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2008 Events
18 September - NZi3 Industry Briefing: Visualisation Technology Capability
5 September - IEEE New Zealand Wireless Workshop 2008
3 September - Canterbury Software Summit
19 June - IT and Sustainability - the HP experience
29 April - Sensor Workshop hailed success by industry guests
NZi3, the National ICT Innovation Institute, hosted an Industry Briefing by Dr Roy Davies from Nextspace on 18th September 2008. The event attracted a diverse audience of over 20 delegates from across industry, academia and local government who shared a common interest in real-time 3D visualisation technologies and applications.
Dr Davies is Nextspace's Chief Technical Officer and Research Director and brings with him a wealth of International and Technical experience. He played a key role in setting up a Visual Technology Research Centre in Sweden, with facilities including a virtual environment 'cave' where users are immersed in the VT environment. Nextspace aims to develop their visualisation tool sets for applications in research, education and industry.
They were founded through a collaboration between Right Hemisphere, the world leading 3D Visualisation and Product Lifecycle Management company and the New Zealand Government. As part of the conditions of their funding from the NZ government, Nextspace acts as an industry catalyst and is charged with the mandate of creating a billion dollar industry for NZ around real-time 3D visualisation. Nextspace has successfully applied Right Hemisphere technology to other markets including in education, and has a bespoke built fully fitted out training room.
Other projects include medical applications of 3D Visual Technology, where the 9 different energy levels are converted into colours to allow the operator to distinguish between the different structures in the body based on their energy level. Nextspace are also involved in embedding 3D capability in PDF files, which is of particular interest to architects and planners and has licensed Right Hemisphere technology to Adobe which is compatible with Version 7 onwards.
Nextspace’s unique capability and their openness to work with a variety of partners fits well with NZi3 opportunities. Visualisation and document management will have an important role in many future projects. As NZi3 looks to building multidisciplinary teams of research and industry partners, it is likely that Nextspace will have a role as solution provider, research supporter and channel-to-market.
The IEEE New Zealand Wireless Workshop is an annual event bringing together participants from New Zealand universities, CRIs, government and industry for a one-day interactive forum to discuss topics of mutual interest in wireless communications. The 2008 Workshop was held at The University of Canterbury on 5th September 2008. These workshops are organised by the wireless academic community of New Zealand, and have been held annually for the past 10 years at venues which rotate between Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.
This year’s event was organised by the NZi3: Wireless Research Centre (WRC) and NZi3 itself, with support from partners of the Wireless Research Network (NZWRN). Sponsors NZi3, Foundation for Research Science and technology (FRST), Telecom (Research and Ventures Group) and the IEEE (NZ) Communications Society Chapter together enabled the wireless community of New Zealand to attend this free event.
The event attracted over 120 delegates from across New Zealand who came to see talks from Tait Electronics, Telecom, FRST, Vodafone, MIMOMax Wireless Ltd, IRL, Alcatel Lucent, Arc Innovations, Indigo Systems, Harris Stratex, National Instruments, Kordia, the University of Canterbury, the University of Auckland, Victoria University Wellington, Auckland University of Technology, Massey University and WRC.
Aside from the formal programme of presentations, the breaks provided invaluable networking opportunities, with many participants taking full advantage to explore future collaborative interactions – particularly between academia and industry.
To view the programme and presentations, please follow this link.
NZi3, the National ICT Innovation Institute, proudly supported the Canterbury Software Cluster's annual Summit held on 3rd September at the Hotel Grand Chancellor, which kicked off with a thought provoking keynote address by the Hon. Maurice Williamson (National's Transport, Communications & Information Technology Spokesman) entitled "Broadband: 21st Century Highway".
This year's Summit theme was "Creating Global Growth", and a great speaker line-up of innovative, entrepreneurial, high-tech business leaders provided open insights into the ups and downs of growing a successful company in New Zealand. The event attracted over 130 delegates from across New Zealand, and speakers included NZi3 Director Darin Graham, University of Canterbury graduates Al Monro (CEO of Next Window)and Neil Butler (CEO of Optimation), Peter Montgomery (MD of Cavotec) who actively recruited University of Canterbury trained engineers at an early stage of the business development, Tony Crewdson (CEO of i-lign Ltd) and Matt Armstrong (Sales Director Asia Pacific of AuthorIT), .
The important messages delegates took away from the event were an awareness of the barriers to accessibility and availability of Venture Capital in New Zealand; closing the innovation gap between industry and academia; the importance of fostering innovation by encouraging staff to take 'ownership'; not limiting your imagination as your business may grow into something you hadn't expected; when starting out think global; adopt a view for long term company sustainability rather than short term profit; don’t be afraid to leverage your successes; when starting a business aim for what you aspire to be rather than what you are now.
Balancing business objectives with those of environmental sustainability was explored in a lecture hosted recently by the New Zealand Institute of ICT Innovation Institute (NZi3).
Annukka Dickens, Hewlett Packard Environmental Manager (South Pacific), outlined the steps HP was taking to reduce the environmental impact of its operations and products. HP is a founding partner of NZi3.
The event attracted more than 40 people from the University and local industry.
Ms Dickens said HP had been a leader in environmental sustainability for decades. HP’s Design for the Environment programme, which was established in 1992, meets key priorities around product energy efficiency, materials innovation and design for recyclability, to reduce the quantity and environmental impact of the materials in its products.
“HP has developed its own set of standards to guide partnerships with its supply chain and facilitate positive practices around ethics, occupational health and safety, labour rights and the environment. These internal standards led to the development of the industry’s first Electronics Industry Code of Conduct in 2004 to extend HP’s social and environmental standards to the supply chain industry-wide,” she said.
“In addition, this year HP is disclosing its list of top suppliers, making it the first major company in the technology industry to do so. We expect this step will promote transparency and progress in raising standards in the IT industry’s supply chain and also encourage other companies to do more to advance responsibility within their own supply chains.”
Ms Dickens said in terms of recycling, HP offered the HP Planet Partners™ Programme which provided a return and recycling service for organisations. HP’s goal was to recover two billion pounds of electronic products and supplies by 2010.
Under the programme, organisations are offered a return and recycling service for office products including printers, personal computers, scanners, fax machines, servers, monitors and associated components, such as cables and keyboards – regardless of whether they are HP products or not. Other HP programmes include hardware and asset recovery services to corporate and public sector customers, printer cartridge recycling, and a pilot carbon offset programme for laser jet printers
A Sensor workshop was held on 29th April at CDC and featured keynote speaker Professor Wendi Heinzelman from the University of Rochester, USA. Professor Heinzelman is currently on an Erskine Fellowship at the University of Canterbury and is being hosted by computer scientist Krys Pawlikowski.
The event attracted 57 people (40+ of whom were from industry) and was supported by Electronics South, NZi3's Wireless Research Centre, Canterbury Development Corporation (CDC) and UC's Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering.
The first session was about key concepts and innovation and the second covered practical implementation issues with regards to wireless sensor networks. Other presenters included Larry Podmore from CDC and Wireless Research Centre Manager Jeremy Reece.