#AcornAccelerator2017 Day 4 by Reece White
Day 4 of #AcornAccelerator2017 was held at Central Working in Paddington. We began the day by assigning roles within each of our teams, for each role within the team we decided specific goals for the day. We also performed an activity known as a scrum, this is where we identified what we achieved yesterday, what we will achieve today and identified any ‘blockers’. These are things that may get in the way of our progress. In my opinion scrums definitely helped with our overall efficiency as team as they made sure every member of the team knows what they have to do and are already thinking about how to overcome future problems at the start of the day.
Our first speaker was Jenny Dean, head of client services at Digital Whiskey. Her keynote was about how she changed her career direction and that not all decisions you make in life are not permanent. The second speaker was Jonathan Kingsley, a 17 year old software engineer. Jonathan told a story about when he was 12 years old and he got his first iPad and within a week he was bored of just using the apps and wanted to find out what went on behind the scenes. After Jonathan had given his talk, he went around and spoke to all the teams individually, listening to our ideas and giving us suggestions on how to improve our products. When speaking to my team and I, Jonathan gave us some very good ideas on how to incorporate a multiplayer aspect to future versions of our game.
Following lunch, we carried on working on our projects and working towards the goals we set for the day. After an hour of working on the products, the teams working on VR based products each spoke to Sanj Surati, someone who has had experience working with virtual reality and augmented reality in the past. During our conversation, Sanj told us about his experiences working with VR and gave us some tips about delivering VR content to people. Once he had finished talking to the teams, Sanj gave a talk about advancing technology and some of the projects he’s been involved with. For example the iconic Tupac Hologram in 2012 and the Burberry holographic fashion show in Beijing, where there was a mix between real and holographic models all seamlessly walking along the same catwalk, allowing for incredible effects to be used in real time. Sanj also spoke about how this kind of technology should be used to tell a narrative and not just be used for the sake of using it. He then gave some examples of good and bad uses of this technology, specifically augmented reality. For example the Charlotte Tilbury Magic Mirror is a good use of AR, however using AR to try on clothes virtually in a shop is a bad example. This is because it looks very cartoonish and ‘blockish’ due to the current limitations of the technology.
By Reece White
Originally published at Acorn Aspirations.
