Winter Hackathon goes really well – 15 teams created apps from 10am on Sat 28th to 5pm on Sun 29th Jan 2012. Prizes from Pearson, Blackberry, InMobi, Microsoft, Marmalade, Serious Games Institute.
Packed house of 60+ hackers at Central Working:
Winter Hackathon 2012 – Coding Session
At the weekend we hosted our first ever Hackathon in London to promote the development of innovative and commercial mobile Apps.
The Autumn Hackathon was the first in a quarterly series of digital technology hack days bringing together developers from the UK and Europe to pool their talents in a competitive environment to create new applications for the booming mobile and social networking platforms. The event was held from 9am on Saturday morning, with the developers coding through the night to 5pm on Sunday at CentralWorking.com – the trendy, boutique co-working club off Tottenham Court Road in central London.
A panel of leading entrepreneurs, VCs and developers judged the competition, awarding prizes in two main categories: The most innovative App and the App with the best commercial potential. The winners of the Autumn Hackathon were each awarded prizes of £2,000 of legal services from law firms Irwin Mitchell and ADL Legal, plus Chrome Laptops for each team:
Most Innovative App: an iPhone Lightsabre, designed by Kornel Lesinski using the iPhone’s gyroscopic capabilities and neural network technology, he created a multiplayer lightsabre game that links to a TV.
Best Commercial App: A top ‘Trump’ education game, designed by Team Trump Trifecta that allows different skins to be applied to the card sets to provide multiple game types. Quality tested and played by a five year old, the team proved the game worked and engaged its audience.
Intellego will be running the Winter Hackathon in late January 2012 which will focus on mobile Apps for the estimated 2 million visitors to the London Olympics next Summer.
Andy Hasoon, CEO of Intellego, commented, “We are delighted to be the lead sponsors of the Hackathon events. Intellego is all about promoting educational development through digital, online and mobile technology, so working with some of Europe’s leading App developers has been an exciting experience for us.”
Judges including leading entrepreneurs & developers awarded prizes including £2000 worth of legal services from a top technology law firm. Entries will be judged on innovation, commercial potential, usefulness & fun factor.
To encourage greater involvement of those in further & higher education, teams are limited to three members but allowed a fourth member who is a full time student.
4 of our Hack Teams
Checking quality of one of our Hacks – it worked!
One of the teams at 9am Sat and at 3pm Sun…..did they move?
The Winners
Kornel Lesinski – aka Hack Winner
- Created a game that reads gyroscope data from iPhone – Creating an iPhone Light Sabre on the TV screen via (http://pornel.net:8000/watch.html)
- Uses ‘pusher.com’ a websocket api
- Bounced data from iPhone to US to Germany (where his servers are) to US to iPhone
- He created a neural network and had to train his system to recognise moves i.e. Over 400+ moves needed programming so iPhone and Neural Network recognise gestures made with iPhone
- Works as multiplayer game.
Watch Video! Click here……….. Hackathon Final
Organised by Milverton Wallace for Milamber Digital.
ADL Legal, Irwin Mitchell & Intellego sponsor Autumn Hackathon!
ADL Legal Solicitors are one of London’s leading firms in hi-tech commercial, technology and intellectual property law. Based in central London, the firm was created by Nick Lockett, the first lawyer in the UK to specialise in internet and online law in 1992.
Irwin Mitchell are one of the UK’s most successful and respected law firms with a national network of offices. We pride ourselves on our open and innovative approach and in providing clear and straightforward advice. Above all we are committed to putting you first.
Intellego - People learn more when they play. They remember more when they do. They engage more when they share. So why is most e-learning so boring?
Thanks to us, the next generation of digital learning won’t be dull. Intellego, and our subsidiary PIXELearning, are re-defining management education. Our team of world-class instructional designers and developers are already delivering award-winning learning products, but now we’re about to take digital learning to a far more interesting place.
Using a blend of games, simulations, online role plays, social networking and content from the world’s leading thinkers and writers, we’re taking learners and immersing them in a learning ecosystem that will deliver the most effective training ever devised.
For more information go to:
PIXEL recently ran a seminar (8th Sept 2011) for our customers at PIXEL and Intellego on ‘Why Serious Games Work’.
I must say the last presentation by Helen Routledge our Instructional Designer Manager at PIXEL was excellent.
With over 70 attendees to the event from blue chip companies the event was a real success.
PIXEL and Intellego will be running more of these ‘thought leadership’ events in 2012.
Milverton Wallace – Milamber’s Head of Digital Media has launched our first Hackathon on the 22-23 Oct 2011.
You can find out more about the event at:
http://www.hackathoncentral.com/
The Autumn Hackathon is the first in a series of technology hack days, bringing together developers to pool their talents to create new ideas and applications.
