers
8. Engaging under-represented groups

Information, Advice & Guidance
9. Improving the IAG portfolio
10. Attracting and retaining talent

Delivery Capacity
11. Digitally adept educators
12. Specialist capacity – facilities & trainers

With regard to the business adoption of ICT strand, Action Plan Priorities are:

P1 – Communication: Promote the business benefits of ICT
Devise and deliver a regional marketing and communications approach that focuses on the business benefits and drivers of ICT adoption rather than the technology involved. This activity should seek to:
provide the wider business support community with a range of promotional tools to demonstrate business benefit to customers
exploit linkages with complementary initiatives, such as innovation

P2 – Transition: Stimulate progressive ICT adoption
Increase business performance as measured by key indicators of ICT adoption and implementation, using effective customer segmentation to move companies up the adoption ladder.

P3 – Synergy: Link ICT with agility in innovation and enterprise
Position ICT clearly within the business support offer, seeking to improve the levels of ICT literacy and awareness, thus contributing to wider initiatives such as innovation and enterprise.

P4 – Capability: Build recognition of the benefits of ICT literacy and training
Work with regional partners and providers to enhance the connection between business support delivery and the ICT skills agenda, improving business recognition of the benefits of ICT training.

P5 – Impact: Increase ROI and business performance
Work with commercial ICT providers and resellers to improve the overall quality, coherence and impact of the customer offer and therefore to maximise return on ICT investment and business performance.

P6 – Leverage: Maximise regional impact, competitiveness and investment
Identify the opportunities arising from increased ICT adoption and work with partners in the public and private sectors to maximise regional impact, competitiveness and investment through a range of complementary initiatives.

There is loads more info on the website:

http://www.digital2020.org.uk/

Logistics Institute

Last week I went to the Logistics Institute in Hull which was great (and i've just realised is the number one link in Google if you search for 'Logistics Institute' so good for them! :-) :

http://www.hull.ac.uk/logistics/index.html

I watched a few presentations from some of their incubator tenants and then had a tour round the building. It's a fantastic looking building before you go inside, nice big glass front and so on. But it also has a really good feel to it and some truly excellent training / event facilities that i'm going to try and find an excuse to use at some point in the future!

They also have a technology showcase area where you can see the technologies being developed by some of their tenants as well as other organisations. I love this kind of thing as it's so much easier than reading about something in a dry, boring document. They had some really nice equipment on display including 2D print examples, RFID tags and a new mobile application which is a bit like Skype but allows you to call several PC's / mobiles at once.

I think what is particularly good about the Logistics Institute is that it is literally (physically) attached to the University of Hull and has business tenants so it really is combining both worlds and I have a feeling that the physical proximity of business and academia will be a real benefit for them.

As an example of this, their membership is for both business and students and both types of members can access their resource centre and use the other facilities (which include meeting rooms as well as state-of-the-art laboratories).

This is definitely another one I shall be keeping an eye on and am sure i'll have more to report back in the future.

Cloud Computing

I just watched a webinar called 'Powering Your Business with Cloud Computing' hosted by the Grid Computing Now! KTN.

It was a really interesting seminar about an organisation called Rozmic and how it uses Cloud Computing for a new service it's released. There were also some interesting questions at the end, the main issues people had with using Cloud Computing seem to be interoperability between different providers, security concerns (which are pretty much overcome by keeping the really sensitive data inhouse) and pricing (the fact that you can't easily predict how much you will use and therefore how much it will cost which is difficult for less flexible large organisations, and that it's all new so pricing can still vary quite a lot).

However, the potential financial advantages seem to be huge, especially for small business and start ups. Ross Cooney at Rozmic made the good point that with Cloud Computing you can take your time over purchasing hardware as you're not in the usual desperate situation of having to get new servers tomorrow, instead you can use cloud computing in the interim while negotiating a good deal for equipment. And of course you can have less equipment inhouse and take advantage of cloud computing for some of your needs.

