Understanding Sport Organizations

When I first started out as a PhD student, a new Professor came into my school and secured me a bursary and was my second supervisor. His name was Professor Trevor Slack and he was a real legend in sports management. He didn’t really get philosophy, but he did understand the value and currency of research and his approach stuck with me throughout my career.

This month, I am really pleased to take part in the publication of the third edition of his significant textbook called ‘Understanding Sport Organizations: Applications for Sport Managers’, published by Human Kinetics.

My chapter focuses on “Technology” and covers a raft of issues, from the innovation chain to esports.

Sadly, Trevor never lived to see this publication, but he certainly had a huge influence on my career and I’m delighted to be a part of this book. It’s used on sport management courses all over the world and certainly takes me back to the early days of my career.

The Digital City Festival

It feels like a while ago now, but in March we put a massive amount of energy into the inaugural Digital City Festival, working across the university, closely with the DCF team.

We ran fringe events, took part in the expo, and assisted with a whole range of preparations. I was also very pleased to be part of the steering panel and look forward to the next year!

I was especially proud of the fact that the whole of the university got behind our delivery.

Esports Business Mixer

On 10th March, my colleague Dr Maria Stukoff pulled together an amazing esports business mixer event in Manchester, amidst all kinds of cancellations due to coronavirus. It was fantastic to see players, managers, owners, and producers come together to talk about where esports is going and to think about how universities can contribute.

Our Esports Science Insights platform seeks to bring knowledge from academic research to industry pros to help figure out what we know and what we still don’t know about this rapidly expanding world.

Esports @ BBC Digital Cities

On 28th Feb, my colleagues and I at the University of Salford produced an event called ‘Esports for All’, which brought together colleagues from all over the university to examine how esports can expand into a space where everyone feels welcome.

It was a really fantastic afternoon, with friends from the British Esports Association, British Cycling, and NUEL. We covered so much ground, but most interesting for me was how we brought together people from very different perspectives to talk about the continual expansion of this remarkable world of esports.

Drones, China, and the Coronavirus

Recently spoke to DeZeen magazine about stories regarding China’s use of drones to police citizens in the context of the coronavirus. The big story here isn’t really that this may be happening, but that the utilisation of drones by a range of enforcement services is likely to become commonplace and has been enabled by a growing utilisation of drones within military operations.

Here’s the link to the full article

Cyborgs roam among us

Zoltan Istvan has attracted a lot of attention in recent years for being the world’s first transhumanist politician. This thoughtful article gives some insight into how transhumanism gained momentum over the last 20 years and what it still needs to go further.

Our Eyes in the Sky

I’m very proud to have published an article about Drones in The Big Issue. The article tells a bit of the story of my journey into this world, leading up to the publication of my new book, which spans everything from environmental research to military applications and artistic works.

Here’s a link to an edited version

Re-Radicalising the Knowledge Pioneers

I was delighted to provide a keynote for the Dutch research funding organization NWO, focused on the role we adopt in science as public intellectuals. It was as much a call to action, as a statement about the value of being publicly present as an academic.

My main point was that our absence from public life leaves the world vulnerable to those for whom information serves simply to reinforce their power and the independent academic is a crucial component of democracy.

Luckily, we have a lot of really remarkable scholars who are taking up this challenge and occupying the role of public intellectual. So, we have a lot to be optimistic. A key factor though, will be for us all to remain digitally agile, so that we can cut through the noise of digital media, but also make the most of the latest platforms that are available.

Science Communication in Times of Global Catastrophic Risk

I was delighted to give a talk to staff and students at the Natural History Musuem in January, as part of their SciFi series. The talk focused on identifying urgent considerations in a climate of uncertainty around a number of major, global transformations.

I kicked off the talk by discussing the importance of utlising creative, digital technologies to put science where it can reach people, showing the game Ark: Survival Evolved as a great example of how dinosaur knowledge can be found. We quickly then turned to transhumanism as a critical re-framing of the climate emergency, so as to encompass a range of other global catastrophic risks. In doing so, we re-imagine the problem at hand and achieve a clearer sense of the totality of the risks we face and what’s needed to address these concerns.

Future of Sport

It was really great to speak at Pro Manchester’s Future of Sport event, alongside my colleague Dr Maria Stukoff. We got into a lot of stuff, but most fun was talking about virtual reality and sports.

