“Today INCA launches a Special Interest Group for ‘Ultra-Connected Smart Cities’ – those cities in the UK working to improve their digital infrastructure. The launch event at Manchester Town Hall has attracted a large audience wanting to find out what cities like Manchester, Bristol and Derby are planning. They also have an opportunity to hear about major private sector initiatives, including City Fibre Holdings plans for commercially-funded urban fibre to the home (FTTH) networks, and new wireless broadband initiatives.
The Special Interest Group brings together public, private and community organisations in a dialogue about how our cities can get the best digital infrastructure for future prosperity and economic growth.”
Maurizio Pilu is explaining the various strands of activity needed to bring the Catapult into existence. It’s a pretty complicated process. You need to be on the Special Interest Group:
The Connected Digital Economy special interest group – a collaboration between the Technology Strategy Board and three Knowledge Transfer Networks – will be the main forum for engagement and discussions with businesses and academics and other stakeholders interested in the establishment of the Connected Digital Economy catapult.
Nick Appleyard describes the way the various strands of activity of the Catapult work together – using the slides that were presented on 17th April; I’ll make notes of anything particularly new.
CDEC will be a Company Limited by Guarantee – that’s the plan at the moment. But this will be separate from the activity model.
Multi-disciplinary nature of the CDEC asks one questioner – how will you maintain the balance between various stakeholders. Nick says that they are actively looking at this ‘live topic’. It’s going to be difficult to balance all the interests.
Jeremy Silver says that want to create a ‘free-er space’ where edgier things can happen.
Looking at relationships between Universities and SMEs – why is there no meeting around that?
How do we ensure that we have learning and gathering of the learning from the CDEC activities and projects.
Nick says they are starting with the Strategic Partners – they had so much interest that they had to ‘partition’ the discussions so they went for big organisations first and also “where we can have more bilateral discussions”.
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@ #CDECatapult hearing it’s objectives: 1.create wealth 2.drive new digital services 3.new apps & services crossing digital & physical world
Discussion of the importance of security and how it cuts across all the three topics areas – but in different ways. CDEC with some sort of security test bed or infrastructure project that could explore some of the security issues.
Another questioner says that there are lots of projects and test beds in Europe and N America – how about linking up with the European projects in this area?
Maurizio says that if you want to go that way “you might as well shut down the TSB”. He doesn’t see that the two are mutually exclusive. We meed to make sure we benefit “UK-based businesses”.
Questioner says that we need to get IT SMEs involved – 96% of them have fewer than 20 people and they deliver fro the economy. How can we do that? How about getting it into one Tweet. Nick says “Get into the market before it exists”.
Jeremy says, somewhat harshly he admits, that this CDEC is not going to work for everybody and there may not be SMEs that can become involved. They do want to get SMEs involved and agree that it’s important to look at the mechanisms for involving SMEs fully in the process.
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RT @andrewbud: #cdecatapult – the question of testbeds has arisen. TSB note no one is using European test-beds – so should the UK repeat the approach?
Serious discussion now about the culture and stance of the CDEC and how it needs to approach its task. Someone points out that the results on the spreadsheet may not capture the attributes of successful companies in the sector. There’s a bit of a debate about what the culture and stance of the CDEC should be to encourage speed and agility and to not be bureaucratic. Seems to be broad consensus that while the attributes and capabilities may be necessary but not sufficient (if you see what I mean).
Feedback session
Graham – we did the evaluation and we also discussed the ethos, culture and approach needed by the CDEC. In this sector, he also points out that the innovation often comes from an approach to openness and play; and the group were a bit concerned about the risk of an overly bureaucratic approach.
Ian – global e-commerce and health informatics came out as very high in the scoring of opportunities. The development of new businesses, help with PR and publications (out in the real world) and more help with the market opportunities as capabilities. Need to be engaged in the local community also. Security testbed and network testbed were Lso seen as important
Steve – similarity of outputs is very interesting he says.
Here are some of the thoughts of participants via Twitter after the event:
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Pervasive access to high-speed Internet scores very highly by the IoT workgroup #cdec #digitalbritain at BIS #TSB
Sarah says that the project was much bigger than the video shown today. “It really punched above its weight”. The making of digital objects was an important act of the project – reflecting back progress.
Choreographic Objects: traces and artifacts of physical intelligence Principle and Co-Investigators: James Leach (Principle Investigator and Award Holder)Department of Anthropology, School of Social Science, University of Aberdeen Sarah Whatley (Co-Investigator)ceMAP, Coventry University Scott deLahunta (Research Fellow)ARTI, Amasterdam School for the Arts, NL Project Partners: Art Research, Theory and Innovation group, Amsterdam School for the Arts, NLWayne McGregor | Random DanceIntel, People and Practices Research Choreographic objects: traces and artefacts of physical intelligence is the title and focus of a series of three workshops centring on the output of four research teams working in collaboration with the choreographers William Forsythe, Siobhan Davies, Wayne McGregor and Emio Greco PC.
