Death of Distance – mixed reality debate

A unique mixed-reality debate on whether the use of cutting-edge technology can change the nature of collaboration.
Due to demand venue has been changed to The Midland Hotel, Manchester
5-7pm BST, 27th April 2010.

This groundbreaking event, funded by NorthernNet, will see a panel of experts from across the globe participate in a real-time debate. Panel members will attend the debate either as avatars or by live video conference link streamed into a virtual 3D auditorium. The debate will be hosted by Phil Jones from Brother UK, who will attend both as an avatar and by video link from a real-world event held in central Manchester. The debate will take place in front of an invited audience drawn from the north of England’s creative and digital industries, who will be attending either virtually as avatars or as part of the live audience.

The event is being delivered through a collaboration between Corporation Pop, The Hamilton Project and The White Room.

How to take part

You have three options of how you can experience the Death of Distance, dependent on your location and the technology you have on-hand. The options are:

To participate in this innovative global event, register your interest and select how you will be attending.

The Panel Members

The panel is participating from across the globe and includes platform owners and platform users. Each panel member will give an overview of how their organisation uses either video or virtual conferencing. Following the presentations a debate will ensue facilitated by the Chair, who will actively encourage lively discussion around the issues raised. There will be opportunities for Q&A from both the real world and virtual world audiences.

Phil Jones — Chair

Sales & Marketing Director, Brother UK

Phil spearheads the UK operations of Manchester based, Japanese multi-national, Brother. Responsible for sales of in excess of £100M PA, as well as the strategy and delivery of its operational performance. A prolific blogger, with his business blog www.philjones.biz having readership in over 60 countries, Phil is a keen promoter of how businesses need to stay relevant in the changing landscape of life. He is an accomplished speaker and has won a raft of awards, including European Industry Professional of the Year in 2008. Phil will become president of the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce in October 2010. Outside of work he is a keen road-cyclist, a self-confessed technology geek, and soul music fan. He can be found on Twitter at www.twitter.com/philjones40.

Connecting from: Manchester, UK

Adam Nelson

Executive Director of Business Operations, Linden Lab

Adam Nelson joined Linden Lab, creator of Second Life, in 2008.  Adam is responsible for overseeing all enterprise business and consumer revenue operations. He brings over 15 years of experience guiding business and product direction with an emphasis in learning and collaborative systems technology.  Prior to joining Linden Lab, he served for 10 years as the SVP of Product and Chief Learning Architect at a leading global technology company, where he established expertise in building effective technology solutions to meet complex organizational challenges.

Connecting from: San Francisco, USA

Joe Little

Senior Technology Consultant CTO, BP International

Joe Little works in the Chief Technology Office of the BP Group. The group looks at new and emerging technologies and seeks to accelerate adoption of those technologies within the group where there is real business value. His specialisation is in Virtual Worlds, Immersive Training and Collaboration and social networking. Over the past 4 years Joe and the rest of the CTO team have experimented with virtual worlds in a number of scenarios from IT strategy planning, training, collaboration, online events and consumer education. This has culminated in keynote presentations as well as lectures at Stanford, MIT and IE Business School, Madrid. He is father to two young and enthusiastic kids. When allowed he plays golf and writes music aimed at film and TV. His blog is at:
http://joelittle.typepad.com/dinosaur_thing/

Connecting from: Sunbury-on-Thames, UK

Neil Katz

Distinguished Engineer, IBM

Neil Katz is an IBM Distinguished Engineer and a member of the IBM Academy of Technology, currently responsible for the IBM technical strategy for immersive virtual worlds as part of the IBM CIO office. Neil’s extensive experience includes the mobile computing and wireless industries where he has designed and managed everything from mobile handheld devices (he holds patents on the power management system used in today’s ThinkPad computer) to architecting solutions for IBM’s largest wireless telecommunications customers. In addition he has in depth knowledge in technical areas such as online games, web 3D, messaging, wide area networking including content delivery networks, and network delivered applications including Software as a Service. Neil has filed over 50 U.S. patents and is an IBM Master Inventor.

Connecting from: Fort Lauderdale, USA

Stuart Smith

CEO, Woodholmes

Stuart has over 20 years experience working at the highest level in consulting and corporate environments where he has been employed as a strategist and change agent helping organisations devise and deliver a wide range of technology and people related projects. At Wood Holmes, he has worked on a range of innovative projects including highly complex multi-million pound ICT transformation and Public Infrastructure programmes. In recent years he has been involved in several futures and innovation projects looking at the impact of emerging technologies on organisations. Stuart has developed Wood Holmes presence opening offices in Singapore and carrying out projects in India, Romania, Czech Republic and Spain. He is married with 3 children and lives in Sunderland in the NE of England.

Connecting from: Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK

Professor Justin O’Connor

Queensland University of Technology

Justin O’Connor is Professor in the Creative Industries Faculty at Queensland University of Technology. Until September 2008 he was Professor of Cultural Industries at the School of Performance and Cultural Industries, University of Leeds. Between 1995 and 2006 Justin was Director of Manchester Institute for Popular Culture at Manchester Metropolitan University. His research led to the establishment of Manchester’s Creative Industries Development Service (www.cids.co.uk) the UK’s first dedicated local economic development agency for the creative industries. More recently Justin co-organised a conference in Shanghai on Creative Economies, Creative Cities, which has just come out as a book.

Connecting from: Brisbane, Australia

Donna Davidson

Project Development, BRC Imagination Arts

Donna Davidson works for BRC Imagination Arts, a global leader in attraction design. She leads BRC’s UK office serving a wide variety of clients, from brand centres, expo pavilions, and theme parks to cultural attractions and museums. Donna was VP of Project Development in BRC’s Californian headquarters before relocating to open BRC’s UK office. There she oversaw the project development for the award-winning Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum. In the UK, Donna has worked on the Exhibition Master Plan for the Museum of Liverpool, a new national museum opening 2011.  From her UK base, she has worked with a global team on the project development of the Information and Communication Pavilion for World Expo 2010 Shanghai, opening May 2010.

Connecting from: Durham, UK

Get Started

Please note that only Northern Net or Northern Net affiliated avatars can attend the Death of Distance debate virtually. To register an avatar please complete the 'register Interest' form and select the 'I'd like to attend virtually' button.

Download viewer

To access the Northern Net virtual environment you will need to install our viewer software (based on the Second Life® viewer). To install the software simply click one of the links below. Please note that this is public beta software. Feedback about any problems you experience, or suggestions about the viewer will be very welcome.

Northern Net Mac OS Viewer

Northern Net PC Viewer

Recommended System requirements

Your computer should meet these requirements or you may not be able to participate in the debate. Full system requirements (including supported graphics cards) can be found here

Mac OS
OS: 10.4.11 or later
Processor: 1.25 GHz or better
Memory: 1Gb or more
Screen resolution: 1024 x 768 or higher

PC
OS: XP or Vista
Processor: 1.5 GHz (XP), 2-GHz (Vista) 32-bit (x86) or better
Memory: 1gb or more
Screen resolution: 1024 x 768 or higher

Quickstart guide

When you first log in to the Northern Net virtual environment you will be presented with a series of boards which will guide you through the basics of communicating and moving in Second Life. We also strongly recommend that you read the online Quickstart guide which can be found here. We will also be holding an 'in-world' drop in session prior to the debate. Further details will be sent by email.