Tech de France

I have a confession to make, well two actually – data doesn’t turn me on and I haven’t ridden a push bike on a road for some time. All the more reason to spend a couple of days with Dimension Data at the Tour de France.

Before I continue, let me justify the above statement. It’s not the data that turns me off, it’s the process. I have something close to a panic attack when I open a spreadsheet. What I love are the qualities of well presented data. This isn’t a plea to make better pie charts, but making them easier to consume.

As for my second confession. I like bikes, and can appreciate their aesthetic appeal, amazing technological build and production and how they offer a better cardio workout than sitting on a bus. But I’d ride in the safety car!

Dimension Data invited me to put aside my indifference by combining data and cycling and what better way to do this than at the world’s premier pedallathon – the Tour de France.

There was of course method in their madness as Dimension Data is the South Africa headquartered IT solutions giant responsible for sweeping the Tour de France into the modern age with a stunning network of connectivity, data analytics and visualisation.

This winning partnership began its monumental journey a little over three years ago when Dimension Data had just six months to turn an initial conversation into state-of-the-art live data broadcast material!

Now in the third year of the partnership, Dimension Data plays a major role in the technology behind the Tour de France experience - learn more on how technology is bringing the race into the 21st century.

To put this into context, the first year of the relationship saw Dimension Data handle data analytics for the race. By the second year, it also took control of the sensors on each bike. This allowed each bike to seamlessly transmit data via the cloud to the race nerve centre - Dimension Data’s big data truck. From there it went live to an ecosystem of broadcasters and sports commentators as well as to a dedicated team of data experts in London responsible for producing data visualisations for the Tour’s social media channels. This year Dimension Data brought some new technologies into the mix in the form of predictive analytics and machine learning which it used to predict likely stage results, adding deeper insight and colour to the race commentary with the ultimate goal of increasing the engagement of cycling fans.

Dimension Data's mobile nerve centre: The Big Data Truck

The system proved to be more accurate than even Dimension Data’s experts anticipated. Over the 21 stages of the race, it knotched up over 70% accuracy for predicting the Top 5 riders. However, they were quick to point out that the objective was not to create a perfect model for race predictions - for or a live sporting event (with crashes, injuries and good old mother Nature to contend with) that would be impossible and detract from the exciting and dynamic nature of the race.

What we can be sure of though is that as these technologies consume and learn from more and more data, they will continue to improve and help people to excel in whatever field – from sports commentating to medicine to teaching.

There are very few events in the sporting calendar that demand such synergy between competitors, their equipment and all team members but the sheer scale of the Tour de France organisation and logistics lends itself to automotive challenges such as the Dakar Rally – actually in Amaury Sport Organisation (A.S.O.)’s stable alongside the Tour de France.

As the demand for social broadcasts increases dramatically (the Tour de France video views rose from 6M to 55M between 2014 and 2016!) so competitive sport evolves to deliver appropriate content to a digitally native audience. New sporting series crying out for this include drone racing, Formula E and the fabulous combination of design, drama and artificial intelligence – Roborace. Watch this space as the next few years will see sports broadcasting provide an accelerated development platform that improves IoT for us all.

Until then, Dimension Data will continue to drive the Tour de France into the 21st century, and deliver live content to demanding fans around the world.

This article originally appeared on Dimension Data's Blog

Goodwood Festival of Speed: Alive and Kicking

Contrary to popular belief, the motor industry is alive and well… and Goodwood Festival of Speed once again proves this point. 

This annual automotive extravaganza isn’t an out-of-touch bubble of petrol-headed enthusiasts descending on Lord March’s estate – it’s proof that there’s hope for an extraordinary industry.

I’m the first to talk about the future of the business, where incredible technology will deliver a safer and more efficient transportation network, but I’ll always counter this with a need for brand individuality and a personal love of driving. Give me autonomous commuting, but hands-on engagement for those twisting back roads. I want to see alternatives to fossil fuels, but silence isn’t always golden so deliver the sound of the future, not merely the vision.