Judges including leading entrepreneurs & developers will be awarding prizes including £2000 worth of legal services from a top technology law firm. Entries will be judged on innovation, commercial potential, usefulness & fun factor.
To encourage greater involvement of those in further & higher education, teams are limited to three members but allowed a fourth member who is a full time student.
The other partner invovled in this event is www.Centralworking.com they are providing the venue for the first Hackathon.
Central are doing the whole co-working-space-coffee-shop-meeting-rooms-collaboration thing differently! They are awesome.
If you want to find out more contact Milverton Wallace at: milverton@gmail.com
Today, Jason Velody and I went to a Technology Strategy Board event to learn how to apply for some of the new grants that they are making available in the digital space.
We began with an excellent(!) ‘Key Note’ speech given by Bill Thompson – Bill being the early adopter that he is gave us a presentation using the newly released iPAD – as with all technology the first 15 minutes of the presentation started without this device until the various members of the technical support team had got it working with the old school technology.
It was good to catch up with Bill – as we have not see each other since Net Media days.
http://www.thebillblog.com/billblog/
So what does the Technology Strategy Board do?
On 8 May 2008 they launched their Strategic Plan: “Connect and Catalyse – a strategy for business innovation.”
The plan sets out their focus over the next three years as well as provide a longer term perspective.
TSB want to make the UK a global leader in innovation. To do so TSB need ensure the UK is a place where:
The Strategic Plan explains the journey TSB will take to reach the destination of the UK becoming a global leader in innovation and how TSB will work to ensure UK business success by:
To do all of this, the Technology Strategy Board has a budget for 2008-2011 of £711 million plus aligned funding from the Regional Development Agencies of £180 million and at least £120 million from the Research Councils.
TSB will also continue to work with Government Departments and the Devolved Administrations further increasing the funding from those organisations aligned with our strategy.
With over £1 billion to invest over 3 years TSB have the opportunity to start to make a difference in changing the innovation environment in the UK.
Here’s one way you can access monies via: Knowledge Transfer Partnerships
Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTP) are a UK-wide programme enabling businesses to improve their competitiveness, productivity and performance.
A KTP achieves this through the forming of a Partnership between your business and an academic institution (such as university, further education college or research and technology organisation), enabling you to access skills and expertise to help your business develop.
The knowledge sought is embedded into the business from the knowledge base through a project, or projects, undertaken by a recently qualified person (known as the Associate), recruited to specifically work on that project. KTPs can vary in length from 1 to 3 years (classic KTP) and from 10-40 weeks (shorter KTP), depending on the needs of the business and the desired outcomes.
KTP enables new capability to be embedded into the business and has benefited and continues to benefit a wide range of businesses across many sectors, including micro sized, small and large businesses, third sector organisations or public.
Tel: 0870 190 2829
REDTRAY hosted for their top clients an ‘Inspiration Day’ at the Park Plaza Hotel, in London, on the 11th May 2010. www.redtray.co.uk
It was a great honour that they very kindly invited me to speak at the event on the subject of ‘The Power of Media in Business Education’, other speakers included Robin Ryde on his current pet subject, ‘Thought Leadership – Moving Hearts and Minds’.
See previous Milamber Blog on Robin Ryde: http://www.milamberblog.com/robin-ryde-modern-leadership/
For the last few years apart from talking to staff or doing publicity for the company I have been doing a limited amount of public speaking, and I have to say it is thoroughly enjoyable to be doing it again.
Firstly, there is that element of nervousness because some one has trusted you enough to give you a platform to talk about something and the main objective is not to mess it up and make them happy that they did put their trust in you. Then when you do get in front of an audience and start talking you start to get that buzz – especially when you have a free rein to talk about topics that you are passionate about. Personally, I find it is great fun engaging with an audience, making them laugh (with luck), and hopefully giving people some useful insights, so that they will remember them and hopefully use them in their day to day working lives. And if you do a good job you get some positive and appreciative feedback which is itself rewarding.
Jon Butress, the Marketing Director of Redtray, kindly sent this note after the event, “Thank you for speaking at the REDTRAY Inspirations Day event yesterday. The feedback from yesterday has been excellent with everyone regarding the day as successful and informative. Your presentation on Digital Media contributed significantly to the day and we have had many informal comments praising how valuable they found your session.”
Job done.
Congratulations to Steve O’Donnell who has been offered a fantastic opportunity to lead an enormous IT undertaking with the Qatar Foundation in Doha to create a visionary 21st Century cloud IT operation for the Middle East and North Africa.
Steve and I go way back when Steve would teach highly specialized IT training courses for my clients at PwC, MOD and numerous others.