Ross also suggested an 8 hour rule whereby any server that will be in use for more than 8 hours a day is cheaper to have inhouse, anything in use less than 8 hours a day is cheaper using cloud computing. He stressed this wasn't rigorously tested but I think it's a good rule of thumb for a small business trying to work out what to do.

Anyway you can watch the seminar online at the Grid Computing Now! website:

http://www.gridcomputingnow.org/

As far as I can tell you have to register in order to watch the seminars but it's free and then you can also see what other webinars they have coming up.

Green Computing

Having been on holiday for nearly three weeks i'm still mainly catching up on emails etc. But just wanted to quickly blog about a conference on the 17th October at Leeds Metropolitan University called 'Green Computing Conference':

http://www.leedsmet.ac.uk/inn/news_green_conf08.htm

Hopefully i'll be attendng and will post a blog with any interesting links / docs etc collected on the day...

After all surely Green Computing is going to be one of the biggest things to affect the IT industry over the next few years, what with the combination of continuing scarcity of energy sources and political will to decrease carbon footprints? Should make for an interesting day.

Some useful websites...

I have a few links i've been saving up over the last few days so I want to signpost them all in this post.

First up is KnowledgeRICH:

http://www.knowledgerich.com/

It's a free service for businesses to get in touch with Universities in the region to work on innovative projects. What a great idea!

Next up is the Yorkshire Science and Technology Network:

http://www.ystn.co.uk/

I went to their last event in Leeds, it's free (although invite only so you have to sign up to attend) and gives a good networking opportunity to meet people from quite a variety of organisations. They have a couple of speakers at each event and in the past these have included Tim Berners-Lee and Wayne Hemingway.

Next I wanted to point out Cisco's I-Prize:

http://www.cisco.com/web/solutions/iprize/index.html

This is a competition to create an idea that Cisco will then fund anything up to $10 million! The really cool part to it is that when you enter you basically register into a community and then can get ideas from other people and create a team from within that community. A very cool way to encourage collaboration...

Finally, 4mations:

http://www.4mations.tv/

This site allows you to upload your own animated movies and games with the most popular each month winning a cash prize! The site isn't the most user-friendly i've ever come across, but if you get stuck you can click 'help' at the top right of the page to get to a fairly useful FAQ.

Melt 2008

Yesterday I was in Sheffield for the Melt 2008 Inspiration Session, and very inspiring it was too! Melt gives R&D awards to artistic, media and technical talent to explore the creative and economic possibilities of innovative content exploitation - basically they invest in cool, new things :-) They also do a lot of mentoring and giving of advice to help the projects make progress.

Personally my favourite part of the afternoon was the Melt Show and Tell where we saw short 10 minute presentations from 5 Melt projects. I loved them all! :

Healthy Island - an interactive game for teachers to encourage healthy behaviour in their pupils. A great way to bring more modern technology into the classroom without using a whiteboard!
http://www.lovemelt.com/past-awardees/7-earth-heart.html

Call of the Wild - a sound controlled game using animal noises. The added value with this one has got to be the whole 'all the family' can play factor.
http://www.lovemelt.com/past-awardees/13-call-of-the-wild.html

Piefighter - a mobile game using bluetooth and involving throwing pies at friends using your mobile and gaining free beer! Surely a winner with students.
http://www.lovemelt.com/past-awardees/16-blueface.html

Lost Angels - another mobile game, this time in a tamagochi / virtual pet stylie using real world info (i.e. news sources). You can really see this being picked up by the increasingly younger mobile market.
http://www.lovemelt.com/past-awardees/10-lost-angels.html

Wizard Academy - interactive 3D / 4D (think water being sprayed at you in 4D!) game for use in theme parks and visitor attractions. This one I thought was particularly commercially attractive, you can see it being used in lots of places.
http://www.lovemelt.com/past-awardees/14-wizard-academy.html

I shall try to keep my eye on the progress of all of them...