I’ve written enough about Goodwood to avoid repeating myself again, but this incredible event is a sell out every year. Attendees of all ages reminisce about past racing glories, touch the supercars of today and marvel at the concepts for the next generation of characterful transportation.

You won’t find bottom-of-the-range city cars – this is about realising potential and dreaming big and it’s how the brands with panic in their eyes can best educate future audiences to the benefits of driving and ownership.

From a stunning show, I’ve chosen my top 4 cars and the best luxury and volume brands…

4 > Renault R.S. 2027 Vision

A stunning realisation of the future of F1 racing, from the company already bringing us Formula E racers and their own F1 efforts. I hope Formula 1 reaches this level of design thinking before 2027!

3 > Jaguar XE SV Project 8

Jaguar’s smallest offering (until the I-Pace arrives) on steroids. The SVO team has injected 200mph and 600PS into this saloon to deliver 0-60 dash in 3.3 secs and a great looking car. I love the honeycomb face.

2 > Aston Martin Valkyrie

Bringing the hyper to hypercar, this automotive project with RedBull Racing looks more like a fighter jet for the road. It’s hard not to appreciate the aerodynamic superiority and unashamed nod to the future. Very nearly my number one but the green centre stripe loses a point. It works on a Ford GT, but seems unnecessary here – even if it is a nod to the racing team.

1 > Robocar

Top spot goes to a car encompassing design, innovation, technology and the future of autonomous racing. This vision of supremely talented British designer Daniel Simon is driving its development alongside the Formula E racing series and ticks all the automotive boxes.

Top Luxury Auto Manufacturer > BMW

This sporting marque brought the beautiful 8 Series Concept to Goodwood, alongside the hybrid i8 supercar in some adventurous liveries. These halo models continue to filter their design inference down to the rest of the range and push technological development without sacrificing driving pleasure.

Top Volume Auto Manufacturer > Renault

A great show for Renault! Not only hitting my top 4 with their R.S. 2027 Vision, but also bringing some EV madness in the shape of their ZOE eSport Concept and the Apline compact supercar. I just wish the Zoe had been equipped with a stunning sound generator for the hill climb. Something to consider for Formula E where everything sounds like Scalextric cars when it has the potential to emulate Star Wars!

Here’s to Goodwood Festival of Speed 2018. We don’t need to wait to be excited though, these cars are amazing 365 days of the year!

VR48: Addressing VR’s Identity Crisis

You wait a whole year for a Virtual Reality endurance attempt, then three come along at once.

Derek Westerman spent 25 hours in a virtual room drawing with Tilt Brush, a 3D creative tool designed to allow the user to build VR sculptures. Result: He set a Guinness World Record, babbled incoherently and threw up in a bucket.

Next, Alejandro “AJ” Fragoso and Alex Christison spent 50 hours sat on a sofa, eating snacks and drinking Red Bull watching TV and movies on Oculus Rift headsets. Result: They too grabbed a record, suffered with indigestion and grew beards.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Guinness World Records and I have a long and happy association with them. However, Virtual Reality is saddled with an image problem, one of nauseating game-play and fellas mostly wasting their time. Sadly, these types of endurance records reinforce it.

If I sound less than impressed with these other attempts, it’s because I am. I spent 24 hours in VR last year (but that’s another story) and this year, as much as I wanted to tackle the official 48 hour VR record, GWR insisted we stay awake for the entire two day period and this ironically wasn’t realistic.

I joined forces with Sarah Jones, a senior media academic and 360º storyteller, to ‘live’ in Virtual Reality. This included eating, sleeping, running, fighting, driving, wing-walking, even getting a tattoo! Everything we tackled, we did so for a reason, not just because we could but to show the outside world that VR has a place in our lives and is there to complement it, rather than replace it.

We harvested meaningful data, relayed anecdotal feedback throughout our experience and 5 minutes per hour were reserved for dashes to the bathroom and 360º video diaries – not at the same time I hasten to add.

