Geeknotes Holiday edition
In July I took my first real holiday in, okay, forever. And I only thought about work… well, most days. But I did work very hard at not thinking about work!
My husband and I ventured overseas for a month travelling through San Francisco, South England, Scotland, London, and LA. There was a definite automotive theme through the holiday but that was just the carrot needed to tempt Mr Petrol overseas.
Incidentally, there were some digital innovation highlights throughout our holidaying activities that I thought I’d share in these “geeknotes”.
Autodesk Gallery — San Francisco
This gallery is the best showcase of innovation I’ve seen.
Autodesk have a range of software packages and services for ‘makers’. Their tools are used across the manufacturing, architecture, building, construction, media, and entertainment industries — and this little gallery showcases examples of all of them.
Some of it’s just really damn cool.
Some of it’s really damn smart.
Some of it’s a wonderfully creative gimmick.
One of my favourites was probably the Augmented reality sandbox. A standard Xbox 360 Kinect and a box of sand. The sand represented a dynamic landscape and an image (/lighting?) was projected onto it. You could heap the sand up and the imagery would respond dynamically to the height of it, creating mountains, valleys and shadows. With the right gesture, you could make it rain across the terrain and watch how the water flows and pools across your landscape.
But also, prototype vehicles, bridge and building models, prosthetics, examples of additive manufacturing, fashion, and optimised design in manufacturing.
There really is something for everyone.
CafeX — San Francisco
Robot ordered, made and delivered (to a pick up window) coffee.
Yes, it was perfectly drinkable. And Rob didn’t spill a drop.
Musée Mécanique — San Francisco
It’s good to remember that “technology” isn’t this fan-dangled shiny stuff in front of us. But technical innovations have been around forever. We visited this antique arcade hall — a chance to play a selection of weird and wonderful (?) games that leveraged the best technologies of the day.
Goodwood Festival of Speed — Chichester, UK
Goodwood is a celebration Motorsport. Classic cars, new cars, rally cars, super cars, concept cars — and everything in between.
Goodwood is E.P.I.C. We went to 2 of 4 show days and it was quite simply full on.
EV
I love seeing how different marques are embracing electric — not as a glorified shopping cart that compromises on design, space, comfort and/or performance for a very niche market but rather as a competitive and compelling offering that would tempt any petrol head.
You can sign me up for the first Charge Car (new, fully electric 1960’s Mustang) off the lot.
AI
We’ve heard of automated vehicles — but what about AI racing?
Roborace are specialising in this exact area, combining sleek design with AI cameras, sensors, and LIDAR to push the boundaries of what’s possible.
When they go, boy can they go fast! Their track car had a human co-pilot (for emergency override) and on its last run, the human got out at the half way point and let the car complete the track by itself. It smoothly pulled away and was swiftly at speed, navigating the corners but right at the end of the track it got confused under a bridge and stopped short of the finish line. I believe they had to tow it out, so I won’t be robo-racing my way to work any time soon.
Challenging assumptions
I also had an alarming reminder of why it’s important to challenge assumptions.
Some of the new car prototypes had something really off about them, they just looked weird. And then I realised what it was…
They had no wing mirrors.
How can you have a car without wing mirrors?! Cars have wing mirrors! How are you meant to see?!
But of course. Why rely on a fragile, annoying-to-position mirror when you can have a perfectly placed camera that displays what you need on a heads-up display?
And in a driverless car you don’t even need a screen or heads up display.
FOS Future Lab
And before I’m here all day, one of the festival’s exhibitions was the “FOS Future Lab”. This included, Aeromobil the flying car (no, we didn’t see this on the track). VR, solar cars, robotics, space technologies. I also got a taste of Notpla’s waste-free water capsules (pure sci-fi delivery and texture, but I’d definitely buy those).
Petersen Museum — LA
“The world’s largest exhibition of science fiction and fantasy vehicles”
This isn’t the best automotive museum I’ve ever seen (I prefer NZ’s Southward’s, or even the Riverside Museum we visited in Glasgow) — I found it “too Hollywood” and the huge collection was quite narrow (American). But a couple of things stuck out for me.
