Upcoming event: Open Source Business Breakfast - Tuesday 30th June

Next week is another Open Source Business Breakfast at Old Broadcasting House in Leeds, as part of the OS4B (Open Source for Business) project.

This is definitely a date to put in your diary, as you’ll be hearing from Yorkshire businessman, Paul Rhodes, from Greencore, talking about his experience in turning around the business from big losses to achieve millions, sharing his ordinary common sense strategies for achieving the seemingly impossible.

Then after breakfast, another highly successful Yorkshire entrepreneur, Neil Warnock of Luminary, will explain how you can gain insight into your own business with a Business Intelligence system based on Open Source.

To register contact the OS4B team on 0845 122 1555 or email info@ntileeds.co.uk.

I'm sure i've blogged about OS4B before but as a quick reminder: OS4B is a joint venture between nti Leeds and Yorkshire Forward, it's designed to help regional businesses make the most of open source technologies. At the heart of OS4B is a centre of excellence for open source, including part-funded training (at least 60%) on open source products to help your business thrive.

Future Technologies June - Interfaces (Johnny Chung Lee)

Whilst at the utterly fabulous Thinking Digital conference I saw a presentation by Johnny Chung Lee from Microsoft Research (http://www.thinkingdigital.co.uk/speakers/speaker_profile.php?id=38) which contained everything I love about new technology. Parts of it made the audience gasp, it made me think about how my life will be in ten years time - just what i'm looking for in a presentation!

I thought i'd cover some of the new developments he shared with us, Johnny focused on new interfaces, pointing out that although many technologies have moved on we've actually been using the keyboard, mouse and monitor for quite some time now.

There are many developments happening using projectors rather than a fixed monitor. At the following YouTube video you can see a demo from Johnny regarding foldable displays - absolutely fantatsic. Note how fast the calibration is with regard to the projector knowing where the object is due to the wiimote. The scrollable screen is particularly awesome, but I can't figure out how the projector knows how much of the display is unscrolled - if anyone else can figure this out let me know!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhSR_6-Y5Kg&feature=channel_page

The orientation sensitivity part of that video is also incredible, the projector knows which side of the screen to display allowing double sided images - how!?!?

Johnny also talked about Haptics, whereby the sense of touch is recreated. He talked about a project he came across whereby he held an empty plastic box and when the switch was flicked it suddenly felt as if there was a metal ball inside the box which he could move around by moving his hand, pretty impressive if you really think about it. I've managed to find another one of Johnny's video's on YouTube where he is demonstrating a haptic pen. It's amazing to think that you can simulate all those different feelings of touch within one pen. Watching the testers using it in the second part of the video really shows how real it must feel:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sk-ExWeA03Y&feature=channel_page

So you can see how potentially the time has come for the monitor and mouse to move over in place of some new, more intuitive technology.

This next video has Johnny demonstrating 3D images. Stick with this one because as soon as you see the football stadium you realise the potential this has. It really is like looking through a window, with a feeling of depth and space that is very clever:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw&feature=channel_page

Obviously the implications for games are also massive as Johnny points out.

Finally I came across this video of Project Natal, which Johnny is now working on, and, well it's just cool! The face recognition, voice recognition etc. The near future of games and home entertainment? I hope so!

One more upcoming event: Shift Happens 2.0

One more upcoming event that I forgot to mention in my blog below, Shift Happens 2.0 will be held on Monday 29 - Tue 30 June at York Theatre Royal. The cost of a ticket is £100 + VAT and they only have a few spaces left.

The programme includes keynote speaker Charles Leadbeater along with many, many more on the line-up and subjects to be covered range from "Sustainable Ability... Building Envirodigital Communities" to "2012 and all that...a new vision for the Cultural Olympiad".

They even have two people calling in live from different locations using Skype - a brave move on the part of the event organisers and surely proof that it's not going to be just another run of the mill conference!

More information and details on how to book your place can be found at:

http://www.pilot-theatre.com/redesign/default.asp?idno=17061

Events - TechTalk 2009, Barcamp Sheffield, Creative Networks

Well it's been a couple of weeks since my last post (mainly due to me moving house) so I have a few events to tell you about today.