Amongst the more conventional VR experiences such as problem-solving, training, painting and gaming, we scheduled three extreme physical activities. Our first required us to drive go-karts around a purpose-built track, using the through-camera on a Samsung Gear VR to give us a video view of the surroundings. An interesting challenge when the vibration of the vehicle causes the camera feed to shake and blur, but a great illustration of driving on instinct and highlighting some genuinely useful user-cases for Augmented Reality headsets.

Race info, ghost competitors and screen entertainment for autonomous vehicles will all follow as a direct result of this kind of real-world testing.

Our second physical challenge required less movement but greater immersion. I was ready for my tattoo…

I haven't been under an inked needle before so this was my first taste of body art. I have to admit to being a less than enthusiastic volunteer but we were determined to discover if VR could successfully mitigate pain. The irritation needed to be sustained and relatively intense, so leg-waxing or nipple-piercing were out!

I chose Gunjack to keep my mind off the job in hand (or arm). This 3D space adventure requires a pretty low skill level, but quick reflexes and prolonged concentration.

I began the process with my headset up, allowing me an unimpeded view of my arm as the needle struck home – my baseline pain levels were set. If I were to describe this raw tattooing pain as a sustained maximum of 10, I felt the VR content and the subsequent cocktail of endorphins and adrenaline genuinely dropped the irritation to a 6 or 7. That result alone would have satisfied us but we were also wearing Apple Watches throughout VR48 to monitor heart rates. Mine peaked at 103BPM in the tattoo studio with a clear view of the procedure, dropping to 74BPM under immersion. That’s anecdotal feedback supported by real science.

Sarah and I returned some uniquely different results over the course of the two days and nowhere was that more evident than in our ultimate challenge – the wing walking finale.

Still wearing our VR headsets, we arrived at RFC Rendcomb Aerodrome at 10am, fresh from the journey from Coventry University to Cirencester in the back of a MINI Convertible – acclimatising ourselves to the freezing temperatures and buffeting we’d have to endure at 150mph when strapped to the top wing of a 75 year old aircraft.

With all our preparation, our additional webbing, straps and a bespoke balaclava weren’t enough to satisfy the experienced pilot or the Breitling Aerobatic team – we were told to hold onto the Gear VR headset with both hands for the entire flight. There would be no waving to the crowd mid loop.

We hoped to gain valuable insight into the effects of velocity and wind resistance on VR viewing. Could reality enhance the virtual experience and vice versa? To view this, we would again be seeing the real world through the Samsung headset’s built-in camera. Or would we?

I mentioned different experiences and mine took a turn for the worse when strapped to the wing, preparing to taxi to the far end of the airfield. “Please remove your phone and update the software”. Seriously? My Galaxy Note 4 had chosen this very moment to force a software update on me. I wasn’t asked politely if I would like to – just told it would happen or my phone was dead. With no adequate connection in the middle of a field, I was faced with a useless piece of technology.

Not willing to submit to the failings of the Internet of Things, I removed the phone and squinted through the headset lenses for the duration of the flight. Not all was lost, as I actually experienced this through the eyes of a partially-sighted individual. Chalk one up for the power of empathy, and a huge black mark for Samsung.

Sarah had no such problems as the team set up a wireless hot spot, updated the software and sent her off to view the entire flight as planned – with the valuable research recorded.

One of the surprise results of VR48 was our time spent in Knockout League, a boxing simulator for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. Your opponent is a larger-than-life cartoon character but the gameplay feels every bit as real as time spent in the ring with an actual heavyweight. We found ourselves ducking and diving, with adrenaline levels and heart rates increasing as our (virtual) vision blurred from a flurry of head-shots.

If ever there was a case against stereotypical VR couch potatoes, virtual boxing was it. That and the go-karting. And the tattoo. And the wing walk.

