quicklink | the nottingham cleantech centre launches!

The GreenTech Business Network would like to announce the launch of the Nottingham CleanTech Centre (NCTC), the first incubator in the region dedicated to accommodating and supporting start-ups and small companies involved in clean technologies.

exciting!

something very close to my heart is the merging together of social media, ethics, technology and enviromental issues.  we have the ability to make our voices heard, the ability to do the right thing by the products and services we offer and the technology processes advancing and superlative speeds that we can make subtle changes to the way we engage with our enviroment.

my whole ark project is focused around what a single person can do not only to live more sustainable but redefine what a new fresh life looks like whilst still utilizing technology to improve the relations and contacts around us to be able to live in a digitally connected world with those assets around us with the internet doing the heavy lifting between it.

indeed the ark will use a lot of technology but in an optimized way, it will look at power and need over want, utilizing elements of the cloud to interact with at a glance without too much thought of taking time out to focus on the creation of the content but more of a virtual intergrated element of my day to day life -- taking social media and using it as a barometer or social ping to the people that lie between the studio and the off the grid enviroment. 

so it fills me with great pleasure to be in a potential hub of startups who are using clean, green technology focus to build out products, systems and ideas.  for me, it feels like a bit of a nirvana space and makes the last year of rounding out ideas with fibrecamp one the catalyst leading up to this new space.

what makes 2012 more exciting is the possibility quite quickly of fibrecamp III located in ghent in belgium as a european headquarters and makes spreading the idea of hyperlocal media based studios servicing the five or six blocks around it's area a real interesting hot pot of digital outreach with the businesses being more than just a partner graphic on a website.

it sparks regular interaction bringing down the potential 'head down desk' mode i see from so many companies when it comes to building out services.  sharing, in the business space is as much a requirement as it is for the social realtime world we live in.

i have a really good feeling about the cleantech centre in nottingham, we are going in at ground level, at the rebirth of a space and a refresh for a building that is already bought, it's owned -- it's not rented or has potential of being problematic -- it's a blank canvas of sorts with the potential to foster some fantastic green tech stars of nottingham and the midland arena.

best of all we get to help them understand the world of social media and create media around some of the exciting concepts and processes these green tech companies have which will obviously feed a foundation of topics for the ark project in 2012.

it's a perfect fit.  we can't wait to get started! :)

• Predictions for Cleantech in 2012 (environmentalleader.com)
• A Cleantech VC Who is Unconvinced of Man-Made Climate Change (cleantechies.com)
• Nottingham City Council budget consultation phase 1 (seaadvocacy.wordpress.com)
• Invest in Nottingham train officially unveiled (rail.co)

seriously, what the frack is that car park at the station all about?

are we really promoting more people to drive to the train station, or use the train station as the point that you bring your car too THEN get a train. really?

i mean don't get me wrong here. i think the outside of it with the sharp lines and different colours is interesting but i'm absolutely blown away about the size of this carpark.

surely it would have made more sense to utilize part of the carpark to push an electric charging location and car2go kind of system?

maybe it could have a bike system where people could rent out bikes as soon as they arrive into nottingham - those could then be dropped off at a variety of different locations across the city.

if each of the bikes had some kind of intergrated gps, check in system that would help for the social media side of talking about the bikes. just saying!

waste of money if you ask me.

christ it's been a busy week.

i've just managed to finish the brief edit and external sound bind of the interview with scott wilcox - the cto of sxsw itself.

it was good to get his viewpoint on the way that sxsw has scaled over the years and how they are improving with technology over the years to meet capacity.

talking of capacity i feel very close to it at the moment. after getting stuck in houston on monday and losing a day because of the weather it really put my week out of sorts.

that said, we still managed to do the reccy and ontheground event at the NTU and that all went super fine. having a super organised team helped and doing a reccy before hand as usual.

i'm now off to pick up my bella chella from burton, sitting on the train trying to fill in my dead time. i'm still behind thou but i did get my business cards all into mailchimp from last week in sxsweco which was a task i wanted to get done and dusted.

i've still got a stack of media to be making tomorrow for verisign and to catch up with the webperiphery release cycle on fibrecamp - stack of redesign work to do on the show pages as well.

it's finding the time. ..

quicklink | futurefactory

(sorry about the poor audio quality in the interview - lessons learnt)

today the team of myself, pcmcreative and ian dearman media were in an 'ontheground' capacity to document, tweet and garner attention for a fantastic talk about eco fashions from sass brown. we managed to get a brief interview before the session started about her travels, book and views on where sustainable fashion is today.

after the interview we shot some pictures with sass that she may be able to use on her website or facebook pages and we like to get this rounded media package on a half day or full day 'ontheground' project.  i thought they came out pretty good actually.

after our little photo shoot we managed to get access to the lecture hall and setup, we had already done a previous day reccy so we had managed to sort out the IT requirements for connectivity and a wired connection for the stream.  we ended up using wireless microphones from ian dearman media who was with us on the day because we could not really sort anything out with the AV team in time.

we had a few complaints about the screen in the stream but this was out of our control.  i had initially assumed that the wooden blinds on the side window moved but it seemed they are fixed and cannot be used as blinds and the AV team had already found the best setting they could for lighting and the screen.

we think that the projector screen contract and throw of the picture could have been adjusted but we were not able to get access to the projector controller or any help in improving that picture.  i should mention that we used flash media encoder in case we got any drop outs but it was absolutely perfect.  the audio in this stream was a really excellent thanks to ians sennheiser microphones we used.

NOTE | no audio until 8 minute 30 seconds

overall a fantastic first outing for the new triple pack team in the form of myself, pcmcreative and ian dearman media working together on providing the ontheground live stream and after meeting a gentleman called ken this week we might have access to an outside satellite truck for those normally hard to broadcast locations that we sometimes get asked to go on.

if your a nottingham business and your looking to live stream your event with full social media coverage for under a £1000 for the day do get in touch as we have the perfect solution for you.

i don't think i'll every get over the sheer amount of product in shopping centers in america. well not just in america but the amount of product in general we have in supermarkets.

how much does go to waste? - why have we never done anything to address that dead time problem when you do go super market shopping? - we push these shopping trolleys around sometimes in a blur pulling things that spark at us from the sidelines between the coupon codes.

what if you had a tablet based unit in the trolley, making suggestions after auth (maybe qr code or something) about what you should be eating based on your other information on your diet, weekly workout and upcoming birthdays etc.

add to that row awareness, food discounts and leaderboard social updating i think you could really take that shopping experience to the next level and communicate in a multitude of ways - both sales advertising, eco and well being.

notifications - it's the key to doing something in the space your at right now.