First up is Connect Yorkshire's TechTalk 2009: "Enterprise IT for the Masses". The event will be on the 17th June from 1pm - 4pm at York Racecourse. It only costs 40 quid to attend and the keynote speaker is David Aldridge, Vice President at Oracle. The debate will cover Software-As-A-Service and Cloud Computing.

Next, Barcamp Sheffield, registration has now opened for Barcamp Sheffield a.k.a Unsheffield, the theme is Future Users of Cool Technology. The event is free to attend, from the 19th - 21st June and will be held at the Showroom. You can see a previous blog of mine about the last Barcamp Sheffield, which was great! 

And last but by no means least is Creative Networks. This month the speaker is Patrick Burgoyne, Editor of Creative Review and they have combined the event with the Leeds College of Art – End of Year Shows.

The event is also free to attend, on 25th June from 5pm onwards at the Leeds College of Art & Design. If you want to go contact Creative Networks on 01422 399444 or email Bridget March at bridgetm@leeds-art.ac.uk.

13th UK Network Operators' Forum agenda now published

The agenda has now been published for the next UKNOF meeting on the 28th May, which will be held in Sheffield at the Electric Works:

Morning Session
"System Maintenance: Please verify your details" (Graeme Fowler, Loughborough University)
How Spammers Break E-mail for the rest of us (Andrew Richards, ACR Consulting)
BBC Redux (Tom Bird, Portfast Ltd)
XS4ALL's IPv6 Deployment Experiences (Marco Hogewoning, XS4ALL Internet)
Using Quagga for Route Servers (Mike Hughes, LINX)

Afternoon Session
Leeds Interconnect (Andy Davidson, NetSumo Ltd)
Digital Region (Les Morris, Thales)
IWF, Wikipedia and the Wayback Machine (Richard Clayton, University of Cambridge)
Internet History (Daniel Karrenberg, RIPE NCC)

Lightning Talks:
DNSSEC for .uk (Brett Carr, Nominet)
100Gb/s Fibre Transmission Trial (Robert Evans, JANET (UK))
The Economic Crisis and RIR Registrations (Jochem de Ruig, RIPE NCC)
Recent RIPE Policy Developments (Nigel Titley, RIPE NCC)
VoIP Caller Location - Implications for ISPs (Ray Bellis, Nominet)

If you want to go it's free to attend and you can register online.

Future Technologies May - New Business Models

To carry on with my monthly post about something new and exciting, i've decided to choose new business models - no really it is exciting!

I recently saw a great presentation from Mervyn Levin, Levering Ltd Consultancy (his background is impressive as you can see from this PDF i've found covering a bit of his biography http://www.southeastmedianetwork.co.uk/knowledge/asia.pdf) on the subject area 'The Digital Economy in East Asia'. He talked about the different business models in the games industry in China, instead of relying on consoles and packaged (physcal) software which can be easily pirated a new industry has developed whereby online gaming has taken over. The online gaming industry tried charging a subscription (in the same way we're all talking about with SaaS, Software as a Service) but this proved unsuccessful so instead they have monetised features in the games and utilise microtransactions. To put it in layman terms if i'm totally into a game I might pay 50p for a better sword, 50p is not exactly a lot to me but if enough people do it (and a new sword would eventually need an accompanying shield etc) it can soon add up - especially when you have a population size like China.

This has all started me thinking about other new business models that are starting to slowly enter our lives. As i've already mentioned everyone is talking about SaaS and i've been hearing about various new ideas with organisations looking into providing all kinds of software on a monthly subscription or one-off fee type basis (made much easier with cloud computing but i'm not going to go into that right now!). At an event recently I heard about a new company that is looking at allowing people to pay for software on a one-off basis i.e. you get an email with a photoshop attachment and could click to pay for a day's use of photoshop in order to view and if necessary edit the attachment - fab idea. Sites like http://www.myhrtoolkit.com/ (check out the 2 minute demo) are totally getting the idea of the scope of SaaS and how it could be used for almost everything (also a Yorkshire company btw!).

So what else can I predict will move to a new business model? Well I don't want to be contraversial by talking about the Post Office and I am absolutely supportive of the Royal Mail but I do also see a future where individuals won't have to buy a stamp to attach to a letter and then pop it into a postbox, after all this is a classic microtransaction scenrio that could be made easier with technology (and I don't believe this would mean you don't need a post office, they're about much more than buying stamps after all!).