Paul talked about ephemera and digital objects such as the BBC indents (the hippos) and their relationship with RedBee media. He was very insightful on the dynamics of ephemeral content and the persistence in people’s minds not designed by its creators.
Clare Reddington says that the Digital Economy is a lot about enabling people to reconnect with the physical world with the help of digital technology. It’s about the layering and richness of experience. “We have to do better than Minority Report”. It’s about experiences. And the way digital changes the way we live. There is a speed function (cites Agile). Temporality and the creative economy.
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Good point well made by @clarered at #beyond text that digital economies are multiple economies. Not singular. #beyondtext
Bill Thompson says he has a problem with the term Digital Economy – and the concept. It needs to be about making the invisible visible. We want to liberate the BBC archive.
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@billt BBC took a long time to see value of what was on the tape was a lot higher than the value of the magnetic material #beyondtext
Sarah says we want more than the value of models and templates. We are seeing a proliferation. It’s also about engagement and values -both material and ethical. The future has to be about re-use of material. And new creation from combining these objects.
Paul Grainge says that he does not have a problem with the word content and there is ‘blurrring’ between disciplines.
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So @billt – is prepared to use the term “Digital Society” but not “Digital Economy” who knew? #beyondtext
Sarah says we are seeding the emergence of short-lived digital objects that don’t persist like photos or written documents.
Big discussions going on about archiving across different disciplines. And changes in the way archives are and can be used (such as pictures of children). And how about reputational issues of researchers ‘private’ notebooks.
Bill points out that the BBC has great difficulties in looking at the digitisation of archives and a ‘duty of care’ to the participants. The issue of online identity and provenance. How do you verify who can see it?
Andrew Burn – says that clearance has been an import aspect of his work especially about images of children. He agrees it needs to be handled carefully.
Until they got over the fear of the amateur, the funders found difficult to make progress
Bill Thompson says “it’s just trees into the swamp” as far as our level of progress is concerned. Sarah says we need to make the ways of entering art objects such as archives familiar.
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#beyondtext art students self-archiving and speakers at conferences having more than one conversation!
Semi-digitised existence – and multiple conversations. Says Rebecca Kill.
Creativity beyond text – where next for the Creative Industries?
Rebekka says it’s interesting that there is a ‘where’ in e title of this session. Was what we did really radical – at music festivals; would it have been more radical at a shopping centre or in a University.
Environments for Encounter Award Holder Dr Alice O’Grady Higher Education Institute University of Leeds Partner Organisation Rebekka Kill, Leeds Metropolitan University Our proposal explores the phenomenon of relational performance within contemporary music festivals as an emergent genre of creative communication.
Rebekka says this is the first time she’s seen the video – it was e-mailed to her this morning.
Dani Salvadori says she sees convergence in the ‘college’ job at Central St Martins; whereas in her university job at University of the Arts she sees divergence. Companies and students coming together – not a hard sell on either side. On university side sees divergence – means dealing with Science and Technology – this is largely a b2b role.
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The most depressing meeting I’ve been to recently was the #cdec meeting says Dani Salvadore of CSM at #beyondtext
She says that there is too much operational thinking and British businesses risk being left behind. It’s not just business – it’s also in science, technology and engineering education – too narrow.
Jeremy Silver says I have two jobs too: advising the TSB on Creative Industries and trying to help get the money spent wisely. And the rest of the time he works with small companies helping them to do ‘real stuff’. And he says that we haven’t updated our definitions of the Creative Industries. And these don’t help – especially when the redefinitions of terms seem to reduce the size of the industry.
The main problem facing the industry is what Jeremy describes as the incumbents’ dilemma and their difficultly in working out how to change. Legislative change – says the Digital Economy Act drove people further apart.
We have an inexorable drive to be businesslike – but we don’t all have to be businesses – not everything can become a business. Let’s not force everything into becoming a business.
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#beyondtext Dr Jeremy Silver asks does everything have to become a business? Dani Salvadori questions gap btween tech ops + creative design
Sally Taylor says that she works between Universities and culture. The list of 13 captive industries has lasted since 1997 – and is probably in need of getting rid of. There is huge demand she says and more creative people working outside the creative industries than in. Need to talk about creative people. It’s a difficult game she says. But “it’s yours”.
TCCE had a conference on Creativity in Business recently. There are positive and negative aspects to creativity in business. Some of the positives are the world’s most iconic buildings.
The problems to deal with are about people; and academics have a role to play.
Where next for the creative industries? How about de-industrialisation. Let’s abolish or radically reduce copyright terms – make things move faster. Less agonistic and maybe more effective.
Jeremy thinks that reducing the term to 12 years would be interesting but the incumbents won’t go for it – implausible.
Rebekka questions the idea of deindustrialisation – and what it really means. Dani says it’s really happening and creation on the Internet is evidence of that. This country is “half deindustrialised” anyway.
