For anyone interested in making cultural shift happen, the annual TED-style for the Creative and Cultural Industries, Shift Happens, is the place to be on 08.07.13. Hannah Rudman is one of the speakers.
Watch the masterclass sessions to get an insight into some of the issues and opportunities raised by digital (or self) publishing. Whether you’re a reader, writer, author, publisher, or professional who creates or curates written work in the creative, cultural and heritage sector, you’ll be able to explore the emerging potential of using digital publishing tools to enable your written and literary output to have increased global reach, access, impact and scale, without so much carbon footprint impact.
Envirodigital‘s CO2 Savings Account App is now a demonstrable proof of concept, thanks to the work of two Edinburgh Napier University students: Phillip Scott and Daniel Cairns. The demonstrator of the app, which adds further functionality to the widget piloted by Envirodigital last year, is based around a database and modular web service all on the cloud.
For an overview of the app, watch this 2 minute video:
Over the summer, the demonstrator was developed by Phill with Dan’s support to be ready and live for 31st August: the finals day of the national SME Enviro App competition, following the selection of the Envirodigital’s CO2 Savings Account App idea down to the last five. Hannah Rudman of Rudman Consulting, the parent company of Envirodigital branded projects, fronted and led the student team, which was supported by Dr. Neil Urquart and Sally Smith of the School of Computing. The team presented to the high profile judges as well as to a wider public, which included representatives from the Scottish Government.
Although the demonstrator app did not win the SME Enviro App competition, the comments and connections from the judges were very positive. Ian Marchant, CEO of SSE and chair of the judging panel, praised the app’s ability to profile previously hidden CO2 savings; and SEPA, supporters of the competition provided internal and external connections to companies such as Cisco, BT, and Microsoft (who played host to the finals day in Edinburgh).
Hannah Rudman said: “This is great example of successful knowledge exchange between the professional and academic sectors. I could not have produced a working demonstrator of my idea without the support of the Edinburgh Napier team, and through their association with Rudman Consulting and Envirodigital, the Napier students now have experience of presenting at a high profile competition, and of building a demonstrator, which worked even during the most stressful of tests – the live presentation of it to the public! I’m really grateful to the team, and hope that the benefit of the working demonstrator will attract further interest in the app.”
For more information, or to discuss supporting the further development of the app, please email Hannah Rudman.
Creative Scottish organisations with ambitions to become more environmentally sustainable through digital technologies can apply for newly available Make:IT:Happen funding to AmbITion Scotland, which supports Scottish arts, culture, and heritage organisations to grasp the opportunities offered by digital technologies. AmbITion Scotland is investing over £400,000 of National Lottery funds provided by Creative Scotland in strategic digital development and Scotland’s arts, culture and heritage organisations are invited to apply for investment to capitalise on opportunities presented by digital technologies.
The Make:IT:Happen fund is part of the national digital development programme that Envirodigital parent company Rudman Consulting has designed and delivers with Culture Sparks, AmbITion Scotland: and has been created to help organisations to grasp the opportunities presented by digital technologies in order to grow business capability, capacity, creativity, and confidence in these areas. Make:IT:Happen funding offers support through four digital investment strands:
AmbITion Approach (up to £5,000) supports organisations during the early stages of their digital development by providing an external specialist to help them assess and develop a wide-reaching strategy for organisational change.
Digital Content Development (£500-£10,000) gives organisations the opportunity to enhance their digital development activity through the creation, or better use of digital content
Organisational Development (£500-£10,000) supports organisations to take advantage of digital technologies to grow their businesses, develop ideas and improve operational capacity.
Sustainable AmbITion (£500 – £5,000) supports organisations to be carbon-aware and improve their green credentials through funding new digital technologies or approaches.
Make:IT:Happen funding can be used to support a project in its entirety or to augment a bigger digital ambition. Funds are available to not for profit arts, culture and heritage groups and organisations with relatively little or no digital knowledge/experience as well as well as to those that have some competence with digital projects, but limited resources.
Hannah Rudman, Lead Consultant, AmbITion Scotland said: “The Make:IT:Happen funding strands have been specifically designed to support organisations adapt to the social, cultural, economic and environmental changes that the digital technology revolution is driving. Given the successes that have already been achieved through AmbITion Scotland’s work in this area with some of Scotland’s creative community, we’re looking forward to continuing an inspiring and rewarding digital journey.”
The Make:IT:Happen fund has evolved out of the work that AmbITion Scotland has undertaken since its inception on 2009. During that time, the project has enabled many organisations, large and small, digitally sophisticated as well as digital newcomers, to develop their businesses through opportunities offered by digital technologies.
Envirodigital is a finalist in the national Scottish SME Enviro App competition - we submitted an executive summary of an app we currently have in development for SMEs (Small or Medium-sized Enterprises) and microbusinesses to help them become greener.
