The FLAME Summer school, hosted at Engineers House in Bristol, ran from the 11th – 13th July 2018 and was organized by Dr. Aloizio Pereira da Silva, a Research Fellow and 5G Portfolio Manager for the High Performance Network Group at the University of Bristol.
The event was attended by professionals from academia, SMEs and industry, aiming to combine their resources and develop innovative problem-solving skills in the Future Multimedia Internet (FMI) ecosystem, under the guidance of the Networked Media Systems.
Expert speakers from the FLAME project introduced functionalities and capabilities of the FLAME platform in both theoretical and practical terms. Along with representation from the University of Bristol, partners included the University of Southampton, VRT, InterDigital, Disney Research, Studio Dott and ETH Zurich.
Dr. Aloizio Pereira da Silva commented about the event:
‘The summer school participants learn about the main building blocks of the FLAME ecosystem. This school was a great success and a great deal of fun, bringing together both creativity and technicality via a broad range of talented attendees and speakers. We look forward to even more success in the future as we continue with the FLAME project’
Participants engaged in a variety of fun and challenging tasks, drawing upon personal experience and creating new connections across sectors.
With the confidence and character gained from these experiences, the mission of the Summer school is to assist contributors in highlighting issues within the current digital infrastructure.
As an example, one such task included small teams of attendees taking to Bristol’s streets to interview and film members of the public. Each attendee adopted different media roles, such as director, cameraman or presenter. The footage was filmed in real time and sent back to other participants at the event venue, to edit and produce the finished product by a specific deadline. Issues encountered during the process, such as the transmission of large data files, were considered as areas requiring technological improvement and focus. This sparked debate, leading to innovative ideas around how to improve and further the technology.
About FLAME:
The FLAME project exists to build a ground-breaking media delivery platform that aims to provide tighter integration of media services with the programmable infrastructure of Telcom companies, allowing placement of media services deep in the network, in metro data centres as well as at the very edge of the network in street cabinets.
FLAME’s goal is to allow media service providers, technology and infrastructure providers to understand the interplay between content and the infrastructures used to deliver it. Cost efficiencies and market revenue sharing models are expected to emerge for providers, while new media services offering better personalisation, interactivity, mobility and localisation are some of the consumer benefits.