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Summary Document from the Open Exhibits Design Summit

A major event in the young history of the Open Exhibits project was the Design Summit that we held here in Corrales back in March. We have more than a dozen blog posts about the summit, but I wanted to put together a short document that helps summarize the activities and findings.

Much of what came out of the Design Summit has guided the Open Exhibits project. Our recent web redesign, and making the Open Exhibit SDK fully open, are recent examples of practical applications of ideas that came out of the summit. Additionally, concepts from the design activities from the summit have made their way into our design process as we are looking to develop new software modules and templates.

Thanks again to everyone who attended and contributed to the making the summit such an important event.

oe-summit-summary.pdf (0.81MB) - Open Exhibits Desgin Summit - Summary Document

by Jim Spadaccini on Jun 8, 2011

  

6th Annual ACM Conference on Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces 2011

6th Annual ACM Conference on Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces 2011 ITS 2011

November 13-16, 2011 Kobe, Japan

http://its2011.jp

Twitter: @ITS_Japan2011

Call for papers posted by: Johannes Schöning: "The Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces 2011 Conference (ITS) is a premiere venue for presenting research in the design and use of new and emerging tabletop and interactive surface technologies." "ITS brings together researchers and practitioners from a variety of backgrounds and interests, such as camera and projector based systems, new display technologies, multi-touch sensing, user interface technologies, augmented reality, computer vision, multimodal interaction, novel input and sensing technologies, computer supported cooperative work (CSCW), and information visualization. The intimate size of this single-track symposium provides an ideal venue for leading researchers and practitioners to exchange research results and experiences."

Proposals are welcome for various presentation formats and the call for proposals states that they are looking for submissions in the following areas:  including gesture-based interfaces, multi-modal interfaces, tangible interfaces, novel interaction techniques, data handling/exchange on large interactive surfaces, data presentation on large interactive surfaces, software engineering methods, computer supported collaborative work, middleware and network support, virtual reality and augmented reality, social protocols, information visualizations, hardware, including sensing and input technologies with novel capabilities, human-centered design & methodologies.

The template for submissions is at: http://its2011.jp.

Submission deadline: June 30, 2011

Perhaps of particular interest to those in non-research/ed institutions: "MENTORSHIPS ITS 2011 offers a mentorship program to help those with less experience in academic publication. The mentoring program is intended primarily for authors from non-academics, including industry. Two types of mentoring are available from the mentor: - Early feedback: assistance in framing and composing your research paper - Later feedback: reviewing an already completed paper and providing feedback on the paper In either case, the mentor will help frame your work in context of other related work, and make meaningful suggestions to improve the quality of your contribution. Depending on a type of mentoring submission deadlines are different. Although we cannot guarantee that your submission will be accepted by ITS, mentoring would be helpful for you to turn your ideas into a proper research paper. If you think the mentoring program is beneficial to you, please feel to contact both of the Mentor Chairs via email: Changkyu Choi ([email protected]) Yoichi Sato ([email protected]) The submission type will vary depending on the type of feedback you are seeking."  

by Jennifer Borland on Jun 7, 2011

  

Another snapshot of the Open Exhibits Community

Here's a quick overview of the Open Exhibits community (by affiliation and nationality) as of June 1st, 2011. The Formal Education category includes universities, k12 schools and research groups/labs. Informal Education includes museum and other visitor centers. Industry includes all other professional affiliations. Charts were created on sporkforge.com.

Additional breakdowns by more general categories are as follows:

• Formal Education (Ed, Univ, Rsch Labs): 620
• Informal Education (museums, aquariums, zoos, etc.): 271
  
  •   Sub: Informal Science Ed: 97
• Industry: (all other occupations/affiliations): 237
  
  •   Sub: STEM Industry/Sci and Tech Careers: 96

TOTAL: 1128 Members

• Of the formal ed participants: 25% (or 152 out of 620) are from the US
• Of the museum participants: 84% (or 227 out of 271) are from the US
  
  •    65% (or 63 out of 97) of the Informal Science Ed institutions are from the US
• Of the commercial participants:  39% (or 93 out of 237) are from the US

by Jennifer Borland on Jun 7, 2011

  

Tech Museum's "Places and Traces" Project seeks examples of interactive exhibits

Bob Ketner, of the Tech Museum, is still looking for about 3 more contributors to commit to the Places and Traces project.
(http://www.thetechvirtual.org/requests/places-and-traces)

His project seeks to:

1. document current interactive systems for exhibits being used in  museums - and/or -
2. Propose new ideas for exhibits, interactions, and experiences ("define the experience")

Seems like a good opportunity to share the word about some of the great things happening within the Open Exhibits community.

by Jennifer Borland on Jun 6, 2011

  

CCV 1.4.1a with multicamera support is released

Community Core Vision (CCV) took a major stride forward this week with the release of CCV 1.4.1a.  CCV is an open source   computer vision based motion/input/event tracker for NUI applications. It arose from the NUI Group forums, co-founded by Open Exhibits Design Summit guest Christian Moore and Seth Sandler.

We love CCV. We've used it with our MT-Kinect module, and on a few custom multitouch tables. With support for multiple, stitched cameras, the new version of CCV should power large optical multitouch devices requiring multiple cameras for high touch-fidelity. You can checkout our DIY 50" multitouch table post for an example of a table using 3 cameras.

CCV can interface with various web cameras and video devices, connect to TUIO/OSC/XML enabled applications, and supports many multi-touch lighting techniques including: FTIR, DI, DSI, and LLP.

Version 1.4.1a has been released for "testing hardware capabilities," so you may not want to put it on the floor just yet...  Learn more and download CCV 1.4.1a on the NUI Group site.

by Chad Person on Jun 6, 2011