Berlin Conference

I am trying to get in gear for my session at Berlin Educa 2010 on 2nd Dec. The Daily Content has to be about the process of producing THe Daily What the online news service for schools.

My idea is to get the delegates to work a bit and make that day's edition.

Olive Tree

I got an olive tree coming to me in the post for a spcial sunny spot and a hope to reach the spring again in few months. Working many days a week in my garden office, I count on it to get me inspired at least half the year !

Bewitching

While thinking about avatars, faces and the like, I have to post this witch picture - a little skillful painting to turn an angel into a wicked witch !

Avatars lift off

It looks like liftoff for the paperwork mired Avatars project, which has been a victim of half term holiday.

If this week gives time to complete all the forms, we should be in go mode

A colleague in New York is touting it for the social media industry at Ad Tech conference

Here's a background spiel

Z/Yen Group, a London technology and finance consultancy, is leading a UK Government-funded strategic research collaboration to create Avatar-style interfaces as a screen-based application for automated marketplaces. In media technology, the prime application will be a new approach to algorithmic trading in ad exchanges and RTB markets. This market in the UK is estimated to be worth £ 130mn by end of 2010[1]. There will also be applications for automated execution in larger sectors such as online gaming and robot-based financial trading.

The Avatars project at Z/Yen will enable trading algorithms in any automated market to be programmed by changing the characteristics of an “Avatar” animated character. Changes to Avatars’ appearance will alter their trading scripts and thus their market strategy. Vice-versa, market participants will also be able to “read” the strategies of other market-playing avatars intuitively from their facial expressions. The experience of playing a market will become more like that of playing a game simulation on X-box. Research shows that animated avatars can reliably and effectively convey many types of information to viewers through facial expression, gesture, clothing etc[2].

The usage scenario is that a market participant will create an Avatar as an additional control interface for their automated trading algorithms in the online marketplace. Today, a market trader views his/her automated trading scripts purely in terms of numerical parameters, typically on a dashboard of read-outs and data inputs. The aim of this research, is that traders will also be able to view their market tactics intuitively through an Avatar.

We believe at Z/Yen that Avatars will allow a more direct, dynamic and personality-based view of a market – and in our research we will test the evidence for this. For real-time markets in media inventory, with microsecond decisions executed by algorithm, the ability to instinctively understand a trading tactic will yield commercial advantage as well as gains in usability and transparency.

The Avatars research project will be delivering a set of APIs for linking an animated character GUI to core trading algorithms, and to animation platforms. It will also be delivering evidence of trading performance and advantage. The Avatars project builds on several successful Z/Yen Group projects in financial innovation, use and display of trading information and managing market risk[3].

By project close in August 2011, this will be near-market research, and Z/Yen is interested in media trading applications with commercial exploitation partners. Parties interested in finding out more, should contact Project Leader Stephen Haggard at stephen_haggard@zyen.com.

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[1] Exchange Wire 10 Sept 2010

[2] For example: Recognition Profile of Emotions in Natural and Virtual Faces, Dyck et al 2008

[3] Financial Laboratory, Best Execution

Is there a Scottish new media scene

These guys have tried to launch a distinctively Scots take on social media.

We covered it in The Daily What as a police story

I'm more interested in the Oxfam Scotland thinking on making a citizen journo network. This would really work for a country with a passionate connection at grassroots to overseas development.

Oxfam Scotland's plans for a citizen journalist network - Be Good Be Social 27th Oct 2010

View more presentations from Be Good Be Social .

Don't Get Website, Get Twittering

Don't Get Website, Get Twittering

My fine local organic shopkeeper, Costas of The Olive Tree, reports he has spent £1000 building his website.

What business will it bring him ? And what grief and effort to keep up to date.

When a simple twitter broadcast daily to the customers will be fresh and keep them coming in.

Time to bail out of websites for most of us.

African School visit worth several conferences

E-learning Africa Conference - presenting a session in Lusaka last week. My wife comes for the trip, and sets up a few day's teaching exchange in a Lusaka orphanage school run by SOS Childrens Villages. On day 2: "come to this school with me you will learn more than at a hundred conferences"

Correct. The technology and hardware infrastructure is good. In many ways, better than the London school our kids goin terms of play facilities But it sits in the director's office. Similarly the books. There aren't enough pencils for each child to work simultaneously. But there is an internet link and PC in the director's office. The CD player sits in the director's office.

However, the kids are wonderful