Balance Mats for Special Effects, Military and Martial Arts Training?

Ian Bergman, MD,
Balance Mat

Met up with Ian Bergman and some of the team from Balance Mat, over lunch at Madam Lu yesterday. This was the first time I had sat down to eat with anyone since Canberra's lock-down commenced. It was great to be able to sit outside in the sun. The value of this mode of interaction was shown when Craig Davis stopped by on his way to Canberra Innovation Network across the road.

Balance Mat is one of those companies with a self explanatory name which requires some explanation. They are developing a balance mat: you stand on it and it tells you how good your posture is. This has application in medicine, sport, and leisure.  The innovation comes from using fiber optic sensors, to provide a rugged, reliable and accurate unit, with no moving parts.

Balance Mat are exploring markets and applications. It occurred to me this would be of interest to elite military units, as well as elite athletes, for training. It may also be of use for the video special effects industry. Normally stick on sensors are used to show the position of an actor's body, so that thy can be fitted with a virtual space suit, or green scales. However, it would also be useful to know exactly how they are standing. As it happens, Balance Mat are located at the Canberra Technology Park, the home of the local gaming & video special effects industry.

ACS Accelerator Hub for Sydney

The Australian Computer Society (ACS) have announced that their new Sydney head office will include an accelerator for tech start-ups. The new office will be in International Tower 1 Barangaroo, Sydney. This is a very new, very modern, very tall tower-block, at odds with the traditional location for an innovation centers. Such centers are traditionally in old, re-purposed industrial and commercial buildings. Fishburners is in an old Sydney warehouse, Spacecubed is in a former bank in Perth, Canberra Innovation Network in an old medical building, River City Labs an old department store in Brisbane.

Further afield the Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning at
University of Cambridge is in an old hospital (over-refinished in post-modern style). This is not just a matter of fashion: innovation depends on people meeting and learning to work together. The trappings of corporate culture can disrupt innovation and not in a good way.

Driving Canberra's Innovation Ecosystem

At the First Wednesday Connect hosted by the Canberra Innovation Network (CBRIN), I gave a sixty second pitch about my book "Digital Education". The people who pitched were then asked "What do you think Canberra needs to do to drive its innovation ecosystem?" and this ended up on a short video. Caught on the spot I ended up saying "The danger with any project with government support is it will get forgotten about before it has a chance to succeed". I am last on the video, so ended up with my image on the video thumbnail. CBRIN and how it uses the Cambridge Silicon Fen approach to industry development, features in my book.

Chat with Anthony Feint

Entry29 hosted a "fireside chat" today at the Canberra Innovation Network (CBRIN) with Anthony Feint, founder of Pen.io

Anthony described how he dropped out of university because he wanted to "build things" and went on to start several tech companies. He suggests that universities need to allow students to build and produce a portfolio of work.

ps: One advantage Australian university students have is that they can work in the USA for a year.

Life Without Lanyards Launch

"You don't have to hate the public service to leave".

Greetings from the Canberra Innovation Network (CBRIN )office, where Kate Lundy has launched Matt  Fenwick book "Life Without Lanyards". The book is for those considering leaving government service and moving to the private sector. In the USA this would be for people "Inside the Beltway" in the UK it is for Sir Humphrey's frustrated staff. In Australia it is for those in Canberra.

Canberra is reshaping itself, partly through necessity, from a public service town, to an innovation centre.

ps: Matt said "You don't have to hate the public service to leave". Perhaps should be added "... but it helps".  ;-)

Australian Government Digital Transformation

Miguel Carrasco from Boston Consulting Group will speak on "Accelerating the digital government transformation", at the Australian Computer Society in Canberra, 4:45pm, 14 April 2015.

