City of Things Partners
Ric and Bill Roberts, Swirrl
Swirrl specialises in technology for publishing open data and is the creator of the award‐winning PublishMyData linked data platform. The company is thus closely involved in the processes of collation, management and distribution of open data and will lead the Data Management and Distribution work package in the project.
Bill is an experienced project manager and will take the role of overall project leader. He has managed a range of multi‐partner interdisciplinary projects, both in a grant funded research context and in a commercial setting.
Ric is CTO of Swirrl and will lead on the issues of management, distribution and use of online data. With a deep technical background and strong links and reputation in the web developer community, Ric is well placed to investigate how best to get data from its various sources to people who can make use of it.
Julian Tait and Anne Dornan, Littlestar
Julian is the CEO of Littlestar Media Production and advisor to FutureEverything. Julian will lead the use case analysis task and work alongside Dave Mee in organising our project workshops. He has expertise in identifying emergent technologies and trends, and building communities and ecosystems around them to enable adoption and sustainability. In 2007 developed the SPOOK platform to deliver location aware media content which was selected by the ESNC Galileo Masters Programme. Cofounded Social Media Cafe in 2008. In 2009 developed the Open Data Cities programme for FutureEverything that sought to open up data across the Greater Manchester region. This led to a partnership with local authorities and the development of the Greater Manchester Datastore and Open Data Manchester Community.
Anne has expertise in developing and delivering collaborative innovation projects across Greater Manchester in multiple technology and application areas. Anne will contribute to the use case analysis, workshops and community building and preparation of the final report. She is Innovation Project Manager at Manchester Science Parks (www.mspl.co.uk) and developed the Innovation Manchester network and programme, co-‐creating and investing in a series of innovation pilot projects including Fab Lab, Manchester Masters and MIMIT. Anne is part of the project team developing Lab: Manchester with the University of Manchester and city partners to establish a city-‐wide support platform and infrastructure for innovation trials and demonstrator projects.
Dave Mee, Madlab
Dave is a director at the Manchester Digital Laboratory, known as MadLab. He will lead the organisation and running of our community engagement workshops. The MadLab is an award-‐winning not-‐ for-‐profit community hackspace, providing a year-‐round programme of cutting edge digital and technology-‐ focussed activity. Over the past 2 years they have created and delivered workshops with the Wellcome Trust and MMU around citizen science, robot building programmes with MOSI, and physical computing activities for MMU. Their extensive networking brings together hardware hackers, embedded systems developers, civic and urban planners with key partners across both the city and the country.
Iain Henderson, The Customer’s Voice
Iain is a Director of The Customer’s Voice and will lead our task on privacy and control of personal data. He is a specialist in personal data management and use, most specifically from the perspective of the individual, but with considerable experience in the organisational environment. Iain’s role in the project is to oversee and advise on the intersect between the Internet of Things, and ‘My Things’, i.e. where personal data meets open data, with the huge privacy and security implications thereof.
Peter Kawalek, Manchester Business School
Peter is Professor of Information Systems and Strategy at Manchester Business School.
Peter is Professor of Strategy & Information Systems at Manchester Business School MBS, where he is head of the Business Economics & Strategy group. He has a visiting position at Instituto de Empresa (IE), Madrid & Letterkenny Institute of Technology. Peter previously worked at Warwick Business School, and has been external examiner at Trinity College Dublin, Liverpool John Moore’s University and University of Salford.
Peter’s PhD is in Computer Science, and contributed to software engineering theory through process modelling and coordination architectures. He co-authored a book on process approaches to Business Information Systems and wrote a number of papers and reports on the topic. More recently, in 2011, he published ‘The Long Conversation’ with Instituto de Empresa/Palgrave Macmillan – a longitudinal review of companies that have implemented Enterprise Systems.
Today he works with qualitative methodological approaches to build a portfolio of engaged research in the area of strategy, media and society. He has PhD students working on contextual models and music purchase (with O2) and IT governance (with SMEs in Oregon, USA). Successful doctoral studies include an investigation into contributors to online social networks in a commercial environment (with SAP, IBM and Oracle), government modernisation in Cyprus, and IT in mergers (with Siemens). Peter was academic lead on two large, government projects in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Social Media.
Peter has experience with Office an Taoiseach in Dublin, Department of Communications in Dublin, the Department of Communities and Local Government in London, Leeds City Council, Salford City Council, Lancashire Constabulary and a number of other public agencies. Some of this work is to Ministerial level. Peter also has extensive private sector experience to board level, and including engagements at British Telecommunications, Chubb Insurance Company of Europe, Fujitsu, Hoverspeed, SAP, IBM, Royal Commonwealth Society and the Great North Eastern Railway. Peter’s work has been published in California Management Review, Information and Management, Journal of Information Technology and a number of other publications. He is an advisor to the Jubilee Time Capsule, an award winning celebration of the Commonwealth for the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II
Peter will lead our business models and market analysis task.
Alan Holding, Manchester Digital Development Agency
The MDDA will act as an unpaid partner and contributor to the project. Alan will contribute access to and his in-‐depth knowledge of the environmental sensors and MESH network currently being deployed as part of the ICT-‐PSP funded SMARTiP project. Alan will bring some very practical experience around the collection of data from Things, as well as bringing links to a broader community and enabling us to leverage the existing EU and TSB funding by making links between them.