Keynotes

Hiroshi Ishii, MIT Media Lab

Hiroshi Ishii is a tenured Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, at the MIT Media Lab. He co-directs Things That Think (TTT) consortium and directs Tangible Media Group. Hiroshi Ishii's research focuses upon the design of seamless interfaces between humans, digital information, and the physical environment.

At the MIT Media Lab, he founded and directs the Tangible Media Group pursuing a new vision of Human Computer Interaction (HCI): "Tangible Bits." His team seeks to change the "painted bits" of GUIs to "tangible bits" by giving physical form to digital information.Ishii and his students have presented their vision of "Tangible Bits" at a variety of academic, industrial design, and artistic venues (including ACM SIGCHI, ACM SIGGRAPH, Industrial Design Society of America, and Ars Electronica), emphasizing that the development of tangible interfaces requires the rigor of both scientific and artistic review. A display of many of the group's projects took place at the NTT InterCommunication Center (ICC) in Tokyo in summer 2000. A new, year-long exhibit of the Tangible Media group's work opened at Ars Electronica Center in September 2001.

Ishii is active in the research fields of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW). He served as an Associate Editor of ACM TOCHI (Transactions on Computer Human Interactions) and ACM TOIS (Transactions on Office Information Systems). He also serves as a program committee member of many international conferences including ACM CHI, CSCW, UIST, SIGGRAPH, Multimedia, Interact, and ECSCW.

http://ttt.media.mit.edu/
http://tangible.media.mit.edu/

Gordon Smillie, Microsoft Limited

Gordon is the Group Director for Microsoft’s enterprise customers across all verticals, partners and consultancies. He has been a member of the Microsoft UK Executive for over three years and was previously the Director of .NET Developer. Since joining Microsoft in April 1994, Gordon has held a number of management positions, including Enterprise and Corporate Sales, Alliance Partners, Industry Sales, Channel management and most recently was Manager, Business Solutions Group. Prior to joining Microsoft, he held various sales and management positions in Trinzic, IBM and Kodak. A Business Studies graduate, he holds a Diploma in Marketing and is Microsoft’s representative in the House of Commons. He is married with two children, and lives in Berkshire.

Bob Regan, Macromedia

Bob Regan is the Senior Product Manager for accessibility at Macromedia. In that role, he works with designers, developers and engineers from around the world to communicate existing strategies for accessibility as well as develop new strategies. He works with engineers and designers within Macromedia to develop new techniques and improve the accessibility of Macromedia tools. He has a Masters degree from Columbia University in Education and is currently a doctoral student in Education at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. His dissertation research looks at accessibility policy implementation strategies. He spent six years as a teacher and technology leader in Chicago and New York City. Working with teachers and students across a range of ages and subject matter, he has extensive knowledge of elementary and secondary education. He spent two years teaching web design and accessibility at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. He has been an invited speaker and panelist at a number of conferences, and authoring credits include Constructing Accessible Web Sites, Dynamic Dreamweaver MX, Flash Usability Guide, and Webmasters Handbook.

Andrew Pinder, the e-Envoy

Andrew Pinder was appointed the Government's e-Envoy on 31 January 2001 following three months as acting e-Envoy. Andrew reports directly to the Prime Minister and works alongside the e-Minister, Patricia Hewitt who has overall responsibility for the Government's e-agenda.

As e-Envoy, Andrew is leading the drive to get the UK online, ensuring that the country, its citizens and businesses derive the maximum benefit from the knowledge economy. He co-ordinates the government strategy, ensuring e-access and training, galvanising UK business and driving the e-agenda through government.

The UK online initiative, which Andrew leads is a partnership between Government, Industry, the voluntary sector, trade unions and consumer groups, to make the UK one of the world’s leading knowledge economies.

Andrew Pinder has a long and distinguished career in both the private and public sectors. After 18 years in the Inland Revenue, where he became Director of IT, Andrew moved to the private sector, becoming Director of Operations and Technology at Prudential Corporation, before joining Citibank Investment bank as head of European Operations and Technology.

After performing other roles in Citibank, including spells in New York, continental Europe and Dublin, Andrew left the bank in 1999.

Prior to his appointment as e-Envoy in 2001, he was engaged in a number of new technology-related start ups and, as a partner, in a small venture capital firm, as well as carrying out a number of management consultancy assignments for Government.