The Prime Minister and Minister for Communications announced the "Australian Government Digital Transformation Office" (DTO) on 23 January 2015 "... so that government services can be delivered digitally from start to finish and better serve the needs of citizens and businesses ... The DTO will operate more like a start-up than a traditional government agency, focussing on end-user needs in developing digital services.". The ACS Virtual College runs a 12 week on-line course "New Technology Alignment" in how to identify such transformations. I am tutoring the course and the students are up to week 7 at present. Also I am designing an innovation coruse specially tailored for Canberra and will be discussing it in "Innovations in teaching innovation" at CSIRO ICT Centre on the ANU campus, 4pm, 27 April 2015.

ACS Enterprise Architecture Special Interest Group (SIG): Accelerating the digital government transformation 

The Australian Government recently announced the establishment of a Digital Transformation Office (DTO) to advance the national e-Government agenda. The Prime Minister and Communications Minister have stated that the DTO will operate "more like a start-up", bringing together developers, researchers and designers to put customer needs and user experience front and centre. The idea of government being as well designed and easy to use as AirBnB or goCatch sounds attractive, but just how feasible is it to create a digital startup inside government, and what can we learn from other Governments, like the UK, U.S. and Denmark, that have taken similar approaches?

In this presentation, members will learn about the approaches taken by global leaders in e-Government highlights some best practice principles for establishing a ‘digital office’ including the importance of whole of government enterprise architectures and standards. Miguel will cover why Australia is in a prime position to learn from and adapt best practice from these countries and accelerate digital transformation of the government, and the Australian economy.

Innovation ACT Awards

Greetings from the BoatHouse by the Lake in Canberra, where the winners of this years Innovation ACT have just been announced. This followed the pitch night on Wednesday.

The winners were:

• BehavioMatrix: This team is producing a diagnostic aid for depression. This would use sensors rather than a questionnaire or practitioner's opinion.
• KRIGE TECH: are offering a smart power system using switches controlled by a smart-home app to reduce energy use.
• OzGuild: This team scans trading cards for the "Magic: The Gathering" card game.
• Siege Sloth Games: producing more non-violent computer games (from the Academy of Interactive Entertainment).
• Vacant Space: provides vacant shops to artists and artisans.

There will be a workshop on 22 November 2014 on what is needed for innovation in Canberra.

Also there was mention of a new China Australia Innovation center at Kingston in Canberra, but I have seen any formal announcement of this.

Innovation ACT Pitch Night

Greetings from the pitch night of Innovation ACT, where teams of university students are competing for prizes by presenting their business ideas. The event is being held in the Inspire Center at University of Canberra. This was an excellent event (even though the team I was mentoring did not make it to this round). In August I dropped in on Philippe Kruchten at UBC  in Vancouver to hear about his "New Venture Design" course, where students are encouraged to enter a innovation competition as part of their studies. I am designing a similar course to be run alongside Innovation ACT.

The pitches:

1. The first team "Vacant Space" are promoting an advanced version of the "Renew Leichhardt" initiative in Sydney, which provides vacant shops to artists and artisans.

2. Team "KRIGE Tech" are offering a smart power system using switches controlled by a smart-home app. This is claimed to reduce energy use. However, I am skeptical that such remote controls save any energy, whereas simpler automation in individual devices does.

3. Siege Sloth Games are producing more non-violent computer games. This seemed the most mature of the pitches. The graphics were good (which they should be for a computer game project).

4. Bio-Mine: This initiative is for electronic certificates, similar to the Digitary service (based in Ireland). While ANU already uses Digitary (I was issued with a digital Grad Cert in Higher Education). However, I found Digitary's system clumsy to use and it has not had a high take-up. There is therefore room for a better product.  One interesting aspect is that Bio-Mine proposes to charge the graduate an annual fee and pay the university a commission. Also they plan to link this to the Intellidox product which ANU already has a relationship with. This sounds very promising.

5. BehavioMatrix: This team is producing a diagnostic aid for depression. This would use sensors rather than a questionnaire or practitioner's opinion. I am not qualified to asses the clinical validity of the technique, but if it works this could be a good business.

6. OzGuild: This team scans trading cards so that collectors can search for cards to complete their collection. While pitched for the "Magic: The Gathering" card game, but could be applied to other collectible cards.