Danger of programming in schools is that it will be pushed into ICT education and they will not realise that to make good computer games you needed to bring together music, narrative, writing etc.
Evelyn Wilson says we over fetishise the creative industries – the notion of boosterism cite by Kate Oakley. But what about what next for creativity?
Rebekka says there is no shared view of what ‘creativity’ means – don’t want a definition but the recognition that we are all on different pages.
Ghislaine Boddington says that internationally we have a good reputation and a very high level of quality for digital artists – it’s leading work worldwide. She mentions Creative Europe and the term Culture and Creative Sector – and says doesn’t mention “industry”.
One contributor says that we shouldn’t underestimate the impact of the English language. Dani says she doesn’t agree – most of the work is of a visual nature – language is not important.
We need the new stuff to come from creative work and be driven by that not led by industrial need.
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Sounds like the #beyondtext event was interesting lookin at tweets by @brian_condon @JeremyS1 @clarered
Rick Rylance mentions Creative Hubs, and the Nesta and Arts Council England. And he thanks Ruth Hogarth and other colleagues especially Evelyn Welch for their work.
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Goodbye everyone at #beyondtext and thanks for a brilliant day!
The speed of change during the programme has been amazing says Evelyn Welch – yet it is also surprising that the questions have remained constant, indeed have gained relevance as the programme has continued.
The themes have connected together on memories and performance, recording heritage and dealing with practical as well as theoretical issues. Very practice-based and participatory
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“Who actually owns the ephemeral content?” asks Evelyn Welch – she says all conversations ended up tackling the copyright issue #beyondtext
Larger questions of learning
Elena Isayev -serendipity is important and beyond text has enabled the space to allow serendipity to emerge. We also learnt how to get complex ideas across to people; including children and providing tools for them to think about things in a different way.
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Elena Isayev – “We got the kids to write in Etruscan, and because we didn’t tell them it was about literacy – they did!” #beyondtext
Graeme Milne saya that testimony from local people was of a different kind from that usually found by museums – it seemed to be more descriptive and about mobility and movement – needed to rethink how we saw these aspects. The was a real sense of Liverpool’s history and maybe they a thinking bait more comfortably about it’s past.
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Seems to me it’s the non-linearity of shared memory which is helping us ‘remember the future’ at #beyondtext
Helen asks about where the collaborations might go.
Elena says she is in conversations with other groups around the world. And also talking to the gallery about making apps and involving local school child’s. There’s also a social justice angle.
Sandy Heslop – publication and wider work on basketry – new perspectives and working with the existing group of collaborators.
Graeme Milne – looking at less formal oral history, less structure and you get people you would never encounter – but it raises clearance and copyright issues. How do we make the content persist and how long do people’s perceptions continue to affect the newer generations. Definition and identity of place.
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Really interesting discussion of an identity of a city that almost everyone buys into .- and suddenly somebody doesn’t #beyondtext
Discussion of place after Rebekka’s question – and how they avoided being sucked into the ‘pop music and football’ aspects of Liverpool.
Question on “Impact” and the ref. Elena says her project is an impact case study – though they started it before the REF changes it has become more visible. Graeme says their project will not be an impact case study though those things were built in from the start by e museum partner.
Growing into Music: a multicultural study of musical enculturation in oral traditions Dr Lucy Durán Higher Education Institute School of Oriental and African Studies Children who grow up in oral musical contexts such as the families of hereditary musical specialists commonly learn the body-language of music before they learn music itself.
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#Beyondtext’s Growing into Music explores how music is learnt and shared by children in countries with oral traditions bit.ly/H326Gb
Vimeo is a respectful community of creative people who are passionate about sharing the videos they make. Use Vimeo if you want the best tools and highest quality video in the universe.
From conkers to singing games, rude jokes to fantasy play, Playtimes brings together 100 years of children’s songs, rhymes and games. Explore war battles on bomb sites, rude jokes on council estates, and imaginary TV in the playground, to discover the fascinating world of children’s play.
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Another great #beyondtext project explores children’s playground games in a ‘new media’ age bit.ly/H0bOMq
From conkers to singing games, rude rhymes to chasing games, Playtimes brings together a hundred years of children’s songs, rhymes and games. Explore war battles on bombsites, rude jokes on council estates, and fantasy TV shows in the playground, to discover the unique and fascinating world of children’s play.
Mark Jacobs in the Chair with Paul Basu, Andrew Burn and Bob Ladd
There is a transposition of narrative from physical playground games into digital games – example of clapping games. Use of motion capture to capture forms of movement.
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Are children’s playground games adversely affected by mediatised cultures. You would enjoy this @culturevultures #beyondtext
Paul Basu talks about representing cultural heritage in Sierra Leone. Creating relationships between museums and people near them and also with museums in the UK.
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Why won’t Dinka songs about the civil war not be ere in 20 years? Bob Ladd #beyondtext @ shiny-tops panel
