18 October, 2010 in Engineering, University by Aonghas

The Visual Supercity

We’ve been giving presentations over the last couple of weeks about issues facing the new Auckland Supercity and today was my turn to give my presentation. I chose to speak about this idea of a “Visual City” for Auckland. Basically the whole city would be modelled in 3D so that multi-dimensional information could then be superimposed on the model to help city leaders make more informed decisions. It would provide transparency for the public so that they could see changes happen virtually before they became reality. Here is a poster I subsequently made (we had to make one afterwards) that gives an overview of my presentation.

My poster describing the Visual Supercity model

Our presentations were interrupted by a fire drill

A few minutes after I presented, we heard a loud siren bellow out through the building. Admittedly we all ignored the noise at first, but as soon as we saw other people leaving down the hallway, we decided to follow suit. Moments later after we had all assembled outside by the road, we heard firetruck sirens approaching. An array of firetrucks showed up on the scene and some kitted-out firemen emerged from the crowd. Nobody really knew what was going on; we couldn’t see any fire or smoke. Luckily it didn’t appear to be serious and we were all allowed back inside once the all-clear horn was sounded.

The remaining presentations filled the rest of the hour and our teaching assistant Vicky closed with some final remarks. It was our last week of tutorials and I feel like I have learnt a lot about technical communications. Hopefully I’ll be able to use these skills later on in my degree and career.

Me and my teaching assistant Vicky

23 March, 2010 in Interests, University by Aonghas

Microsoft Presentation

I received an email last night about a presentation by Microsoft that was scheduled for this afternoon at the OGG building. The blurb in the email attachment said,

Microsoft Student Road Show 2010

Join us on our campus visit, where Microsoft will come to town and talk about a number of different student benefits, such as access to free software, discounted Office, career and networking opportunities, and showcasing some cool new technologies.

In true Microsoft style there will also be a heap of giveaways including a retro Microsoft t-shirt for the first 20 attendees!

The representative from Microsoft talked about the upcoming Windows Phone 7

The free t-shirt was the real draw card for me, so I was keen to get there early. As my luck would have it however, I ended up searching for the room for nearly 10 minutes before I realised it was down the end of the hallway. Even then I waited outside the door because I thought a previous lecturer was still in progress, when in actual fact everyone else had already gone in via the door on the other side! As you can probably guess, I wasn’t one of the first 20 attendees so I missed out on the free t-shirt. It was still a pretty interesting talk nonetheless. A guy from Microsoft New Zealand, Ryan Tarak, spoke to us about some of the new technologies Microsoft is developing. He focused on the upcoming Windows Phone 7 and the new tools that will be available to developers once it’s launched. We watched a few KeyNote videos from the Mix10 conference he went to last week in Las Vegas.  He wasn’t specific on when the launch is due to reach New Zealand though. You can follow Ryan’s blog on the Microsoft website.

Definitely exciting things to come in the way of cell phones. I can’t wait for Windows Phone 7 to arrive!