DCRC - Digital Cultures Research Centre

In the frenetic wake of what we believe to be the first pervasive media producers summer school we didn't quite get around to blogging a weeknote for the week ending 23072010, so this is a 'fortnight note'.

The biggest expenditure of effort, energy and enthusiasm over the fortnight has to have been the aforementioned Summer School for Pervasive Media Creative Producers. There is a lot of documentation available from the blog for the Pervasive Media Knowledge Transfer Fellowship, through which this event took place. However, it is worth making some headline observations:

Prof. Jon Dovey and Dr. Constance Fleuriot led an action packed summer school that introduced students to the key aspects of performing the role of a producer in an emerging field.

We had fantastic external speekers imparting their hard-earned experience and wisdom:

• Dan Williams, Creative Techonlogy Researcher in the PM Studio, gave a nice overview of 'pervasive' technologies.
• Jo Reid, Creative Director of Calvium, led us through a brilliant review of evaluation methods for technology development.
• The chaps from Mobile Pie delivered a fascinating insight into the sort of work that they do, and how they manage the project process.
• Duncan Speakman took us through the process of getting commissioned as an artist and offered advice about how to manage that process.
• We had the dream team of Clare Reddington, Director of the Studio and iShed, and Mike Bennett, Director of E3 Media, providing invaluable advice about pitching.
• Hazel Grian guided us through the process of producing work for a larger project as a commissioned writer.
• Mark Leaver discussed funding streams in a difficult economy.
• Anna Clement of TLT Solicitors gave a fantastic presentation about the issues around copyright and intellectual property in and around pervasive media.

Our first alumni of the summer school are now back at the coal face, hopefully employing some of what they learned and we look forward to seeing some interesting productions from them in the near future.

We are in the final throes of confirming the finishing touches of the Paying Attention conference, which is fast approaching - 6-10 September. Check out the full programme online.

Our friends at ThoughtDen have pulled a few treats out of their bag of webby tricks and this website will get a little bit of sprucing up next week, so - stay tuned!

Finally, we're delighted to host a brief visit from Dr. Matt Wilson from Ball State University which has prompted some interesting discussion around critical reflections of geographic information technologies.