7. Ingiv: This team organizes volunteers for non-profit organizations online. While pitched for non-profit organizations this may also be attractive for for-profit organizations who encourage staff to volunteer to work on projects. In many cases the companies have difficulty keeping track of what their staff have volunteered for.

8. CanBAR: This team has the best logo of the night (a stylized cocktail glass with a Google style map pin as the cocktail stick). Their product provides demographics of patrons for cocktail bar owners, via an App.One technique the team might try at their next pitch is to hand out cocktails. I was part of a team pitching a line of boutique spirits at one such event and we handed out drinks to the judges, which put them in a good mood. ;-)

9. Meeting Cost and Timer: This App is billed as "The Taxi Meter for Meetings". It estimates the cost of a meeting, in terms of staff and other resources used. This might be fun to have on a large screen during a meeting. Of course the solution is not to have meetings. I am not so sure about having his in the Microsoft Office Apps store. what I would like is an application for preparing for meetings, which would prompt for all the necessary materials for a good meeting and prompt those involved to try to complete tasks before the meeting, thus eliminating the need for a meeting. I noticed there are some simple Meeting Meters already, such as "Meeting Cost Meter".

10. Young Money: Comparing insurance policies for young people is the topic of this product. It was not clear how this would differ from the many insurance comparison websites already available.

Based on the presentations, my ranking of the teams from highest to lowest would be:

1. Siege Sloth Games
2. Bio-Mine
3. OzGuild
4. Ingiv 
5. CanBAR
6. KRIGE Tech
7. BehavioMatrix
8. Vacant Space 
9. Meeting Cost and Timer
10.  Young Money

ps: The Canberra Innovation Network (CBRIN) will launch on 7 November 2014. An open innovation event will be held on 29 November.

Canberra Innovation Network

Greetings from the ACS Canberra Conference, where Sarah Pearson, Interim CEO is talking about the "CBR
Innovation Network". Sarah had much news about the development of new high technology products in Canberra.One example was "DataPod Modular Data Centres" and another was IntelleDox. Sarah mentioned numerous other successful Canberra based high tech products  which most of the audience had never heard of. One way to promote Canberra as a centre for such innovation could be simply to let people know what has already happened. One way would be to have better websites with details of these, the problem being that companies are reluctant to mention they are in Canberra and the ACT Government has tended to build websites which are not well indexed by search engines. At the moment I am mentoring a team of ANU students competing the the "Innovation ACT Competition" sponsored by the ACT Government. My suggestion for promoting Canberra was in: "Building Arcadia: Emulating Cambridge's High Technology Success". Recently in Vancouver for ICCSE 2014 I dropped in on Philippe Kruchten at UBC Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is involved with the "New Venture Design" course (APSC 486), where engineering and business students learn to produce a business plan for a product. The students are encouraged to enter a innovation competition or program as part of the course.

Sarah said CBR  Innovation Network would have a simple one page website and then look at how to build a system for matching up people. My suggestion would be to use a free open source text web software, so that the information is well indexed (it does not have to look good). How to link up people is not a solved problem and the organisation should not waste too much time on complex software (SpaceCubed in Perth use Yammer, as do CSIRO).

I asked Sarah if "Canberra" was a good brand for selling high tech products in Australia, particularly to the Federal Government which prefers to buy imported products.  She replied that CBR Innovation Network was building on the ACT Government's "CBR" brand (which I had never heard of). It may be that the Canberra Innovation Network needs to have two promotional strategies: one for within Australia which does not mention Canberra, and one for international use which does.

The use of the abbreviation "CBR" in marketing Canberra  makes no sense for high technology products and would be of very limited use even for tourism. The Wikipedia lists dozens of meaning of CBR, including Chemical Biological and Radiation weapons. One near the bottom of the list is the international airport code for Canberra International Airport. That is not going to be much use to an international tourist, as there are no scheduled international flights to Canberra. In contrast I find that people have heard of "Canberra" as being a government city, even if they think Sydney is the capital of Australia.