I used to be able to pay for the bus in York by using a 2D barcode on my mobile phone - it was great! They've stopped using it and I don't know why because it was so easy, all I had to do was send a text to get more bus tickets on my phone and my bank account was immediately debited - i'm really hoping they can bring this back to buses and that some bright spark makes sure you can use the tickets on any bus in the UK - how great would that be! So what else can we pay for with our mobile phones? Games, tickets, hotel reservations, parking spaces and where could this take us? Into supermarkets, airports (negating the need to have a different currency to buy a bottle of water)?

Also, as we're all wanting to be *the* knowledge based economy isn't it time we monetised knowledge better? We already pay for advice, could we do this in a microtransaction type way? Are people prepared to make a one-off payment for a single recipe for example instead of a cookery book? (okay that's a bad example due to wikibooks cookbook http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook but you get the idea).

Could you sell a book chapter by chapter? How much would you pay for a 30 minute online chat session with a solicitor? Why has no one thought to have a 24/7 online IT support company where you allow access to your PC / MAC and pay by the hour? What about an online magazine that allows you to click on anything in the photo to be taken to buy it (i.e. clothes, furniture, games, whatever the magazine specializes in).

There has already been talk of charging for single TV episodes. Could it work, I think maybe. People download individual episodes from torrents so would they pay a small amount if it was made easier and more reliable?

I think it will be really exciting to see the next round of new ideas with this new kind of business model.

LSx 09 - the 2nd Leeds Web Festival

Just to spread the news regarding LSx 09 which began on the 5th May (I'm too late to tell you about the Digital Britain unconference i'm afraid but I believe there are still more to be held in other locations) and continues until the 3rd June.

There are even more things going on than last year and include:

12th may innovation north 2009 showcase
Leeds Met's undergraduate expo, showcasing the work of this year's graduating class in music technology, sound, games design, animation, special effects, creative media and computing.

19th may hackspace
Hackspace is an alternative term for Hackerspaces, a physical place where anybody with an interest in technology can meet up, socialize and collaborate on project within a vast range of technologies and languages.

20th may geekup
An evening social of internet industry workers, including a trio of brief 20:20 talks - Clare Lindley on Creating iPhone apps with PhoneGap, Phil Helliwell on What your BIG-IP can do for you & Jonathan "Squigfried" Powell on Hack Spaces, and why having one in Leeds will be awesome.

27th may girl geek dinner
An evening buffet accompanied by keynote speakers representing the best femalte talents in the technology sector. Seedcamp CEO, Reshma Sohoni, and Democracy PR's founder, Jennifer O'Grady will be one of the featured speakers, with around 70 guests drawn from the city's most talented and respected female professionals in creative and digital.

28th may future of web apps tour
Ryan Carson's renowned conference comes to Leeds for the first time, at the city's newly opened Rose Bowl. The theme is Cloud Computing - with speakers from Microsoft, Amazon and Salesforce.

(I'm assuming this is the same lineup that I saw in Manchester a couple of weeks ago and in which case I can really recommend the event. I thought all the speakers were really interesting - and I was tired that day so it really says something :-))

29th may physical computing 101tinker.it
an innovative consultancy that's bringing together the physical and digital worlds through creative technologies will be leading a day long Beginner's Guide to Arduino, to help novices and experts alike learn how to build small electronic widgets!

(I know i've blogged about Arduino before and i'm afraid i'm still yet to do anything with mine - but I have big plans, honest!)

30-31st may barcamp leeds {2009}
BarCamp Leeds is the city's third 'unconference', an event where the folks that attend create the programme of sessions themselves. BarCamps are open, participatory, democratic, 'workshop' events; the organisers and sponsors simply provide wireless broadband, a venue, beverages and food!

(I blogged about Leeds and Sheffields last Barcamps so will try not to bore you again with how great I think they are! I will hopefully be attending this on the Saturday so will blog again then.)

3rd june exposure leeds
The city's photographic community is supporting LSx by running 60-90 minute workshops photography workshops with a technological bias - some topics might include Flickr, Photoshop, HDR, PhotoSynth and Lightroom.