Re: [kDev] Intro from Mark (was project managers )

[Mark Simpkins <mark@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Daniel and the rest of the list,

I just wanted to follow up my previous email and respond to this one 
and I guess really introduce myself to the list as that is not 
something I have done yet. Sorry this email will probably be long so if 
you are not interested in reading about stuff I have been involved in 
(that may have some small connections with kendra) then please skip the 
rest of this email.

I am leaving the BBC (I am a technical project manager for interactive 
Factual & Learning) because the work that has interested me the most 
there, mobile platforms, GIS, geocoding of pages and working on the 
Hull KIT platform have all had big budget cuts. The work that will be 
left is not going to be of much interest to me and I have some other 
projects that I would like to spend some time on. This does mean though 
that I am looking for contract and consultancy (and if at the end of 
this, you think you know of anything that may be of interest then 
please let me know). I do also hope that in the longer term I do get to 
return to the BBC though, so who knows.

These projects are :

1/ For the Brighton Photo Biennial, I am developing a picture blgging 
system, that is tied into locations around Brighton. The idea being 
that you could be standing by th epier and see a picture of the pier 
from when it was built on your mobile phone. There will also be the 
facility to add to the system, thus building up narratives and threads. 
The, rather clumsy term I have for the system is a Blography, apologies 
to peter ackroyd and his biography of london.

I did release a short while ago one of the first picture blogging 
scripts (a simple perl script , using the blogger api and accepting 
pictures emailed from my phone. it sat on baaham.com, which is now no 
more, but will be available again under nodalpoints.org the name of my 
software development studio).

2/ CCTV database, this is a project to build and put online a database 
of all the cameras in the UK. I am working with privacy international 
with this and hope to involve the industry and local councils. The idea 
is that we will publish an API to the datasource, allowing people to 
build their own interfaces to the data set (such as iSee and 
Upmystreet).

3/ A research project with the design against crime initiative at 
Central St. Martins, revolving around surveillance and ways to 
democratise and gove control back to the individual again. (picture 
phones, web cams).

I have also been looking at the Digital Object Identifier system 
(doi.org), video caching servers (in an education context, schools can 
run these servers, cache material overnight then deliver it at 
broadband speeds over their internal network. The material source still 
gets a hit for each view, and the school gets to use broadband 
material), and tracking the likes of the creative commons initiative 
and RDF projects like FOAF.

Anyway, that covers a broad range of my interests and what I am 
involved in, if anyone wants to chat about any of this away from the 
kendra project then please feel free to drop me an email, but that is 
now enough about that stuff. I am available to do work on a part time, 
ad hoc, project based etc.. position if you think I there is something 
that I could do, otherwise, well I will still be throwing my thoughts 
into the pot via the list.

Thanks for your time,

mark

>
mark simpkins
e: mark@xxxxxxxxxx & mark@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
gsm: +44(0)7855 365 481
gps: 51.423369, -0.051432