• The network will deliver services, programs and support to a wide cross section of growth oriented companies and entrepreneurs;
• The network will have a physical location and will also have a charter of outreach that establishes multiple delivery points or partner delivery arrangements;
• It will be managed by the stakeholders under a governance structure shaped and agreed by the stakeholders. Potential stakeholders include the ANU, CSIRO, NICTA and the University of Canberra and other partners who want to join the network. The ACT Government will also have representation on the management body for the network;
• The network will be structured so that smaller players are able to have a role in the direction of the network;
• The ACT Government will contract the network to provide a range of services to potential high growth businesses, including mentoring, access to capital, skills development, managerial skills and links to international supply chains amongst many;
• The network will provide a 'triage model' for all entities that contact it, but with services that engage quite deliberately and effectively with potential high growth businesses; and
• The services of the network will be made available to all potential high growth companies, not just companies spun out of research institutions or ICT companies.

From: CBR Innovation Network: promoting innovative businesses, 09/04/2014

Australian Innovation Festival

Apparently this week is the Australian Innovation Festival. I only know this because it was mentioned at the ACT Innovation event. I don't rally know what it is, having see nothing else about it. This evening there was a large pile of brochures at the door. These appear to be about the festival, judging by the cover, but seem to contain nothing but PR material and advertisements. I had difficulty finding anything about the actual event. But there is a web address on the cover, so I will have a look at that: ausinnovation.org

Even without using the web address it tells me something: this is very similar to the ACT Innovation web address and so may well be related. Having clicked on the web address I am still none the wiser, as so far noting has loaded. I am using a slow wireless Internet connection at present and it seems this web page has not been designed with this in mind.

In the interim John got my attention by using the example of turning a problem into a solution with Staten drugs for reducing cholesterol.

It has been several minutes at the supposed Australian Innovation web site still has not arrived. So I decided to run a few tests to see what might be the problem with the web site. These are the sort of tests my second year ANU web design students learn to do on their assignments.

The first test is to validate the HTML of the web page. The Australian Innovation web page failed this test with 96 Errors. This is a very large number of errors. Students are expected to have no errors on their web pages and a typical web page might have a half dozen errors.

The second test I usually run is for mobile ok. This tests how well the web page will work on the typical mobile phone. Unfortunately the test failed to complete.

John got my attention again by mentioning Bob Clifford, Tasmanian large fast ferry builder. John pointed out that having a ferry tied up at the factory unsold represents millions of dollars. It happens that I met Mr. Clifford once on the bridge of one of his ships at an Olympic Games function (the US DoD now buys such ships from Australia). He surprised me by leaving me in charge of the ship, while he popped down stairs. Fortunately it was tied up at a wharf, but it was still lonely on the bridge.

The third test I usually run is for accessibility. An automated TAW test, which reported thirteen priority 1 problems, 56 Priority 2 and one Priority 3 problems.

At this point the web site finally appeared after several minutes. From first glance, it is obvious why the page took so long to load: there are a lot of high resolution graphics and animation on the page. Unfortunately none of this has helped me find out what the event is about. There are photos of unidentified people along with large blocks of test appearing. But these are disappearing before I can read the text, or work out who these mysterious people are. There are also lots of maps and logos which suggest this is an important and well supported event, but I am still none the wiser as to what it actually is. So far about all I know is that this web site must have cost a lot of money to develop.

Here is the text of the page:

Australian Innovation

* Home * Festivals * Events * News * Publications * Get involved * AusInnovation TV * About Us * Supporters * Newsletters * Login

Ausinnovation.org

The future is electric - GM concept car

Take a look inside GM's new EN-V concept car as Chris Borroni-Bird explains how this zero-emission, electric vehicle ...

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This suggests that the web page is a collection of events to do with innovation. The rapidly changing content on the home page appear to be examples of events. Exactly who is doing this, or why, is not clear. A search of the ASIC database shows there is an organisation AUSTRALIAN INNOVATION PTY. LTD, created 04/06/2009.