Category Archives: Bristol

Sep 10

Beyond the Console

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I was at the Creative Technology Network event last Thursday: Beyond the Console.

Toby Barnes from Pixel-Lab kicked things off with a very brief overview of some South West Screen sponsored research on the Games Industry in the SW (not yet on Pixel-Lab, SW Screen or CTN websites).
Toby noted that the 5 year technology shift (PS, PS2, PS3 etc) makes for a very distruptive development cycle. There is very little other than basic principles that can be carried from one platform to the next, a huge barrier for small developers. Examples of disruptive (and expensive) changes were increased photo realism & development assets, improved AI, etc, (Toby was going quite quickly so I missed some detail).

Interestingly Toby noted that across the UK games sector there has been a dramatic reduction in the number of separate companies; 400 – 150 companies in few years – but that more people are now employed in the sector than before.

New business models were touched upon (and discussed in the Open Spaces session at the end of the event), especially the download market for consoles and increasingly episodic design. Despite the event title, the work Toby had been asked to undertake was concentrated on the main console platforms and so there was little data from this report on casual gaming & mobile / micro games as a sector in the SW.

The perennial issue of businesses in the SW choosing not to be more successful (Life style businesses) came up again, but coupled with the proposition that to be successful they’d have to leave the South West.

Best quote of the event (can’t remember direct context but I think it was linked to the meat grinder approach to big budget console games that replace game play with more detailed graphics and explosion effects, and thus why sticking to smaller casual games): Developing games that are actually fun!

Darius Pocha of Enable talked about their work on building a branded campaign in Second Life, mainly for the WWF conservation island (conserving Panda bears, not aging wrestlers as Darius pointed out). :)

In a slightly surreal moment Darius was describing the use of the fairly recent introduction of VOIP to Second Life being used by BBC Radio One to host an ‘outside’ broadcast on WWF stage.

One good point (I thought) was the point that traditional brands shout really loudly about how good they are and ‘better = louder’; Darius condends that this doesn’t work in the ‘brave new web 2.0, social networks, virtual world thingy’ ; you can’t replicate RL online.

Darius closed with two slides showing technology developments in console games on the last 5-10 years (going from a handful of pixels representing a car with wheels, to the super-photo-realistic-first-person perspective) and asked; what happens when you factorup the development in consols to virtual worlds?

Phil Stenton of HPLabs on mscape

Much of this was describing the potential of immersive and pervasive media. One interesting proposition was that WOW was the new golf – as much about turning up and chatting with your friends as with slaughtering orcs. Ended with plug for the planned Pervasive Media College.

Hazel Grian of Licorice Film on producing an Alternative Reality Game
Much of Hazel’s short presentation looked at Meigeist, a ARG in Bristol over summer that was by accounts very popular. I had a quick dabble but never really got into the game. One question that came up from several audience members was if anyone had made a commercial ARG that you could sign up for like a Murder mystery weekends (which are popular here in the UK at least)? The consensus was that, for the moment at least, ARG’s are the domain of art projects and advertising driven brand strategies.

Steve Hinde ran the Ideas Generator based on Open Space which was great but a lot of people seemed to dissapear after the second session and before the ‘serious’ networking began. My excuse was Open Coffee was starting down the bar. :)

Aug 21

Entrepreneurship in Bristol

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There have been lots of events and initiatives to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship in Bristol. Two of the latest have been Simon starting Open Coffee Bristol and the Creative Technology Network (CTN), this last launched with some fanfare by Michael B Johnson (Moving Pictures Group Lead at Pixar Animation Studios).

Open Coffee is really beginning to build some momentum with a regular cadre and new folks dropping in to see what’s happening, which is nice. We still haven’t quite reached the attendance size or mix that Saul’s getting in London, which could be in part to the time the events are held. When Simon called the first OC Bristol event, it was a morning coffee at Starbucks next to Temple Meads train station. It was suggested that 8am wasn’t a good time for the creative crowd that are probably Bristol’s strong point (though mobile tech is putting in a good showing recently). So the time was put back to the evening and the location switched to the Watershed. Although we’re getting the innovative and creative crowd, we’re not really getting the investor crowd.

