Day 11: Frequency festival, work, work, work, Immersive multimedia

Tuesday was the eight subject related day. Most time went finalising the demos for the presentations on Wednesday night. Two presentations to give inspiration were however shown.
Graham Cooper introduced Frecuency - Lincoln Digital Culture Festival.
Jānis Garančs gave the lecture: "Immersive multimedia technologies as surgery on space or vivisection of realities?"

Graham Cooper

Jānis Garančs

Busy busy busy to get everything done

Does it look right now?

No time for lunch breaks this week any more, pizzas on the fly!

In the evening most MC2020 members participated in the iWeek TALK&SHOW.
Read more about iWeek here soon.

Day 10: Preparing the pitches

We started the second week by having a short lecture prepared by Lenno Verhoog and Rosa Pons about the best ingredients that can be used in a pitch and how to make it successful.

Preparing the pitch

The seven teams were preparing the pitches of their projects for half an hour and afterwards they pitched to each other in order to have feedback. The main conclusion was that the ideas had to be better explained.

Pitching between teams

Students listening to other student's pitches 

So that, in the afternoon, Graham Cooper decided to ask the teams to prepare an elevator pitch in ten minutes and again the results showed the need to stress the logline instead of trying to describe the design of the technology involved.

Elevator pitches were presented to teachers during the afternoon

Days 8 and 9: Weekend! In prison and ruins

After working hard six days MC2020 had two well deserved days off. On Saturday there was no other arranged activity than dinner, some went to Riga, some explored Liepaja, some went to the beach.

On Sunday we went to Karosta, a closed city and naval base from late 19th century until late 1990s.
http://www.karosta.lv/en/places/

We visited the military prison museum, saw some attractions of the city and finally the fortress built by the Russian Tsar Alexander III.

During the visit to Karosta military prison we were treated like prisoners.
Quite many of as found that rather amusing in the beginning.

Rather soon the realistic drama got us serious. No giggling any more.

The walking area behind the barbed wire for well behaving prisoners
does not offer much options for sports.

The St. Nicholas Orthodox Maritime Cathedral next to the prison offered
a massive contrast to the latter.

At canon base number one we got basic details about the history of
the fortress.

In the underground tunnels beneath the fortress. Scary.

Freedom at last! The beach very welcoming

The ladies and the sea

We are high!

Want to go somewhere? Here's only nowhere.

Between cutting edge technology of late 19th and early 21st centuries

We need to get up from here!

Is this the end?

This is the end. The last shore.

Day 7: Flow-charts, scenarios, video shootings, Sinterklaas and Zwarte Piet - Gezellig

Friday was the sixth working day. The demos will be shown next Wednesday, so MC2020 is now learning by doing.

Lenno Veerhoog opened the day with his presentation "How to prepare a flowchart about your concepts".
Then the teams worked on their flow-charts and/or user-case scenarios. At noon teams presented their flowcharts to the teachers to get fresh feedback.

Afternoon was practical team-work, many team members went out to create video footage for their demos.

Cultural Evening: DUTCH night - gezellig!
Friday saw the last of the five cultural evenings arranged by the partners. The difference of Holland(s) and the Netherlands was explained and the teams competed in knowledge about the Netherlands - and played many Dutch games of course.
Here's the video explaining Netherlands vs Holland
And Dutch delicacies like stroopwafel, pepernoten, speculaas koekjes, drops and cheese were tasted, of course.

Team Orange

Sinterklaas was so nice. Cai's dream came true: Sinterklaas invited him to sit
on his lap!

All teams had all those yummies on their tables, at the end there was also
a big table for everybody.

Eating bread hanging in the air as fast as possible blind is not a piece of cake
(as the English would say, wouldn't they)

Spiikerpoep is the name of this game. Put those nales in the bottle!

Hang in the pants - as long as you can!

Everybody had an opportunity to interview Zwarte Piet, the assistant
of Sinterklaas.

...and the winner of the games was this time: the TAMK Media team!

Day 6: Evil design, plenary, iWeek, Catalonia

Thursday, the 5th work day started with Carita Forsgren's presentation "Think evil! - Reverse design" Carita presented one alternative approach to user centred design, analysing all the things that can go wrong from the users point of view and then turning them to positives.
Carita's presentation

Carita Forsgren (Tampere University of Applied Sciences)

During the presentation students got an idea generation task: to go outside to a church, square, anywhere, and make notes of all the horrible things that might happen there. Many disasters where reported by the teams - in the spirit appropriate for the Halloween eve.