I think a lot of people wonder whether VR will go the same way as 3D, but it’s worth remembering that VR is still a developmental technology. Design glitches are getting fixed, new platforms are emerging to make a more comfortable experience and a lot of the people working within this space are really excited by the capacity to make the world more accessible by creating VR experiences of it. I know people who are creating VR interactives of the natural world, which are amazing. There’s a great everest video which gets into the waste left by climbers and how it gets cleaned up.

There’s so much around using VR for good and the health benefits of its integration with sports are vast. So, it may be a bumpy ride, but I think it’s likely that VR - or XR experiences - has reached a critical point in its history where it’s going to become a bigger part of everything we do.

Esports at the Lausanne 2020 Youth Olympic Games

Just back from the Lausanne YOG and what a whirlwind it has been. Most noticeable was the presence of esports, which included a dedicated zone in a building, as part of the cultural programme, along with some tournaments, conferences, a retro-gaming exhibition, and big stage demos.

What was particularly compelling about the presence of esports was the promotion of Swiss Made Games - nurturing the game developer community and putting them in closer contact with players. I had the chance to speak to a young player, Neo, who was a fantastic ambassador for the Swiss Esports Federation.

Very grateful to those walked me through the content.

Esports for Peace

Just before the summer, I was in Monaco giving a talk about how esports can contribute to peace processes. The event brought together many world leading athletes who have broken records for many years and it was great to have a chance to talk about the potential of esports for social good.

This will be worked up into a longer paper, but I’m passionate about the idea that esports can be a pipeline for all kinds of valuable social functions, from building greater innovation, to developing infrastructure, creativity, and community. These elements draw on the idea that digital rights are becoming a more crucial part of our world.

Esports and Virtual Reality

I recently interview for Ubeat, a Spanish esports OTT platform, which featured a film on the relationship between sports and esports. I spoke about the growing range of immersive experiences that are developing around the esports world and how these are beginning to approximate the kinds of things we do in sports.

We can draw a long line of interest in such forms of gaming from Dance Revolution to Nintendo Wii and to Pokemon Go. Bringing physical activity closer to the gaming space is one of my key areas of focus for the next couple of years and it’s such a compelling proposition, as we move into a world that is increasingly anxious about sedentary lifestyles and excessive mobile phone usage,

Here’s the video! And thanks to Emma, who set up the opportunity and produced the content, and to David and the team at Salford University for shooting the film for me during our Virtual Reality Fitness Marathon.

Check out our wider esports work over at Esports Science Insights.

Virtual Reality Fitness

Last week, we ran a Virtual Reality Fitness Marathon as part of our Creative Entrepreneurs day at the University of Salford, which focused on esports. It was a day for bringing people together across a range of disciplines within the university, from health, business, art, science, and digital, to explore the synergy between gaming and physical activity.

Here’s a wider piece on the topic I wrote recently.

"This week, I joined the British Esports Association Advisory Board!"

I am very proud to be joining the board of the British Esports Association this year, along with my colleague at Salford, Dr Maria Stukoff..

I’ve been in dialogue with BEA since 2016, when I met Chester King during the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. He was there producing what must surely be the first esports event to take place during the Olympic Games, and was suitably embedded within British House.

Since then, we’ve met all over the world to talk about the development of esports and BEA is really leading the world in terms of its values, concern about the importance of esports for social and personal development and I’m really looking forward to working more closely with them

Esports is the future of all sports – here’s why

Delighted to have another article published in The Conversation, focused on esports and the prospects of virtual reality. Take a peek here

Are you TikTok Ready?

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve been diving into TikTok, lecturing about it, writing, and trying to figure out what space there is for scholars to be present. It’s not a simple one to solve, but I think we need to understand how the consumption of media content is changing and so I put this at the heart of this article for the Times Higher. More writing on this to follow, but here’s the link to the article.

Esports Science Insights

I am very excited to share our new Esports research platform, which takes research findings from the academic literature and digests them into accessible insights for the industry. We’re now making informal inquiries to colleagues around the world to work as sub-editors for disciplines, so if this is something you’d like to do, then please drop me a line.

Level Up Human

Great to have recorded this episode with the Level Up Human crew and the amazing Sarah Withers from Salford.

Altmetric Annual Conference

Last week, I spoke at the Altmetrics conference on how we may think about our role as scientists, not as professionals, but as citizens. Here’s what I said.