Tagged / Digital

Adido Presents…

Research news

The Centre for Entrepreneurship is delighted to invite you to a series of FREE digital marketing related seminars presented by Adido, one of the South’s fastest growing digital agencies.

Please see below for further details – we hope you can join us!

 The Digital Trends of 2013 – Monday 11th March 2013

What will businesses need to know about to get ahead in digital in 2013? This seminar will cover the most important areas to invest in to make sure your business maximises the opportunities available.

Maximising Mobile – Thursday 18th April 2013

Mobile internet traffic set to overtake desktop at the end of this year and more mobile devices are being sold every day. As mobile devices become even more pervasive in our day to day lives the opportunities engage with audiences increases dramatically.

SEO in 2013 – Thursday 27th June 2013

Of all the digital marketing channels used by marketers, none has changed more than SEO in the last few years. This seminar will highlight some of the major issues facing the industry along with how to get ahead of your competition in 2013.

To find out more or to book your place please visit www.bucfe.com/events

Dr. Dinusha Mendis presents papers on digital copyright, parody and 3D Printing

BU research, Featured academics

Dr. Dinusha Mendis, Senior Lecturer in Law and Co-Director of the Centre for Intellectual Property and Policy and Management http://www.cippm.org.uk/ of the Business School presented papers on digital copyright and parody at the 103rd Annual Society of Legal Scholars Conference at the University of Bristol which was held from 11-14 September 2012.  Dr. Mendis presented a third paper on the Intellectual Property Implications of 3D Printing at the VII Gikii Conference, at UEA London Campus, London which was held on 17-18 September 2012.

The papers are a reflection of the recent research carried out by Dr. Mendis into online infringement of copyright, with particular focus on the Digital Economy Act 2010, which advocates a ‘three-strikes-and-you’re-out’ policy.  A paper on this topic has been authored by Dr. Mendis and submitted to an international peer-reviewed journal for publication.  The paper on parody is based on research commissioned by the Intellectual Property Office and carried out by Dr. Kris Erickson (of CEMP, Media School), Dr. Dinusha Mendis and Professor Martin Kretschmer of CIPPM.  The paper presented at the SLS conference by Dr. Mendis considered parody exceptions in various countries in implementing a suitable parody exception in the UK as recommended in the Hargreaves Review http://www.ipo.gov.uk/ipreview.htm Various reports on the research by Dr. Erickson, Dr. Mendis and Professor Kretschmer will be published by the Intellectual Property Office in the near future.

The paper on the intellectual property (IP) implications of 3D Printing drew much interest at the Gikii Conference, London. Being at the cutting-edge of law and technology, Dinusha’s presentation was amongst the first to consider the IP implications of 3D printing.  A paper on this topic has been authored by Dr. Mendis and has been submitted to a peer-reviewed journal for publication.

TSB – Digital Innovation Contest – Culture2

BU research, Funding opportunities

 

Digital Innovation Contest – Culture 2

The ‘Digital Innovation Contest – Culture 2’ – run by IC tomorrow in conjunction with the Design Museum and the Public, is procuring up to two trials – offering a maximum of £24,000 for each successful innovative commercial prototype in response to the following two challenges:
1. ‘Digital campaigning and fundraising challenge’ – set by the Design Museum – 1 award of £24,000.
2. ‘Fun and engaging gallery journeys challenge’ – set by the Public – 1 award of £24,000.

Successful applicants will also benefit from:

  • collaborating with one of the two leading cultural partners
  • an opportunity to promote their prototype via the IC tomorrow programme
  • support in resolving content delivery, licensing and metadata issues related to the service or application
  • retaining their intellectual property.

Register and Apply at:
https://connect.innovateuk.org/web/digital-innovation-contest-culture-2

Deadline for submissions – Noon, Monday 20 August 2012.

Open date: 09 July 2012

Close date: 20 August 2012

Email: competitions@innovateuk.org
Email: support@ictomorrow.co.uk

Phone number: 0300 321 4358

The RKE Operations team can help you with your application.

SpoGo Digital Challenge

Funding opportunities

SpoGo are looking for the 100 best technology-based ideas to tackle the nation’s best excuses and get more people to enjoy sport and fitness. As long as it’s digital and technological, the most genuine, innovative and fun idea will receive £10,000 to make it a reality. Even if your idea isn’t chosen to win by the tech panel, the most popular idea will win a £1,000prize.

Your idea can be a mobile phone app, social media campaign or web development. And if you already love an existing product or service let us know and we’ll feature the best on spogo.co.uk so even more people can enjoy it. Check out these links for more competition info, inspiration, data sources, and info about spogo.

