LewesLight isn’t exactly what I thought. Although the name offers a clue, anyone who imagines it’s a celebration of floodlit local landmarks is missing the point. “We're all about context and people”, lighting designer Graham Festenstein tells me, “not simply an engineering exercise”. And he’d rather I didn’t use the f-word. “As designers, we don’t particularly like the term ‘floodlight’. It does what it implies. That’s the old-fashioned way. We’re generally working to enhance the nature of what’s there – the colours, the materials – not to distort them.”
 
Unlike some similar international events, LewesLight isn’t just about creating something artistic. “It’s very site-specific”, Graham explains, “looking at the context of the space”. This year the festival is focussed on history, with a theme described as ‘The darker side of Lewes life’. It promises to go beyond familiar local events. “The idea is to investigate less well-known stories and those that have a more scandalous or darker undertone.”
 
The day-to-day management of the LewesLight festival is handled by three people: Graham Festenstein, Phil Rose from Sussex Downs College, who’s the festival’s Community Coordinator, and history consultant Edwina Livesey. They’re part of an organising committee that’s worked to ensure almost everyone involved has a local connection, including the lighting designers and artists who have been invited to take part. There’s been financial support from Lewes Town Council and a few other sponsors, although much of the assistance arrives in the form of equipment loans from architectural lighting manufacturers and suppliers. “The lighting companies tend to help us by providing us with equipment”, Graham says, “and they also provide personnel to help us put it in and get it all working properly.”
 
There’s a strong educational link to this year’s event. LewesLight has partnered with the local Sussex Downs College campus, working closely with Production Arts, Digital Arts, History, Tourism and Marketing students. It’s also developing STEM workshops (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) with local schools, supported by Sussex University. In addition, LewesLight is promoting energy-efficient lighting and explaining the importance of ‘dark skies’. All of last year’s event only generated the same amount of electricity as half a football match under floodlights, Graham tells me, which demonstrates the effectiveness of LED lights.
 
In fact, the 2016 electricity bill could be one of the few aspects of LewesLight that’s largely unchanged from last year’s festival. Participating locations will be better advertised, there’ll be clearer maps and the guided tours will contain more information. There’ll be different venues as well: Graham tells me I shouldn’t assume it’ll be all the ‘old favourites’ illuminated this month. “We're not doing all the same sites. There's always going to be a little bit of overlap but, if we do overlap, we'll have a different designer.”
 
 LewesLight starts on Monday 10th, with installations around the town on the evenings of Friday 14th, Saturday 15th and Sunday 16th. leweslight.uk

First published in Viva Lewes magazine issue 121 October 2016

The London-based Complicite touring theatre company launched in 1983 and gained a reputation for producing “the most imaginative theatre to be found anywhere”, according to David Lister of The Independent. This month they’re bringing an already sold-out show called The Encounter to the recently-refurbished Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, which is on the University of Sussex campus at Falmer. Now named after the work of Lord (Richard) Attenborough and his family, the building was previously known as the Gardner Arts Centre.
 
Kirsty Housley, who’s co-directing The Encounter, thought she’d only be involved for a few weeks of research when she joined the production team in 2010. “That couple of weeks turned into a few months… and then the project kind-of continued, really”, she tells me. It’s part of the distinctive way Complicite operates. “Each time a project is created, a company is built around that project. There’s a genuine ‘not knowing’ at the beginning of the process. You relinquish an element of control, which is quite scary.” In addition, the work they do is never seen as finished. “You never lock something down and say ‘that’s it, keep it exactly as it is now, repeat what you’re doing’. So there’s always a sense of evolution in the performance as well.”
 
Performing in The Encounter is Complicite co-founder Simon McBurney, who’s known to many as the sinister MI6 man in last year’s Mission: Impossible film and as the often unsympathetic Archbishop Robert in TV sitcom Rev. The story is adapted from a book called Amazon Beaming, which tells the adventures of photojournalist Loren McIntyre. In 1969, McIntyre went looking for the elusive Mayoruna tribe in South America. Also known as the Matsés, they were popularly referred to as 'cat people' because of their facial tattoos and the whisker-like spines they wore in their noses. He found them – but, as he followed a group into the rainforest, he lost track of his original route. McIntyre’s planned three-day trip turned into weeks spent with people who shared no common language with him. Yet much to the photographer’s surprise, he seemed to develop a wordless way of communicating with the tribe’s elderly leader.
 
