Academic Network 07 Conference (2)

The Academic Network Conference started yesterday with some 40 participants. The number of participants changes as there is also a meeting of the nominees in another part of the city. And some of the professors, lectors and instructors move back and forth depending on the subject.

The Academic network Conference had yesterday roughly three to four themes. Most prominent was the theme of mobile. It is clear that the schools are desperately trying to get material together for teaching purposes as well as for assignments. And I do not see too much of involvement from commercial and not-for-profit telecom research institutes. Of course this might be because the colleges do not find an entry into these organisations; on the other hand it might be that the organisations are not eager to be part of the educational institute. But I will come back to the mobile theme and especially to the mobile games.

Another theme was the social environment and digital media. Christina Handford, a 2003 EUROPRIX Top Talent winner from the UK, presented her initial inventory on teens and digital media for her Ph.D. Rodica Mocan, from Babes-Bolayi University in Cluj (Romania) made a presentation on happiness and the family in a digital media framework, a study which she is performing with a colleague in psychology. Both studies look very interesting and should give some extensive social insight. I will come back to these lectures later on. Also the social network were touched upon by Joanna Skoczkowska, who works for Procter & Gamble in Poland in her presentation To poke or not to poke..

Interesting was the presentation on Aesthetics as an attribute to usability by Raphael Kominis from Edinburg (Scotland). The subject is interesting as I saw a relationship with the presentations which were made in Hungary amongst others by Dalia Matijkiene and a colleague. It looks like EADiM might start up a special interest group in this area. Of course aesthetics is a difficult subject, which in practice gets aggravated by the cooperation of designers and producers.

During the day we had a working unit of the one hundred dollar PC. It was great to have the device in my hand. It looks great and is very intuitive. It reminds me of the forthcoming ultra mobile PCs (UMPC), such as the ASUS EEE (which is on my wish lit for Christmas, but which most likely will not arrive in the Netherlands before next year). An advantage is that the hundred dollars PCs are pushing the price for those UMPCs down in some cases and will start introducing open source.

Today there is a presentation of the Valnet-EMIN network, a virtual learning network In the project a group of European universities offers a MA degree to people working in multimedia companies. In this project the European Academy of Digital Media (EADiM) is involved. It is an exciting project to which I will return after the conference.

Later this afternoon the participants of the Academic Network will move over to the Kunsthaus for live presentations by the nominees of the Top Talent Awards. The nominated teams can present their projects. It is like a pitch for fame and for some teams it is a general rehearsal in order to pitch for venture capital. Tonight there will be the EUROPRIX Top Talent Award Gala. As the nominees have not been informed about their winning positions, all teams come with high expectations.

Blog Posting Number: 932

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