We’re happy for you to submit ideas about anything, but our theme is ‘tackling the nation’s best excuses’ for not doing exercise.

– Can’t get off the couch? Create an app that knows when you’ve been sitting for too long

– Don’t know how to get to the gym? Use travel data to plan your journey

– Don’t know where to do sport or fitness? Come up with a social media campaign to create awareness for spogo!

Once you’ve entered your idea, don’t forget to tell everyone on your Facebook, Twitter, or blog – let’s get those votes coming in! The competition closes for votes and entries at the end of the Olympics so make sure you get yours in before August 12th.

If you have any questions, you can contact info@spogo.co.uk and they will be happy to help!

To submit an idea, please click the new idea link below. You will then be asked to add a title and choose a campaign for the new idea. You will also have the option to add tags to the idea. To vote on an idea, simply click the up or down thumb to the left of the idea title/description. And to add a comment, click in the box below the idea.

Submit New Idea

Consumer behaviour in virtual worlds

BU research, Research news

A prestigious journal has awarded two Bournemouth University (BU) academics the ‘Best Paper’ accolade for their work in the largely unstudied domain of consumer behaviour in digital virtual spaces, including video games, virtual communities and the web.

‘Concepts and practices of digital virtual consumption’, by BU’s Dr Janice Denegri-Knottand Dr Mike Molesworth, was among the most downloaded work published by Consumption Markets and Culture last year.

The paper examines digital virtual consumption (such as owning luxury cars in a video game), the relationship it has within the real material world and the appeal of consumption that is deprived of a material, physically tangible form.

Flying planes in a computer gameDenegri-Knott and Molesworth think of consumption on spaces like eBay, Amazon and World of Warcraft as somewhere between the consumers’ imagination and material consumption, and believe it is charged with transformative potential for its users.

Consumers can fulfil all sorts of daydreams, such as finding a designer dress on eBay, or performing the fantasy of being a powerful wizard. They don’t just look and ask ‘what might it be like’, but may ‘try on’ being an entrepreneur, someone with wealth, a collector, a trader, an advertiser, a criminal, a hero, a warrior, or many other ways of being.

Their roles are enhanced as the scripts available to them expand and can be tested within relatively small timescales. The digital virtual individual may be an avid collector one year, a warrior hero the next, and a successful entrepreneur the year after that. The video game player may be a successful criminal one week and a racing driver the next.

Denegri-Knott and Molesworth believe more emphasis is needed on the relationship between the virtual realm and the real-world and, as digital virtual consumption is largely unstudied, they propose an integrative view for further research.

“The paper was written in the spirit of mapping out potential avenues for research, and also to give us some kind of conceptual frame to make sense of consumption in emerging digital virtual spaces,” said Dr Denegri-Knott.  “We now have a body of work that looks at the way in which users consume through eBay, from which we have been able to draw some insights on the acceleration of consumer desire and the problems this creates. We now would like to develop the theme of transformative potential in digital virtual consumption; that is to see how consumers make sense of their experiences and how they integrate these into their everyday lives.”

The pair are also now researching the experience of owning digital virtual goods, in particular the ways in which consumers become attached to certain goods, and how they maintain their preferential stature.

Dr Denegri-Knott concluded: “We were both delighted and surprised to hear that our paper was so well received by the readers of the journal and by the judging panel.  This is a real achievement for the Emerging Consumer Cultures Group (ECCG).”

Using computational intelligence to develop predictive modelling that benefits organisations

BU research

Watch this excellent short video from BU’s Professor Bodgan Gabrys on the Computer Intelligence EU grant (INFER project) used to develop predictive modelling that’s applicable to multiple industries.

To see other BU videos on YouTube go to the BU YouTube page!

 

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r5zGqCtVSc

RCUK Digital Economy theme: invitation to apply to participate in sub-theme workshops and networks

Research news

The EPSRC have recently announced a call for applications to participate in a number of workshops to develop research challenges and networks within the Digital Economy Theme:

 

Digital Economy Theme – The Research Councils UK Digital Economy (DE) Theme is supporting research to rapidly realise the transformational impact of digital technologies on aspects of community life, cultural experiences, future society, and the economy.

EPSRC leads the DE Theme on behalf of the partner research councils AHRC, ESRC and MRC, bringing together a unique community of researchers from diverse disciplines including computer science, engineering, social science, the arts and medical research; a combination of research and skills that coupled with user-led design will deliver impact.