Recently, we have been catching up in relation to Milamber’s next generation digital library project – well if you think about it housing a massive digital learning repository requires intelligently and intuitively storing major amounts of data and information – and who better to ask for advice on such a challenge than Steve.
Just visit his blog www.thehotaisle.com and you will see why.
Good luck!
Steve O’Donnell’s background includes – Managing Director EMEA and Senior Analyst at ESG. He has 30 years experience running IT Operations for the largest global companies. Before joining ESG he was SVP IT Infrastructure at First Data the credit card processing business. Prior to this he was Global Head of Data Centres at BT running the largest data centre estate in Europe. He has a worldwide reputation as a thought leader in Green IT having won six industry awards for his 21st Century Data Centre vision and design.
While in the pub a few weeks ago having a catch up with Dapo Ladimeji, he invited me to an RSA event at Phillimore Gardens, London, W8 to discuss the issue of ‘Manufacturing’.
Come along Dapo says you’ll enjoy it………
Firstly, the RSA who are they?
‘For over 250 years the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) has been a cradle of enlightenment thinking and a force for social progress. Their approach is multi-disciplinary, politically independent and combines cutting edge research and policy development with practical action.
They encourage public discourse and critical debate by providing platforms for leading experts to share new ideas on contemporary issues. Their projects generate new models for tackling the social challenges of today and their work is supported by a 27,000 strong Fellowship - achievers and influencers from every field with a real commitment to progressive social change.’
Anyway, I find out that Dapo is actually Chairing the event, and while we were waiting for the 70 odd people to arrive for this debate, my mouth stuffed with a sandwich, Dapo drops on me that I am one of the speakers and I should talk for a few minutes on how the digital world is changing manufacturing……..‘get people’s brains sparking Andy’!
After the initial shock of having only effectively two speakers in front of me to prepare my patter, I decided the safest bet was to give an analogy. So I began by stating that English is the most spoken language used on the Internet and in business today. This was reasonably safe territory and luckily, the audience agreed. Then I went on to explain that the UK is the leading manufacturer of English Language Training (ELT) courses in the world, and a large portion of the course material and the writers of those materials are actually based in places like Devon and Cornwall. You could see this got the audience thinking. Was English a manufactured product?
The two previous speakers had just been talking about Japan and China, so I linked back to these two references and explained the market size for ELT courses in Japan, a mature market, was $12Bn a year versus the Chinese market, currently early stage, is only $3Bn a year for ELT products – so the existing ELT manufacturing base that delivers to Japan already has a good established market to sell to but the room for growth is in exporting to China and it is significant.
Then I told a story that Bill Gates is reported to have given when Microsoft in the early days was giving its results to the financial markets about its % market penetration of Microsoft software in each territory. When Bill came to give the results on China he stated that Microsoft software was already in 49% of all Chinese computers and the good news is that Microsoft had recently sold its first license there.
So at this point I highlighted that we have to consider the Mobile phone angle – if you take into consideration that there are say 380m internet users in 2009 in China (source CNNIC) versus 750m mobile phone users in China (Source Note 1), and with mobile phones we can protect digital content from piracy with security better than we can over the internet. We have a serious opportunity for manufacturing digital products that can be exported to the biggest market in the world in just this one area.
Note 1: Jinglei, Hua. (2010-01-22) China home to 747.38 mln mobile service subscribers in 2009 | Interfax TMT China.
Then to encourage the audience to expand their thinking further I highlighted digital Education products as a whole e.g. filling the 150+ newly created Chinese business schools with digital content is one task but what about all the large Enterprises around the world of the millions and millions of SMB’s.
What followed was a fascinating debate where we got split off into 5 groups to debate an issue within each group and then report back to the core at the end. The group I was in discussed potential partners for the RSA to link with to raise awareness.
Although the debate ranged from; defining what is manufacturing, to how to adapt our infrastructures to nurture innovation, how to set up funding structures that make sense for manufacturing, how to create incentives to become employees within manufacturing, making sure manufacturing is profitable, to even discussions about how manufacturing can be made sexy. As the various strands of the discussion evolved the centre stage theme that came back over and over again related to the key issue – Education, Education, Education.
And as I was walking out the door one of the participants came up to me and shook my hand and told me there were still several people still debating around the ideas I had seeded on digital products and how they relate to manufacturing – I was told that many people had not made the link that really manufacturing was if you thought about it much wider than just building ships, or cars. And perhaps these ideas around digital manufacturing could be a foundation on which we could build further to give the UK more zest in the global manufacturing economy.
I have to say overall great fun so Thanks Dapo!!! – you were right I did thoroughly enjoy it.