Going Global Conference

Another event to blog about, this one is for any industry and is being run by UKTI:

http://www.tradeyorkshire.com/eventdetails.aspx?id=45997

It's all about improving international business relationships, export and trade. Sir Alan Sugar is the key speaker, although personally i'm more impressed with the host, Declan Curry - always been a fan :-)

The event is in Harrogate on the 30th September and even more importantly it's free! It'll be a great opportunity to get free advice, inspiration and more importantly meet other businesses.

Singularity 2008

Just came across an online conference called Singularity which has some very interesting sessions:

http://www.singularity08.com/

It's from 24th - 26th October and features some fairly well known speakers including Tim O'Reilly and Molly E. Holzschlag.

It's not free, which is a shame as it's an online conference but then I guess the quality of the speakers would probably not be as high, however there are 'hubs' where people can get together to watch the conference, the nearest to us being in Manchester:

http://www.singularity08.com/hubs/

I'd be interested to hear from anyone how they thought it went...

AIDC

AIDC is a European Centre of Excellence for Automatic Identification and Data Capture. They basically work in the barcoding, RFID, smart cards, biometrics etc world and are located in Halifax:

http://www.aidc.org/

The building is absolutely fantastic. Covering two floors it's built in a tv / film set style with physical rooms representing different scenarios whereby visitors can walk around and see the technology in practice. Room scenrios include:

* A hospital where you can scan equipment used for surgery to see how many times it's already been used in the past.
* A farm where you can follow stuffed sheep (i.e. cuddly toy :-) ) round the farm with their tags, and even take apart a stuffed lamb (!) and see where the different parts go enabling a supermarket to know not only which farm a piece of meat comes from but even which particular animal on that farm.
* An airport where you can pick up a small tag and walk around the room while watching a moving dot on a screen representing you. This shows how exact an airport can pinpoint luggage moving around its building. The airport room also had smart technology that identified if a runway light needed replacing.
* Town hall, this has a machine that allows the general public to vote using electronic polling stations and their ID cards, this technology has already been used abroad.
* Supermarkets, there are obviously various uses for the technology in a supermarket, my favourite included a smart shelf that knows exatly what products are on the shelf and therefore knows when it needs restocking.

More info about the different room scenarios can be found at:

http://www.aidc.org/page.asp?pageid=74&pagegroup=AIDC&pagetitle=Demonstrators

Digital Print CIC

Today I met with Digital Print CIC who are located at Leeds University. They've been going for three years and are involved with lots of exciting new developments within the world of print. I've been sworn to secrecy regarding most of it but I can say they're interested in hearing from electronics companies and told me about some amazing new products that involve print and electronics.

The website is:

http://www.cic-digitalprinting.com/

I will be keeping uptodate with any events and projects that they become involved with - and will blog about the ones that are allowed to go public!

NorthTech

Another useful link i've come across following the Barcamp in Leeds is NorthTech:

http://upcoming.yahoo.com/group/5015/

It lists upcoming technology-related events and you can add more events to the list.

Barcamp Leeds

Today is the first day of Barcamp Leeds 2008. It's a fantastic event. Totally user-generated meaning that you don't know what you'll get till you get there. The sessions are written on a white board in the morning, updated during the day, and the session speakers are the attendees - so it's a total free for all!

Sessions at this year's Barcamp included Cloud Computing, Virals, Web Apps, Debian, 12 Tips for Startups, Design vs Usability etc, etc.

Useful links include:

http://barcampleeds.com/

and:

https://barcamp.pbwiki.com/BarCampLeeds2008

As you can imagine their's a Twitter page, Facebook page, probably tons of blogs and a load more photos on Flickr.

It's an extremely useful and well-attended event. Tickets (which are free) went in 3 days this year so if you can get one next year, enjoy :-)

Digital Yorkshire

This blog will be a way for me to record all the exciting things going on in the digital and new media industries in Yorkshire and Humberside, and occasionally even further afield.

Hopefully it will become a really useful resource for people working in a particular field to find out about related projects and also for people outside the industries to see all the exciting things going on.