Digital Economy Sub-Themes – The DE Theme has formed four ‘sub-themes’ to describe the research they support (further described at the end of this document):

  • Communities and Culture– As people interact more and more over the web, what might ‘community and culture’ mean within a digital society?
  • Sustainable Society– Digital technologies can be used to make services more sustainable and enhance current systems (economic, environmental and social), in a way that is accessible, affordable, bespoke and popular.
  • IT as a Utility– To realise the digital economy, digital infrastructure should be so simple, accessible and reliable it is invisible to the consumer.
  • New Economic Models – New business models in a digital economy will create a more flexible, dynamic, resilient and individual-centred economy for the UK.

EPSRC now wish to further develop these sub-themes, and so are seeking applications from interested researchers and users to attend a number of one-day workshops, to explore the opportunities and associated research challenges in these sub-themes and also to create a longer term network of researchers and users around the sub-themes.

Sub-theme Workshops and Networks – At the workshops attendees will consider the sub-theme remit and associated DE Theme portfolio, and identify the opportunities within the sub-theme and the associated research challenges, prioritising where the DE Theme could add value and have maximum impact.

Following on from the workshop, EPSRC envisage the sub-theme network creating a community around the sub-theme, expanding the network to include other relevant stakeholders, whether academic, users or other stakeholders.
The network will also continue to develop the research challenges and priorities in the sub-theme and also gathering information on the sub-theme landscape (e.g. other activities, funders etc.). The DE Theme will use these network outputs to inform future investment.

The workshops have been arranged for the following dates, although locations are still to be confirmed:

New Economic Models – Monday 23 January 2012

IT as a Utility – Tuesday 24 January 2012

Communities and Culture – Thursday 26 January 2012

Sustainable Society – Friday 27 January 2012

The deadline for submission of the EoI is 12:00 on 30 November 2011. Applicants will be informed of the outcome of their application by the 16 December 2011.

For more information on the RCUK Digital Economy theme, and how to apply to participate in the workshops please visit the EPSRC website.

This is a fantastic opportunity for anyone researching in this area, especially as it fits in with our emerging BU Research Theme – Creative and Digital Economies. Anyone interested and research-active in this field is strongly encouraged to apply!

Trying to define digital economy

BU Challenges, Research themes

At a recent meeting which John Oliver arranged we tried to define some key terms for the creative and digital theme and the inital viewpoint was that the ‘digital economy’ was a narrower definition focusing mainly on enterprise and ‘doing’, however this definition of the digital economy from the The Research Council UK is broader:  “the novel design or use of information and communication technologies to help transform the lives of individuals, society or business (RCUK website accessed February 2011).”

Creative & Digital Economy Theme

BU research, Research news

I’d like to update colleagues on the Digital Hub HEIF-funded project which runs in its current format to the end of July. Picking up on an earlier post by John Oliver of the Media School, the Hub is currently providing a lead on this important theme across the university with colleagues from the School of Tourism, Media School, DEC, Applied Sciences and the Busines School involved – it is by any definition a cross-university project. There have already been several tangible outputs:

  • The Hub has just secured £70k of funding for three projects related to digital tourism and online consumer behaviour – two of these projects are a collaboration between Dr Philip Alford (School of Tourism) and Dr Jacqui Taylor (DEC) and are inter-discplinary projects involving psychology and digital marketing (in a tourism context);
  • The Digital Hub website is up and running with the current objective of building a community of experts around the digital theme;
  • The Hub has also embraced social media and has both a Facebook page and a Twitter feed (LinkedIn is under development);
  • The Hub has two events planned – both aimed at external organisations (businesses, charities, public sector): A Digital Dinner which will be an invitation-only event designed to showcase our expertise around this theme; a Digital Day event on the 19th July at Kimmeridge House which, although showcasing our expertise, will be more of a consultative event and an opportunity for us to listen to what organisations’ needs are around the CDE theme. After the keynotes the central value-added proposition of the event is to feature breakout seminars where Digital Theme leaders will present but also use them as an opportunity to engage with organisations.
  • Both events feature Tiffany St James as a keynote speaker. Tiffany is currently retained by Microsoft, The Guardian, Channel 4 and built the world’s first social media laboratory as a managed service for Euro RSCG London, one of the UK’s top integrated advertising agencies. She is a Special Advisor to the British Interactive Media Association and Advisor to the Speaker of the House of Commons. And as a bonus she is a BU graduate! This will give the Digital Hub at Bournemouth University great profile and form a positive association.

If you’re interested in being involved the BU digital community then send me an email (Philip Alford:  palford@bournemouth.ac.uk)