Investment Forum by Connect Yorkshire

On 7. July, Connect Yorkshire organised the Investment Forum, a one-day event at the Aspire in Leeds with the opportunity for investors to meet businesses with good potential for future growth. I was involved in two roles in this event: In one role I have been a mentor in the group of advisers who would give businesses advice on their presentation at this event, where they would seek funding and would show their prospects in the best possible light. In the other role I represented together with Prof Rod King (Carnegie Faculty) our own project "Virtual Runner". Unlike most of the other participants, we did not plan to give a presentation, but we simply presented our poster, next to the "Proof-of-Concept" fund table.

We arrived in the morning around 9am at the venue. Unfortunately, setup time had been between 8-9am, and while I was carrying our poster to the setup location, the first investor guests already had arrived, zipping their coffee and mingling around for networking. At our table I realised that we did not have any stand for hanging of affixing the poster - I must have miscommunicated our requirements... fortunately Danielle came up with a few stripes of Duck tape, and we could affix the poster to the big column next to the table. We setup the Virtual Runner software on Rod's laptop, and were able to give quite a few demonstrations to many people who were interested in seeing it. The two lovely ladies Amanda Robinson and Danielle Ward did a great job in making sure that the exhibition of the posters and the whole organisation of this event went well!

The presentations by those companies who were seeking investment were very interesting. Quite a mix, from simple but innovative solutions to high technologies. Very interesting to observe the different presentations styles. A panel of three experts from the venture community were moderating and were asking questions to the presenters after their talk.

The Aspire building is a very interesting architectural structure from Victorian times. It has been remodelled and modernised inside and is a very nice venue for these kind of events. One remarkable feature which I got to enjoy were - the gents toilets. Never have I encountered anything similar: somewhat indirect lighting, there are candles lit in glass containers, the main pissoirs are long glass bowls along the walls, the water for washing hands flushes from flat and wide fossetts into the basins. After entering these rooms it takes a while before one realises the purpose of all the installations, so unusual is their design!

Getting Ready for Conference

This night I will have to get up before 3am... for a flight to the US. I will attend over the coming weekend the Mathematics and Computing in Music (MCM) Conference 2009. Have a poster there, about the Riemann Tonnetz. My contribution was to determine a numeric parameter of this model, but I made an assumption that was critisized by the reviewers of my submission: I put out the theorem that Major and Minor third are equivalent in their "tonality consonance". I put forward some argumentation for this, but there remained some doubt... I hope to be able to convince the experts that this is a valid approach that I proposed. The consequence would be a metric for determining the degree of "consonance" in a music piece, allowing to judge the melody or the harmony for consonance in quantitative terms. This may be useful for analysing / searching / retrieving online digital music.

ISMAR: Posters (2nd Photosynth)

With the pictures I took today, I now created a quite elaborate photosynth: with 97 photos and a synth quality of 100% (no picture was left out) this is the best synth that I have made so far. Each poster can be viewed in its full resolution as a separate picture.

ISMAR: posters

Here is a Microsoft Photosynth of the ISMAR poster room. A more detailed synth is in preparation, this one here is just the "first try".

Difficult to print an A0 poster in Leeds...

On Sunday night I finally found the time to design my poster, representing the Centre for Creative Technology. I thought it would be easy to find a shop which could print it in A0 size. But when I looked at the Fedex/Kinko site, where I had printed that nice poster for the 2005 AXMEDIS conference, I noticed that they are no longer in Leeds, only in London. I had asked the day before at Staples, but they only print A1, and laminate only A2. I could split the poster, but this would be only an emergency option. A friend had told me about a copy shop near Leeds Uni. As I pass it, it appears to be closed for holiday. In many of the online directories, one company was mentioned: Baskind Imaging. I had tried their website, but I only had gotten their reply "website cannot be found". I had called their phone number, but nobody had picked up. When I finally went to their address, 54 Otley Road, there was a sign that parking is only for Baskind Imaging customers. But the actual store was not there. I ask the clerk of a printer cartridge shop which now seemed in its place, and he told me that they have moved two blocks futher. Ok, I walk there. No sight. I go back to the car and drive along where the clerk had told me the shop would be. No avail. Only private residences. some churches. Am I stupid or what? This search for a simple print job becomes quite frustrating.

I have to go back to my office and search the web again... There I find something promising: Printer In Leeds. They have a nice online chat. I sign on to ask if they can do the job. Alice answers, yes they can, but it would take a while to ship it to me. Can I not pick it up? No, because they are - in London. So what about their name "Printer in Leeds"? Yes, they are currently looking to hire a representative in Leeds.

I feel like I am in a parallel universe, where everything that business do is aimed at getting no business. What kind of attitude is this? Who came up with that business name? Why not call it PrinterInLondon? I am getting desperate. Find another company, get a quote, is over 100 pound. Ok, I am willing to pay this, would be reimbursed from my EU grant.

But then I finally hit the jackpot: Deepblue Digital. Here is a company who is willing to do business. Of course, they could make the music on their web page an optional item, instead of forcing the viewer to listen to it, but they respond quickly to my inquiry. I had called them, get a call back that they can do it. I send them the PDF and the Powerpoint File around 12:00 noon, and at 16:45 I get a call back that the poster is ready. Printed and laminated, and trimmed to my specifications. Great! I drive there to Roundhay Park to pick it up. Price: 19.90 £ for the A0 print (which is extrodinarily affordable) plus another 19.90 £ for the lamination. Plus VAT. In any case, they have the lowest price I had found, and they were actually able to do it. I can recommend them highly! And the poster looks great. Aside from my own mediocre design for it ...