Plenary
Students and lecturers gathered for a plenary, which dealt with some practical things. As a result of voting the decision was made to start daily at 9:30 and skip the break between the afternoon session and dinner.
A short progress report was reported by each team. The teams are now seven as one team had progressed in two different directions. The split was made in full mutual understanding.

Voting by standing in different areas of the working space

Here's a summary of the projects made by Rosa Pons:
1/ HAP1: wearable software, to receive and store wearable info, no cable, no batts, you are the device. No implants, just a software that you can peal off.
2/ HAP2: a monopoly game. Touch screen on walls, streets, connect cultures through the art, playing games like chest that appears into different places. To improve art and the game.
3/ CONNECTING CULTURES 1: ideas to use art as an international language, to make an installation or create an object that uses the five senses to connect people.
4/ CONNECTING CULTURES 2: use feelings to connect cultures, use feelings as a language
5/ VIRTUWALL: an app that assesses what your body needs at that moment: energy, vitamins...
6/ KUPLA: a hologram interface where you can get to know about objects, getting information anywhere anytime only visible to you. They are dividing tasks.
7/ PRESERVING HERITAGE 1: our environment as heritage, media installation with a 3D projector to see all is there in an area that you couldn't see.

Team 2a reporting

iWeek
In the afternoon Anna Trapenciere, who is also producer of the iWeek starting next Sunday, gave a presentation about the opportunities iWeek offers to MC2020 members. They are many, and the final presentation of the projects will happen as a iWeek event on Wednesday evening
iWeek

The Catalan night
The Catalan night introduced information about Catalonia and Catalan culture, which was also experienced in practise in many ways. The evening was also most physical of the cultural evenings, involving the participants in exiting physical exercises.
The evening featured the Catalan quiz, eating the hanging apple, wheelbarrow game, pulling up onions and the muffin tongue twister.

Welcoming hosts

A pair from each team competed in eating apples covered with chocolate

A new lecturer - Graham Cooper (Uni Lincoln) arrived in the evening
and started his duty in the team of professors.

The last assignment of Martyn Thaye (Uni Lincoln) before his departure
was to represent the professor team in the competition of pronouncing
Catalan phrases with a muffin in mouth. 

Pulling up onions!

Wheel-barrow competition

Day 5: Making of demos, electrobikes and English murder mystery

Day 5, the 4th working day started with a workshop by Lenno Verhoog. His presentation was about preparing the demos.
Possibilities of visualising mock-up and prototype/demo presentations and how to fake interactivity was covered in the presentation.
Presentation(s) by Lenno Veerhoog:
How to prepare demos
Concept format explained

Lenno Verhoog

Work Work Work Learning Learning Learning
The teams continued the work with their project until late afternoon until the field trip.

Innovation: The Electrobike
The field trip destination was a square in the city center, where director Artis Daugins introduced the very innovative electrobikes of his company Blueshock Bike. The MC2020 students tested an electrobike and found it fast and convenient. This product will really attract more people to choose the bicycle as their first choice means of transportation.

Artis Daugins (right). Thanks a lot! We wish you all the best!

The awesomeness of driving the bike! (Robin Bosman)

The English Night
The third Cultural evening introduced England. We got familiar with different dialects and had a thrilling competition about understanding and pronouncing phrases from different English counties.
We had tea with famous English persons: Sherlock Holmes, Robin Hood, Lewis Hamilton, Harry Potter, Amy Whitehouse, James Bond, Sir Bradley Wiggins, Guy Fawkes, Audrey Hepburn and Princess Diana.
The peaceful event was interrupted by a shock: someone had murdered the Queen. The rest of the evening was spent interviewing the celebrities. It was obvious one of them was the murderer.

The different parts of UK were explained, also the parts of England introduced

Bend over backwaeds - what does that mean?

The Bristish icons were introduced

The English team brought the tea cups with them!

The assignment after the dead body of the Queen was found.
The Lincoln students did admirable work preparing for their roles!

Interviewing Harry Potter. At the end he was found guilty.