There are rumblings about a more focused approach to bring the innovators and investors together (probably in the New Year) which will tie in nicely with Speed Camp and their outcome. It will be great to see Bristol fulfil more of it’s potential, hope to have more to post shortly.

So when is the best time for innovators and investors to mix – 8am or 8pm?

Jul 20

Launch of Creative Technology Network

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Last night was the launch of the CTN here in Bristol at the Watershed. The keynote (which was fully packed out) came from Michael B Johnson from Pixar.

I’m not sure if Michael’s talk will be up on the CTN or Watershed sites as he had been told by Pixar not to allow recording (so this is from memory rather than live notes). The main points that really resonated was the instruction to ‘fail fast’ and iterate quickly towards a great movie. Josh has a great post on the ‘Fail cheap, fail fast, learn & move on‘ approach from a VC perspective. Ewan has a great cross-over post on the approach (or lack thereof) in education. Michael went in to some detail about how they used technology to allow them to creatively generate new plot nuances and stories that could then be refined, whittled, mashed, etc into the final story. Each film gets made twice, once in story and once for ‘real’. The software that Michael and his small team address pain points in the creative process and redistributed the power in intelligent ways. One example allowed the story artists to very quickly sketch directly into a time line to generate roughly edited scenes with their drawings. This got over a pain point (scanning in hand drawn sketch frames so they could be digitally edited) and sensibly redistributed power so that the artists could create a story (which they wanted to do) and the editors got much richer and complete material to refine (which they wanted), and Pixar got to a compelling story much quicker and with less tension between these key people in the process. Win-win-win; everyone’s a winner!

He also talked about the artists in developing story that had four talents;

  1. draws really well
  2. draws really fast
  3. works well with others
  4. always has another idea

There was a load more other great stuff (including footage from Ratatouille, early rushes from the Incredibles, and some interesting voice casting for Buzz Lightyear).
In Q&A someone asked about the divide between creatives and technologists and Michael pointed out that there wasn’t a divide. Great software developers (in his opinion and the general consensus during drinks afterwards) was that great coders can code/develop really well, really fast, are good in a team and always have another idea/option/suggestion. The audience was (from what I could tell) a typically Bristol mix of technology researchers from BBC, HP, Bristol & UWE, independent film & screen, digital media, entrepreneurs and social enterprises. I had a really great chat with Tom Alcott (Social Network Company) about the use of social network mapping to improve internal business operations and also about his partner Katie’s social enterprise Frank Waters.

Jun 08

Entrepreneurial support

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Pretty much since leaving University I’ve been involved in supporting business change, either from within or as an external agent. Universities have always been pretty central to that change process (either as sources of innovation and entrepreneurial activity, or as expertise engines to support change in businesses). More recently I’ve become increasingly interested in the start-up and highly dynamic micro businesses that have so much potential.Around Bristol there is a genuine wealth of creativity and innovation around the digital media sector. There are good historical reasons for this (the BBC, HP Labs, two strong Universities, etc). There are also strong cultural aspects of Bristol that means many great companies and individuals are, or like to think of themselves, as outside the main stream.  Some of this cultural aspect was undoubtably reinforced with the music scene over the last 20 years where Bristol has produced many underground stars (some of whom went above ground for a bit e.g. Portishead).

What this has left is a highly dynamic, innovative, technology enabled city that doesn’t like (or sometimes want) to be mainstream. Which is fine until you try and build high growth start-up businesses with investment support.  There are of course lots of networking events, there is lots of investment capital, there are business clubs, there is beer; unfortunately they haven’t quite come together as positively as many (including myself) believe they could/should.

So over the next couple of months I’m going to be working with as many people as will put up with me to link up all these great attributes of the city/region.

If you’re an entrepreneur, investor, business builder, inventor, etc, drop me a comment. Lots of stuff will be happening over the coming weeks most of which I don’t know about yet but stay tuned and we’ll find out together!