Which helps to explain why The Encounter doesn’t tell McIntyre’s story with conventional imagery. Simon McBurney performs it as a one-man show, assisted by binaural headsets that blend his performance with sound effects to put the audience in the heart of the jungle. “A lot of the technology had to be custom-built”, says Kirsty Housley. “We create the feeling of being somewhere rather than trying to visually represent what that place looks like. You don’t see any creepers or any green leaves. Like all theatre, it really takes place in your imagination rather than on the stage.” 
 
The Encounter runs from Wednesday 11 until Sunday 15 May 2016. brightonfestival.org

First published in Viva Lewes magazine issue 116 May 2016

Device detection and responsive design explained

James Rosewell shows me a colourful roll of paper that's the width of an iPhone yet well over three metres long. But this is no celebratory banner. When I look closer, I can see it's a printed copy of the Wall Street Journal's mobile website. That's a lot of scrolling to do... and a pretty unfriendly user experience for anyone reading the news online. Why does it work so badly?

Responsive web design is to blame, James tells me. This method of website creation – often summarised as a ‘mobile first’ approach – involves starting with a small screen, then automatically adjusting the layout depending on the screen size of the device you’re using. It means that users may see several columns with features and photographs if they visit a newspaper’s site on their laptop, yet can be shown fewer columns if they visit on an iPad, or just a single column when reading the site on a smartphone.

It’s pretty clever but, as the lengthy print-out demonstrates, it isn’t perfect. “What that misses is the context of the device and how the user's requirements change”, James explains. “So what you see with news organisations, for example, is websites like the Wall Street Journal, where you go to the home page and you're effectively scrolling through three-and-a-half metres of content in order to get to the bottom of the page. In that particular example, the user has two directions they can swipe by mobile phone: you've got the vertical and the horizontal. Often, with responsive web design, the horizontal is being lost. There's no reason why that should be.” And in addition, advertisers aren’t likely to be happy if their message is lost somewhere in the middle of an apparently endless reel of news.

Getting websites to react intelligently to their visitors is what James Rosewell’s company specialises in. He’s founder and CEO of 51Degrees, a Berkshire-based company that was founded in 2009. 51Degrees enables websites to know what device is being used to access their pages: not just the screen size but also key features – does it have a touchscreen, for example – and even the specifications of certain components, such as the graphics processor. As a result, website owners can tailor their sites to work perfectly for virtually every visitor.

This means that visitors on laptops, tablets and phones could each receive a version of the site focussed on their specific needs. James describes how a bike company might analyse which devices their customers were using when they visited certain parts of the website. “They may find there's a lower propensity for people to purchase expensive bikes on a mobile phone but there's a far higher propensity for them to purchase lower-cost accessories.” Armed with that information, the company can then optimise the products that are being displayed, targeting desktop visitors with bicycles to buy and mobile visitors with accessories “so they can improve the experience and therefore get more people checking out and spending money”.

In order to work effectively, this type of web technology requires up-to-date information about new or updated devices. In the past, it hasn’t always had a good reputation.

“For a long time, developers have been told that something called 'browser detection' is not a good thing to do”, James says. “Browser detection typically means you look at the version of the web browser - for example, it might be Chrome 38 - and you then say 'okay, Chrome 38 is capable of x but not capable of y. Therefore I may use technique x but I won't use technique y.’ Of course, the problem is that Chrome 39 comes out, Chrome 40 comes out, so this logic has to be continually maintained. Once developers have released their project or website to the client, they’re not necessarily engaged in maintaining that data. This is seen as a problem, and rightly so. It needs to be updated.”

51Degrees provides a simple solution in two parts. Firstly, it has a team of ten people that maintains a database of detailed device specifications, adding more than 200 new models every week. The 51Degrees device database now holds over 28,000 devices and 320,000 combinations of device, operating system and web browser: a true ‘device detection’ service that’s much broader than mere ‘browser detection’. Next, it makes it easy for businesses (and their developers or designers) to use this data, offering a choice of automatic updates or a cloud-based service. “On-premise deployment is quicker, because it doesn't have to go over the internet to get the information. A lot of larger organisations prefer this because it keeps the technology in one place, which is easier for them to manage.”

Despite the amount of information involved, device detection from 51Degrees is remarkably quick. “It'll typically take well under one millisecond”, says James. In fact, his top-end product currently runs at 0.0016 milliseconds. “The time taken to do device detection is miniscule compared to the overall time it would take for the other components to render a page. A cloud service is naturally going to have a slower detection time because the request has to pass over the internet and back again; typically that process takes 10 to 20 milliseconds.”

Rather than charging for the product, the 51Degrees device detection is free and open-source. “That's a very permissive open-source licence”, James points out, “you can use it commercially, for example.” There’s then the option of a free data file, updated monthly with new devices, or the choice of chargeable weekly and daily data file updates.

