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SciCom23 Luxembourg

SciCom23 Luxembourg

I was delighted to give the keynote at this year’s Luxembourg National Research Fund science communication conference, speaking about artificial intelligence and immersive worlds. Such a fantastic community with some incredible work. Find more about them here

Science Communication in the Metaverse

Science Communication in the Metaverse

Fantastic visiting Oxford University to speak about innovative practices in science communication, harnessing the potential of digital to engage people differently.


SEG3

SEG3

Very pleased to Chair a panel at the SEG3 conference in London, focused on the metaverse.

Panel: The Road to an Interoperable Metaverse

Thursday, June 29

An open metaverse is the long term goal of many within the space, but what would this look like, and how can it be achieved? This session will explore:

The technological framework that needs to be in place to support the vision

The timelines to achieving an open metaverse

The role of blockchain

The role of universal game development standards

Ownership of digital assets in web2 and web3 environments

The impact of interoperability on consumers and enterprise

Host City 2022 Glasgow

Host City 2022 Glasgow

Some thoughts ahead of #HostCity2022 next week.

"COVID has brought about a step change in audience expectations, which must be seen in the context of a longer history of making our live and remote experiences increasingly immersive, flexible, and technologically enabled. The Web2 era nurtured this desire and COVID embedded the expectation, readying us for web3.

For sure, the error we make is concluding that this is a move away from the importance of physical space as a crucial component of a compelling experience, but what's changing is the capacity to level up the physical world with immersive integrations which have been prototyped during COVID. Audiences expect to be more active and the data driven event economy finds a crucial extension through volumetric and locative audience data.

The future of the elite event experience is phygital - e.g watching digital content layered over a physical swimming pool and seeing the projection of Olympic swimmers live into the space, as it happens, or the transition of triathlons into arena based virtual worlds, or running in your gym alongside athletes as they compete. These are our clues which shed light onto the future and it's as big a shift as was the design of the amphitheatre in ancient Greece.

In this context, rights holders need to massively rethink what they do and what they are in relation to their audience. Simply staging something isn't enough anymore. The Olympic Channel is a great example of how institutions are experimenting to find their feet in a world where the media proposition around events is vastly different. The MVP in this future is to wrangle the innovation community that can remake events for a vastly different set of audience expectations."

Join us for Host City in Glasgow next week!

TEDx University of Salford

TEDx University of Salford

Well this was an absolutely phenomenal event! Over 1500 households registered for the event and you can watch back my presentation on the TEDx platform here.

The ethics of virtual sports

The ethics of virtual sports

I've really fallen behind on updating my website, so I'm going to blitz through the last 3 months!

Way back in March, I gave a talk for the doctoral school of the University of Lausanne about ethics and xr sports. It was a great way to think through some new ideas and you can find the entire session here.

Global Sports Week

Global Sports Week

Global Sports Week took place last week, led out of Paris, France. I gave a Masterclass on Esports and, while so much was online, a huge amount of activity tool place. Here’s a bit about how it felt.

COVID-19 and the Scottish Parliament

COVID-19 and the Scottish Parliament

I was really honoured to be part of a session organized by the Scottish Parliament to advise the Scottish Government on their public communication strategy. The session was a really good opportunity to think about how we evaluate government communications, especially in times of urgent need for clear messaging and quick public reactions. I hope this may develop into some further research on the subject and may well need some international collaborators to get it done.

LDNUTD Education Programme

LDNUTD Education Programme

I was really honoured to take part in the inaugural esports education programme hosted by LDNUTD, a fantastic esports team in London. Reaching out to young esports players in London, the sessions covered all aspects of becoming an esports professional. I was really pleased to speak to school kids and beyond about how to think through developing a public speaking presence in the esports world. Here’s a bit of what we covered.

Brave New World Festival

Brave New World Festival

I was delighted to speak about Extraterrestrial Ethics this month for #BNW2020, a fantastic event, which brought together artists, philosophers, scientists, and engineers to think through some of the biggest problems we face.

My talk on ET Ethics gets into an expanded definition of alien life forms that takes into account the new biology we are creating through synthetic biology and the likelihood that our evolution may take place outside of planet Earth!

More on that later!

Esports Education Summit

Esports Education Summit

Earlier this month, the British Esports Association produced the Esports Education Summit, in partnership with Pearson Education. I was delighted to speak in a session with Dr Maria Stukoff, as host.

We covered career paths in esports, from how STEM subjects are really benefitting from the esports pathway to the creative work involved in designing increasingly immersive experiences in esports.

The Science Communication Crisis

The Science Communication Crisis

These are remarkable times and I was very pleased to have the chance to speak with people from the STFC and UKRI community about the importance of science communication. Here’s the re-run.

Our Digital Future: Thinking Through the Ethics

Our Digital Future: Thinking Through the Ethics

Today, took part in an event produced by the Manchester organizations Future Everything and MIDAS, focused on discussions about ethics and digital technology. You can view the whole session here.

"How can gaming and science come together?"

"How can gaming and science come together?"

I was delighted to take part in the week-long Pint of Science programme this week, especially as our event covered one of my favourite subjects - gaming. In my slot, i cover how Salford’s Game Lab inspired collaboration and why gaming is a great way to develop enthusiasm for learning. Here’s the video:

Taiwan Olympic Academy Conference

Taiwan Olympic Academy Conference

I am really delighted to be virtually in Taiwan this week, speaking at their National Olympic Academy about the relationship between ‘Sport, Health and the Environment. I get into everything from nanotechnology to virtual reality to discuss how an appreciation for planetary health must guide everything we do and the sense we make of human actions in a fragile and vulnerable world. I’m really pleased to make this available more widely on YouTube.

Sport 2.0

Sport 2.0

It was an absolute pleasure to be involved with an event this week run by the Tokyo 2020 Director of International Communications Tatsuo Ogura, who took time out of his role to produce an independent, charity liveathon about all things digital and sport. For 24hours speakers from all over the world covered a range of topics in an event he wants to become the SXSW of Japan.

My session takes you through the last 20 years of digital innovation, which leads up to how esports are changing the conversation about creativity, culture, and content. You can watch it back here

Artificial Intelligence and Esports

Artificial Intelligence and Esports

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This week, I took part in an event led by the United Nations agency ITU and the Global Esports Federation, examining points of intersection between artificial intelligence and esports. Other panelists included Ursula Romero, Chris Overholt, Chong Geng Ng, Bryn Balcombe, and our host was the amazing LJ Rich. We covered a wide range of subjects from how esports integration with AI is driving ground breaking research and the possibility that AI may just save the world from a range of catastrophic risks.

Currently working on a full article to examine these areas, so stay tuned! Meanwhile, here’s the recording from yesterday.