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Session on being an entrepreneur provided by the Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning at the Judge Business School
How to define a business model, Hermann Hauser (Amadeus Capital Partners)
This session introduces the concept of a business model and define what it means for the entrepreneur and places it in the context of business planning. It investigates why business models come and go in fashion and why it is important to change them. It considers how to choose an appropriate business model as well as how to challenge and optimise your selected path.
Workshops:
Partnering with established organisations, Mike Carr (British Telecom)
This session explores practical issues and challenges in partnering with established organisations from small entrepreneurial start-up perspectives. The session focuses on:
- Why should two companies work together
- How could they work together
- What issues might arise, such as differences in culture, ways of working and making decisions, how to get in, who to talk to, and so forth
- Some tips on how to overcome these issues from the speaker’s experience
Intellectual property, Isla Furlong (Venner Shipley)
There are many possible business models to take your idea and intellectual property forward. Should you license it out, start a firm to make and sell the product, or create strategic partnership agreements? This session provides a legal perspective on these different business models and the practical steps you need to take to protect your intellectual property.
Keynote talk, Rick Rashid (Microsoft Research)
Rick Rashid gives an overview of Microsoft Research, highlighting some research projects from various Microsoft Research laboratories and presenting opportunities at Microsoft Research for PhD students and recent post-docs.
Giving a good presentation, Ken Shaw (Benchmark Communication Techniques)
Lecture, presentation, or conversation? We examine:
- Who you audience is
- What they want
- Why you are addressing them
- How you handle practical issues such as nerves, body language, speech and voice, humour, visual aids
- What is success?
- What is plan B if everything goes wrong?
- How you recover
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Productising research, John Miller (Microsoft Research) – Slides
The research community generates a huge number of interesting results every year, but few find their way into consumer products. This talk discusses the differences between research results and consumer-ready software. We provide examples of challenges and key differences between writing a prototype to prove an idea can work versus writing a product designed not to fail.
Autostereoscopic 3D displays: stereoscopic perception without the special glasses, Neil Dodgson (University of Cambridge) – Slides
The talk is in two parts. I begin by explaining what a 3D display can offer that a 2D display cannot and then cover the various technologies that can be used to build 3D displays that do not require you to wear silly glasses. In the second part of the talk, I describe the 3D display that was designed and built by the University of Cambridge and the work that was done to convert the proof-of-concept model into a commercial prototype. I conclude with an update on the commercial state of the 3D display market.
Applying for research funding, John Hand (EPSRC)
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Mind-reading machines, Peter Robinson (University of Cambridge) – Slides see also Emotionally Intelligent Interfaces
Facial displays are an important channel for the expression of emotions, and are often thought of as projections of a person’s mental state. Computer systems generally ignore this information. Mind-reading interfaces infer users’ mental states from facial expressions, giving them a degree of emotional intelligence. We use video processing to track two dozen features on the user’s face. These are then interpreted using statistical techniques through a hierarchy of analyses as basic actions, head and facial gestures, and finally groups of mental states. The talk describes an implementation of facial affect inference, together with an evaluation and some preliminary results of using the system to monitor car drivers.
Posters sessions
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How to write a great research paper, Simon Peyton-Jones (Microsoft Research) – Slides
Writing papers and giving talks are key skills for any researcher, but they aren’t easy. In this pair of presentations, I describe simple guidelines that I follow for writing papers and giving talks, which I think may be useful to you too. I don’t have all the answers—far from it—and I hope that the presentation evolves into a discussion in which you share your own insights, rather than a lecture.
Programming biology, Andrew Phillips (Microsoft Research) – Slides
This talk presents a programming language for designing and simulating computer models of biological systems. The language is based on a computational formalism known as the pi-calculus, and the simulation algorithm is based on standard kinetic theory of physical chemistry. The language is first presented by using a simple graphical notation, which is subsequently used to model and simulate a number of intriguing biological systems, including a genetic oscillator and a pathway of the immune system. One of the benefits of the language is its scalability: large models of biological systems can be programmed from simple components in a modular fashion.
Peer-to-peer networking, Ant Rowstron (Microsoft Research) – Slides
The talk describes Virtual Ring Routing (VRR), a new network routing protocol that occupies a unique point in the routing protocol design space. VRR is inspired by the overlay routing algorithms used in Distributed Hash Tables (DHTs). However, it does not rely on an underlying network routing protocol. It is implemented directly on top of the link layer. VRR has the unique feature that neither requires network flooding nor translation between fixed identifiers and location-dependent addresses. VRR provides both traditional point-to-point network routing and DHT routing to the node responsible for a hash table key. VRR can be used with any link layer technology and this talk will cover the design and evaluation of a VRR implementation tuned for wireless networks. Experimental results show that VRR provides robust performance across a wide range of environments and workloads. It performs comparably to, or better than, the best wireless routing protocol in each experiment.
Autonomous monitoring of vulnerable habitats, Robin Freeman (Microsoft Research) – Slides
Determining the longitudinal effects of changing environmental conditions on vulnerable species is fundamental for their effective conservation. Traditional methods for assessing behavioural and environmental conditions rely on considerable manpower and time-consuming field study. Not only does this limit the quantity of data that can be gathered, but it also constrains its scope and resolution. We are currently trailing a system combining wireless sensor nodes with novel Microsoft technologies to automate the collection and aggregation of detailed nest attendance and habitat information from a vulnerable seabird, the Manx Shearwater (Puffinus puffinus) on Skomer Island, Pembrokeshire. In this talk, I discuss the application of such methods to collect ecological data, its advantages and the new problems it presents, and the exciting data we are receiving from Skomer.
Machine learning applied to games, Phillip Trelford (Microsoft Research)
Games are now big business; the global games market size now exceeds that of the Hollywood film industry and game titles can even spin off movies. We assert that machine learning can be used to make games more fun by adding learning to agents’ behaviour and may be able to cut costs by automating generation of agents’ behaviour. To that end, in this talk I look at a recent internship where a Reinforcement Learning PHd thesis was applied inside an Xbox 360 title.
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Your chance to ask a panel of venture capitalists, business angels, bankers and others who fund new businesses in different industry sectors, what they look for in business plans and presentations from entrepreneurs. This will provide a backdrop for the financial day, as well as key tips for your business plan and how to work with the investors when you secure your funding.