So what were the side-effects? For an endurance attempt such as this, it can be difficult to differentiate between regular eyestrain and fatigue and that relating to being in a virtual environment. Sarah’s forehead was sore and her cheeks were temporarily marked. The bridge of my nose was bruised and my close-up vision is still slightly more blurred than before the event.

Other than that, we appear to be psychologically unaffected – even with our VR48 content planning requiring us to fall asleep and wake up in VR!

This medical research may come as a surprise to the public, brands and hardware multinationals alike as I’m pretty sure they all thought we’d be lucky to survive unscathed.

We received no support from any headset or mobile manufacturers as they believed we contravened all their health and safety advice, but these side effects are never talked about at the many global industry events and certainly not in the consumer press.

I hope we've gone some way to change the current perception of VR and to highlight its potential, rather than its shortcomings.

A version of this article originally appeared in the Huffington Post

The Uncomfortable Middle Ground: Part 1

Call it what you will – the Internet of Things, enchanted objects, or the connected world – most of us have been plugged into the digital network for longer than we think.

This week I’ve been immersing myself in all things connected as IBM opened the doors to their stunning new Watson IoT Center Munich. Actually, IoT doesn’t go far enough – they call it the Genius of Things.

We live in a time when a connected kettle can sit on the same network as our telephone, television, baby monitor, washing machine and every light bulb in the house. In theory, a chain of events can occur when we pull into our smartwatch-sensing garage in our connected car, unlock our smart-door and enter our digital domain, or ‘home’ as it used to be known.

This networked utopia isn’t a new concept. 1950s visions of the future foretold just such a connected world where all these wondrous gadgets were living in harmony, alongside their human masters. But who’s really in control – us or the machines?

Currently, Artificial Intelligence isn’t that intelligent and we haven’t handed over the reigns just yet because they’re not all playing nice. With so much emerging technology trying to piggyback legacy systems, we’re living in the ‘Uncomfortable Middle Ground’.

The what? UMG is that awkward grey area between the creation of platforms and devices and realising their potential. With great arm-waving comes great responsibility and the need to deliver on a promise. In order to achieve this, our connected world needs to be truly connected.

Much of the public IoT fanfare comes from existing personal assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa and Google, Apple, Samsung and Microsoft’s OS voice-botherers, but it’s what’s under the skin that really counts or you’re left with a pretty shallow experience.

I was invited to the Genius of Things Summit as a Futurist by WIRED Insider for Watson IoT. It was here that IBM and 20 clients showcased some of the stunning technology that interacts beautifully with the outside world, but does something meaningful with the data. Ricoh’s intelligent whiteboard, Panasonic’s interactive mirror and Bragi’s new Dash hearable for enterprise with built-in language translation were all perfect examples of effective IoT partnerships.

I may have an abnormal interest in future platforms and their potential impact on business and our lives as consumers, but the only time IBM has been on my radar since their early PCs is with a misinformed opinion of Watson, a chess and Jeopardy-playing super-brain. This week changed all that.

The huge glass towers project an impressive facade but the ‘FAB Lab’ and client ‘Collaboratory' inside Watson’s Head Office have a playful air about them. The work environment feels very much like a high tech college, where the IBM’ers and co-working clients all exude a genuine sense of child-like wonder and possibility.

IBM positions Watson as Cognitive Computing – a step above Artificial Intelligence, which is in turn a level above Machine Learning – and this is apparent in the Munich HQ. It’s like Stark Industries, but the Pepper and Nao robots aren’t weaponised.

The smart elevators really do talk to the smart doors, room and desk reservation system, the lights, windows and aircon. If you ever wondered what they say to each other, visit machineconversations.kone.com

We’re nudging closer to that connected vision of the future and we’ll see good (and plenty of bad) ideas fall by the wayside in the rush to offer a seamless experience. In order to be ground-breaking, you need to break a few heads, hearts and rules along the way. That top layer will always face the most criticism as it’s our first touch point but the rewards for perseverance are high when the information backbone delivers results. After my visit to Munich, I’m convinced the future’s in safe hands.