That could easily be the end of this story. A story of how good device detection can enhance the user experience and provide financial benefits for website owners. However, 51Degrees doesn’t just monitor the number of new internet-connected devices on the market. It’s also capable of counting the different devices that visit 51Degrees-enabled websites. “Businesses and developers can enable aggregated usage-sharing”, says James “and that information can then be analysed. It's all freely available on our website.” So, for example, you can compare devices or operating systems across continents or countries – Android devices in Europe, maybe, or screen sizes in India – and see them as a graph.

And James has another technological trick up his sleeve. “One of the ways we've started visualising some of that data is in a 3D rotation of the world, where you can go to digitalglo.be and interact with that data. You can see in which countries different device vendors are popular, you can see the usage rise and fall as the time of day changes, and then compare one vendor against the other.”

The 3D visualisation was built with the help of Robert Bateman, Founder and Managing Director of non-profit software company The Away Foundation. It took around five months to develop, using the AwayJS framework, and was first revealed at Mobile World Congress this year.

Their map shows the world as a globe with varying points of light shining out from each continent. Each point is a representation of genuine user data, with on-screen options to view anonymised information for different handsets, countries and time of day.

“It pulls out things which you might not necessarily notice by looking at data itself”, Robert explains, “so it's a nice way of getting a feel for where your customers are, or where the hot-spots are for the different handsets.”

The digitalglo.be project is certainly an impressive demonstration of web technology and the 51Degrees data source. But what about apps?, I ask James.

“My thinking is that the app is not long for this world”, he tells me. “The web browser - as you can see through the digital globe - is now capable of high-end graphics, it has all the capabilities needed to produce high-end games, so why use a native app? There's no real benefit. A simpler world is available through the web browser.”

First published on TheFonecast.com September 2015.

I've got 45 different mechanical models and will have most of them on display during August Bank Holiday weekend. Years ago I used to sell some but I don't now. For our Open House exhibition we have them in the conservatory and the dining room - and then you come into the garden for tea and cake.

I've always been practical and made wooden toys for my children. In 1997 I went to Covent Garden and saw the Cabaret Mechanical Theatre. It isn't there now but the people are still around [they have a touring show at Herstmonceux Observatory Science Centre this month] and that inspired me to make mechanical models.

When I retired from the county council, I had a passion to sit and whittle in a shop window somewhere. But my dream fell apart when I realised how much that would cost. So I set up in the back of my garage with a scroll saw, a pillar drill and a sander. I have since built a lovely workshop in the garden with a panoramic view!

My most useful tool is my bandsaw. When I make cogs, I spray-mount the outline onto a piece of wood and cut all those little teeth out with the blade. It's brilliant but you have to keep your fingers out the way.

I've got a great stock of old bits of wood; it's all recycled, donated or off-cuts. I just have to buy a bit of 6mm dowel occasionally.

I very rarely draw plans before I start. I just sketch things out in my book. Sometimes I have a better idea when I’m making something and then change the design to get it working differently.

You can't really appreciate the models unless they're moving. I let adults and children operate them as long as they're careful. If anything gets broken it can always be mended. People love studying the models to see how they work. And that's what encourages me to carry on.

As told to Mark Bridge
21 Gundreda Road, Sat 29 to Mon 31, 2pm - 5pm.
positivelycreative.co.uk

First published in Viva Lewes magazine issue 107, August 2015.

The notion of a computer you can carry around is nothing new. Back in the 1960s, Star Trek’s Captain Kirk was rarely seen without some kind of electronic notepad. Today, science-fiction has become science fact. But what exactly can these handy new devices do?  

First, let’s look at the difference between tablets and eBook readers. A tablet is simply a computer that’s small enough to hold. It’ll have a touch-sensitive screen instead of a keyboard and will let you browse the web, check your email, read books, download recipes, play games and much more. Apple’s iPad is undoubtedly the best-known tablet, although there are many other companies producing rival devices. They run on rechargeable batteries and connect to the internet by using WiFi: either through your home broadband or at many libraries, coffee shops and other public buildings.

Buying a tablet also gives you access to downloadable ‘apps’. These are the equivalent of software programs on a computer but are much easier to install. You could download the BBC iPlayer to catch up on your favourite TV soaps, shop from the comfort of your armchair, send messages on Facebook or read the latest edition of My Weekly without a trip to the newsagent. Getting started can sometimes seem a bit daunting, so ask at your local library about classes if you’re not sure where to begin.