The headline bandwidth figures are 40-80Mbs for 80-95% of Scotland’s premises by 2020, with the best connections physically possible pledged for rural areas. (Update 07.06.12) I’ve just heard first person Infrastructure Minister Alex Neil announce that £250m will be invested in the next 3 years in rural and remote broadband – mainly in the highlands and islands. The government expects the private sector to match that, investing c. £250m in urban areas. Fibre optic cable will be dug into the landscape of the Highlands and Islands to provide a substantial uplift to rural and remote bandwidth, although it might not reach 40mb. The government is also making a seed fund available – opening this month – of £5m for communities that want to scale up their broadband now, through community and local initiatives ahead of the roll-out of the national programme.
(Its interesting that there are over 3000 community projects running in Sweden in the countryside – “Fibre to the Farm” involves each community member pledging that they will dig their own trenches/create overhead cable carriers from their house or farm to the road: the provider then comes and puts the cable ducts and fibre in the roads, each participant pays €3-4k one-off connection fee. Sweden are also pushing for 50% of usage of their bigger bandwidth broadband to be used by community and citizen services – healthcare digital visits, e-school, etc.)
Next Generation technology opportunities:
Scotland can be THE Destination for clean, green, data centres – we have the natural environment to deliver this.
The business sector of Scotland will be able to move wholescale to the cloud with all services (delivery of e-services, taking e-payments, operational infrastructure systems). This is great news – I currently can’t advise highland and island organisations to move onto the cloud business critical services like e-payments as the satellite bandwidth is too slow, and latency issues with payment systems are a security risk. Cloud computing is also greener as clients can be thinner and organisations don’t need to upkeep servers on site.
Savings for households as they find it easier to shop online and find the best deals.
Different job opportunities. For example, Apple in Ireland employ call centre support staff who are homeworkers based in rural and remote locations: the essential advertised job criteria includes that you can prove you have min spec 5mb down, 1 mb up. Amazon’s criteria for remote and rural workers is 4mb down.
Faster trades and faster online gaming: real-time trading in Scotland will be possible without latency, with better ping times – meaning more auctions, games and trades won.
Less latency also means a better user experience with VoIP, teleconferencing and live streaming services, meaning more people will become comfortable with using them, and they’ll become a normal method of undertaking a meeting, event or training session.
Different job opportunities and better business connectivity means that service businesses can be set up wherever, and people can work from wherever, hopefully meaning less rural population decline, as well as far greener working practices with demand for less business travel and commuting.
Envirodigital’s 2011′s co-production with National Theatre Scotland Five Minute Theatre (#FiveMinuteTheatre) has been nominated for has won a Critics’ Award for Theatre in Scotland (#CATS12) in the Best Technical Presentation category.
The Stage quotes judge Robert Dawson Scott, theatre critic of The Times: “For once, it wasn’t the pin point accuracy or the polished slickness of the endeavour that impressed: it was the sheer scale of the ambition which made Five Minute Theatre – 24 hours of uninterrupted, brand new theatre, streamed live from all over Scotland, to the world – such an astonishing technical triumph.”
The World Business Council for Sustainable Development’s Future Leaders have launched a video offering thoughts on what 21stC leadership might need to look like. With many companies like Hitachi, Shell, Lafarge and PriceWaterHouseCoopers now creating senior management team posts like sustainability manager, climate change initiatives manager, and environmental strategist, big business are responding to climate change. Economic and legislative drivers may have created these posts originally, but listening to the holders of these posts another message is portrayed: leaders must look to the medium-long term and not just be short-termist. Leaders must serve, acknowledge grass-roots concerns, community action and initiatives and be ethical in knowledge sharing and collaboration. Many of the leaders point to the need for systems thinking and care in the process as well as end-product in order to be able to tackle the complexity of the challenges of climate change. Some of the most forward looking even talk about sharing the rewards (benefits, profits) with the people rather than just gaining for themselves and their companies!
The New World Centre’s new concert hall (Miami Beach, Florida by Gehry Partners – more about the architecture spec) has embedded 360-degree video projection technology that ensures world-class classical music performances can happen without the environmental impact of touring an orchestra, conductors, and or soloists from somewhere else. Advanced audio technology and connectivity to the internet via Internet 2 (the USA’s version of academic mega bandwidth network JA.NET). The solution allows (for example) a conductor in Australia to conduct an orchestra on stage in Florida – to a live audience of 757 in the concert hall, and an outside audience paying a much lower ticket price in the grounds of the New World Centre watching the Wallcast, and to a connected via a website virtual audience anywhere in the world. I love this movie captured on a mobile phone by an audience member watching the wallcast – picnics, cagoules, less pomp and less expensive champagne: classical music for the masses not the exclusives – a healthy future for classical music as it increases reach, scale and accessibility without increasing carbon emissions:
