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The Community of Practice for has been progressing at a superb rate and some great relationships are starting to blossom from it. To give you a sense of what we've achieved so far and where we are going next; we've collated our diary notes from the last year.

Our first calendar of events was listed here but that's only half the story, the inception of a community around object based media (OBM) started a year beforehand.

Autumn - Winter 2016

At IBC 2016, so far on object-based media, and outlined the need for a community of practice. Not long after that I was invited to talk to a packed and excited audience of around 60 people at FutureFest in London. Following this in October I was invited to speak at Thinking Digital Manchester, with a digital savvy crowd of 250+ people.

#TDCMCR On stage now @cubicgarden from @³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖRD watch live

— Thinking Digital (@ThinkingDigital) October 11, 2016

Then I had the pleasure to speak to 150 film and production industry folk at in Babelberg, Potsdam, Germany. I took a trip back to Germany a month later to talk about OBM with their public broadcasters ZDF and ARD.

I rounded off the year in December when I was invited to talk at the in Stockholm. The audience as the conference title suggests was production people with a science, factual and documentary background. There I met with the for the first time, and we made a commitment to begin a collaboration. 

Spring 2017

2017 started with a regular visits to Liverpool to talk about OBM at , then later with 50 LJMU broadcasting students and staff. FACT is also where I discussed the possibilities for entertainment in the digital out-of-home market, for experiences like theme parks, amusements, and physical puzzle games etc.

In March I took the opportunity while travelling in Iceland to visit RÚV, the National broadcaster. I spoke with the head of interactive media about how OBM could be relevant to other public service broadcasters.

In April I spoke about OBM to the Digital Arts team at the British Council. The day before I gave a lecture at University of the Arts London to over 75 broadcast students, it was planned for an hour but the captivated audience were so engaged that the Q&A went on for another 60mins.

In May our first official CoP event in Newcastle had a small crowd of super engaged people in attendance, many of them have joined our . At the end of the month I was invited to talk about storytelling in the digital age at Cologne’s FutureZone Summit with 100 TV, transmedia & new media producers.

Perceptive Media. You could do some incredible things with it. Incredibly dark or incredibly nice #futurezonesummit

— Fabian Wallenfels (@fabwall) May 31, 2017

In June I joined one of our core academic partners University of York in Edinburgh for a workshop with 20 people at DIS 2017, while others in the team headed to TVX 2017. A week later I was in Amsterdam for the Quantified Self 2017 conference and led a workshop exploring how personal data could be used to change our media landscape. There was an international crowd of 40 super switched on attendees. A week later the team came together in Bristol’s Pervasive Media Studio for our first external 3 hour paper prototyping workshop.

@cubicgarden on Stage #toa17 #storytelling

— GRÜNDERMETRO (@Gruendermetro) July 13, 2017

Following a talk at HyperIsland, Manchester, in July I met with a company who were so amazed by the VideoContext library, that they want to adopt it within their practice. At Tech Open Air in Berlin, my thoughts turned to AI and machine learning using OBM - which I talked about at the conference. I ran a workshop at TOA (with 60 people) and a fascinating ask me anything session. Another workshop I co-produced (for 120 people) was run by the Propellor Film Hub who I stayed in touch with following that meet in Sweden.

³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ R&D’s Senior Firestarter (yes, that’s his job title) Ian Forrester, who raised some interesting questions about the future of storytelling while demonstrating the prospects of object-based media.

We kept August deliberately quiet while preparing for the next round of outreach talks.

Autumn 2017

This September I gave an extended presentation at Cardiff’s Digital Festival thanks to ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Wales, which involved 40 digital creatives and producers. It took place on a docked boat which was a little odd for someone with poor sea legs!I then gave a similar talk at the University of York mainly to new digital media students. Our partners in the Digital Creativity Lab joined us to show their part of the 'OBM Engine' based on the VideoContext work.

#imonaboat with @³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖRD talking #objectmedia #tailoredtech #digifest #lonelyisland

— elin lenny (@elinlenny) September 19, 2017

On October 23rd we made our first CoP visit to the capital by creating and running an event aimed at Developers, Transmedia and Digital Producers of Internet of Things & Narratives. This was part of . Our academic and industry partners joined us, as well as OBM senior team members.

On Nov 1st the team ran a workshop event at Manchester Metropolitan University, aimed at Digital Producers and Media Students. This was another , where attendees created stories that separated narrative and repsentational story models. I unfortunately wasn’t there as I was in . 

Had a pleasure to talk to @cubicgarden from ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ R&D about the future of media during his visit to #Sarajevo @MultimedijaBHRT

— Aleksandar Brezar (@brezaleksandar) November 8, 2017

Into 2018

The new year will bring more exciting OBM developments, here's a taster of what we're planning:

A hackday-type event using OBM tools is on the cards for early 2018, to get developers and forward thinking producers hands on with OBM tools. Our partner University of York are also planning similar, which we lead to even more collaboration.

A few festival engagements with Sheffield Doc Fest, Encounters in Bristol, Endinburgh Festivals, MozFest + many more outreach activities.

Besides these events; we submitted a letter of support for a project actively putting OBM at the centre of its process, our intention is that it will receive funding from the German public service broadcasters. A few companies interest in OBM after attending one of the events, may also turning into real projects soon.

Finally in other news we opensourced some and you can . Thanks to Ben Robinson for scratching his own itch and helping many others.