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'Rural Needs in Scotland', a SICSA Smart Tourism and dot.rural event

16 March 2012, University of Aberdeen

Our spring event this year was held on the topic of 'rural needs in Scotland'. Organised in partnership with the dot.rural Digital Economy Hub, this was a one-day event held on Friday 16 March  at the brand new University of Aberdeen Library. The day was split into two halves: The morning was spent looking at existing projects in dot.rural and beyond which explore how the digital economy can support rural activities, with topics ranging from transport, through cultural heritage to small business support.

The afternoon was centred around genealogy and ancestral tourism, understanding the needs of visitors, venues and supporting organisations. The main aim of this event was to scope possible innovation projects to address problems in rural tourism for the forthcoming early summer deadline (date TBA).

Presentations as part of the event can be found by clicking here or using the links below.

Schedule

10.00 - 10.30 - Coffee and registration
10.30 - 10.45 - Opening
10.45 - 11.15 - Supporting Accessibility and Mobility for Rural SmartTourism - David Corsar, Research Fellow Computing Science/dot.rural DE Hub
11.15 - 11.45 - Using Open Linked Data to support Multiple-use cultural archives - Nava Tintarev, Research Fellow (CURIOS), Computing Science/dot.rural DE Hub
11.45 - 12.45 - Brightsolid Genealogy - A family business, CTO Malcolm Dobson and Marketing Director John Robertson
12.45 - 13.45 - Lunch
13.45 - 14.15 - Placebooks: Rural Participation, People and Place - Alan Chamberlain, Mixed Reality Lab, University of Nottingham, Mark Davies, FiT La, Swansea University
14.15 - 14.45 - Connecting Rural Enterprise for SmartTourism - David Emele, Research Fellow (ASSURE) Computing Science/dot.rural DE Hub
14.45 - 15.45 - Visit and guided tour to St Machars in breakout groups
15.45 - 16.30 - Summary and report back

If you have any queries about this event please email thea.dejoode@ed.ac.uk

Smart Tourism Navigation Challengefest, 31 October 2011

A group of 24 individuals from the academic, problem holder and SME community met on 31 October with the aim of:

  • Getting a fix on the key navigation problems that keep cultural and heritage partners awake at night
  • Exploring some of the solutions emerging from recent research projects in Scotland
  • Plotting out a navigation challenge that researchers in SICSA across Scotland can rise to.
Presentations included:

David Benyon, Napier University, Search and Surf

Stephen Brewster,University of Glasgow, Multimodal Navigation

Alan Dearle, University of St Andrews, The Gloss Vision

Eva Hornecker, University of Strathclyde, Mobiquitous Lab

William Mackaness, University of Edinburgh, Smartphone

Historic Scotland, Navigation to and on unstaffed sites

Smart Tourism Informal Evening

Venue: The University of Edinburgh 'Inspace' on the evening of Monday 29 March.

An informal evening was held to give news to the Smart Tourism community about the Scottish Funding Council decision to support the Smart Tourism horizon project led by Professor Jon Oberlander. A presentation summarising the Smart Tourism project provided a focus for discussion. 


SME Presentations Evening

Venue:
The University of Edinburgh 'Inspace' on Monday evening, 16th May 2011.

The aim of the event was to encourage discussion for Smart Tourism projects.  The event was well attended by the organisations involved and to begin the process, each small and medium enterprise (SME) was asked to give a 5 minute elevator pitch / presentation covering;
  • What we do
  • What unique/competitive knowhow and technology we have
  • What benefits there would be in working with us
  • How much effort can be put into a project
  • Example (if applicable) of a project relevant to the tourist / culture sector
Presentations

1. Smart Tourism Introduction        - Jon Oberlander

2. Advanced Display Systems Ltd - Campbell Cromar, CEO

3. AmbieSense Ltd                        - Ayse Goker / Hans Myrhaug
    Mobile Guide Solutions

4. Data2Text (YouTube video)        - Ian Davey

5. Kotikan (Loc8 Solutions)            - Gavin Dutch
    Smart Tourism

6. Pufferfish Displays Ltd               - Geoff Kell, COO

7. Radiator                                    - Stephen Hunter

8. Second Places                          - Mark Duffy
    Smart Tourism

9. SymetrIQ Ltd                             - Johnny Paterson 
    SICSA Smart Tourism Project

10. Next Steps                              - Jon Oberlander




Events Calendar


Summer School on Multi-modal systems for Digital Tourism

The Summer School on Multi-modal systems for Digital Tourism was held in St Andrews from June 27th – July 1st 2011. The aim of the summer school was to introduce a new generation of researchers to the latest research advances in multimodal systems. During this week five teams worked on a range of projects
which can be seen on the Final Project Page. This summer school was in the context of applications, services and technologies for tourists (referred to as Digital Tourism). Where mobile and desktop applications can rely on eyes down interaction, the tourist aims to keep their eyes up and focussed on the painting, statue, mountain, ski run, castle, loch or other sight before them. The program for this school focussed on multimodal input and output interfaces, data fusion techniques and hybrid architectures, vision, speech and conversational interfaces, haptic interaction, mobile, tangible and virtual/augmented multimodal UIs, tools and system infrastructure issues for designing interfaces and their evaluation. We welcomed participants from across SICSA, the UK and Europe who along with attending the lectures and session we had delivered five innovative and exciting digital tourism demonstrators.