If tablets can do all this, why bother with an eBook reader?  Well, if you just want to read electronic books, an eBook reader is likely to be lighter than a tablet and easier to use. They’ll probably have a monochrome ‘black and white’ screen, which keeps the price down and means the batteries will last for much longer. It’s easy to change the size of the text, too. The model you choose will influence the books you can read, so decide carefully. Amazon’s Kindle readers are great all-round products for buying books and magazines, including many of today’s best sellers. However, if you’re more interested in the classics – which can be free to download – a lower-priced Kobo eReader could suit you very nicely. Either way, you can get rid of that pile of paperbacks next to your bed!

This is an excerpt from 'The future at your fingertips', which was written for My Weekly magazine and first published in the 22 March 2014 issue.

Talking about Smartphones and Customers with Kazam  

Earlier this month, London-based smartphone company Kazam announced seven new Android handsets. That’s pretty impressive… and is an even more noteworthy feat when you consider the company didn’t even exist at the beginning of the year.

Kazam was founded by Michael Coombes and James Atkins, who’d previously both held senior roles at HTC UK and Ireland. Michael is now Kazam’s CEO, while James is Chief Marketing Officer.

To learn more about Kazam and its plans for the future, I met up with James Atkins last week. Before we started talking, he handed me his own phone — one of the mid-range Kazam devices — and I admitted to being pleasantly surprised. A soft-touch back cover and decent screen resolution gave the impression of a premium handset. Okay, so that’s hardly a long-term test but this first glance certainly implied higher quality than the price tag might suggest. Even the top-spec handset is expected to sell for under £200 SIM-free.

So how did James end up co-founding a mobile phone business?

“It starts when you’ve had a beer or two and you’re putting the world to rights. You know, ‘we could do this better’, ‘if we did it our way…’. It became frustrating seeing opportunities and, as a brand, not being able to take advantage of them. We’re beating someone else’s drum, essentially. And so after having that conversation a number of times, we thought ‘well, we can sit around and say this for the rest of our lives — or we could actually do it’. So we decided to do it.”

And how did they manage to set it up?

“A lot of it’s down to strategy. It’s recognising what your strengths are but also recognising what your limitations are. For us, we knew we had to get exceptional people on board. I don’t know how to sell product in Poland, for example. We need to play to our strengths — we’re good at developing product, we’re good at producing product — but not trying to own everything ourselves. We outsource where we can.”

Around fifty people now work directly for Kazam, with another 300-400 employed by outsourced partners. Manufacturing is one of those areas that’s been outsourced.

“That’s something we shouldn’t be shy about saying. For Kazam, it’s about identifying the right product for the right consumer. We don’t believe one size fits all. If we were to produce in-house or set up our own factories, we’re then constrained by our own capabilities. As it stands, we have the flexibility of the market. What’s important is that you have really robust product testing and quality assurance processes in place. And that’s something we wouldn’t outsource. If we launch a load of devices and they don’t work, we’re not going to be around for very long.”

Although James didn’t want to reveal the names of the manufacturers he’s working with — or details of the private equity partners who provided Kazam’s start-up funding — he insisted that the smartphones weren’t merely rebranded white-label products.

“I would say it’s a hybrid. We have internal R&D: we can develop hardware and we can develop software. But if it’s right for the market and there’s an off-the-shelf product, why would we change it? If it’s nearly right, what we typically do is say ‘we need to change this’. So it’s a combination of lots of things.”

Asking whether the phones run stock Android — they do — prompted a glimpse into the ethos of Kazam.

“We talk about ‘ruthless logic is revolutionary’. It’s sort-of an internal mantra. There’s a lot to be said for commonsense and not over-complicating things. ‘Simple’ is the ultimate refinement. A few years ago maybe it was necessary to refine the Android operating system. I think Android has become so good now, a lot of the skins are not necessarily enhancing it. If you read the forums, I think some people would suggest the opposite is happening.”

HTC, of course, has its own high-profile ‘HTC Sense’ user interface for Android devices. I bit my tongue at this point and asked James whether Kazam’s focus on the consumer — a simple UI, a promise to replace broken screens, a support service that can ‘take over’ a customer’s phone to solve problems — was filling a gap in the mobile industry.

“I think it’s lacking at the moment. At the moment we’re innovating in a customer support environment but we’re not trying to carve that niche out of the market. What we are doing as a brand is looking at the end-to-end value chain and saying ‘where are the opportunities to innovate in an area that is not just pixels and processors?’ What’s important is that we’re trying to innovate the complete proposition and not just the device.”

First published on The Fonecast November 2013.