- I got really angry when I saw an infographic depicting “alternative fuels”.
We know Gasoline and Diesel are dominant fuels— of the crude oil family, they certainly are crude and don’t measure well against metrics of cost or environmental impact.
This infographic showed a timeline of the earliest use of different fuels and Gasoline and Diesel come in at 6th and 10th respectively. With negligible environmental impact, Electricity was the 5th used fuel. It came first (not first-to-market, doomed-to-fail first, that was woodchips). Electricity was used by the automotive industry 29 years before gasoline.
Why did we do that? Why invest all that effort to process crude oil into petrol and invent a combustion engine to power cars, when we had plenty of lead time to invest in more sustainable and efficient electricity production?
I know this frustration is largely through the benefit of hindsight, but if I could go back to 1835 I’d give the solar electricity team a giant high-5 and have a stern talking to the gasoline crowd before their 1864 achievement. Wouldn’t the world be a different place.
The museum also had a list of less-popular fuel types. One of my favourite was a 70:30 blend of eucalyptus oil and gasoline, used in a 1977 Suzuki Fronte.
2. What’s with the Low Res car series by United Nude?
They’re reinventing fashion (particularly shoes) and had a special car exhibition on show.
Would you drive it?
Is my aversion just me being overly attached to wing-mirrors all over again?
Friends, Allies and Troublemakers
OneTeamGov
I managed to squeeze in a OneTeamGov Westminster breakfast — it was lovely to be back after my initial visits right back when the movement was just starting.
Two of the topics gave me deja vu though. Attendees nominate and vote on what to talk about, and I’m pretty sure these two topics were also discussed during my 2017 UK visit… and since with the OneTeamGovNZ crew!
- Meetings, meetings, meetings.
- General frustrations around data and information sharing.
Clearly two persistent problems, but it’s great that the community is openly acknowledging these and sharing tips with each other. (Noting that the community keeps growing!)
I’m also really stoked for the sustainability and climate change discussions brewing. If anyone can tackle it, it’s this global community of kick-ass public servants.
Catching up with friends
In London I also caught up with:
- Emily, Mary and Anne from the UK exchange team we hosted in New Zealand back in 2017
- Rachelle. Our generational diversity work got put on the back burner (timezones really don’t help a 3-nation collaboration when it’s on our spare time) but we’re keen to get that going again
- plus some one-on-one time with Matt, Sarah, and Glyn, as well as Marc in San Francisco.
We talked about leadership, data, generational diversity, the world naked bike ride (I’m not sure I needed to see those photos), digital transformation, ethics, mentoring, sustainability and empowerment. I also led a pretty decent NZ recruitment drive!
Home automation
My husband is slowly sneaking IOT into our house. I’ve been a bit reluctant but it turns out it’s perfect for going on holiday!
We have some Philips Hue lighting that was rigged up to a timer when we were away. But lights coming on and off at the exact moment each day also isn’t good — so when you’re waiting in an inevitable queue on the other side of the world you can easily open the app and flick the lights on for a few minutes, mimicking your more night-owl tendencies.
While your phone is out, you might as well open the Arlo camera feed and see how the Goldfish is doing. “Hi Dwight!”
Other observations?
- various home assistants have aggressive marketing across the UK, they’re basically giving them away. That’s one technology I’m actively resisting introducing to my home (my phone eavesdrops enough) but market saturation quickly shapes service delivery norms (try ‘opting out’ of Facebook and see which services you’re restricted from). I just hope society is ready, because it’s coming quick.
- from a tourism perspective, signs are popping up forbidding drones. I’m rather pleased — can you imagine trying to enjoy a nice day out with a hundred drones buzzing above your head, competing for the better photo?
- I flew the same route in 2017 and there has been a marked improvement in airport flows. Twice I thought I must have sleep-walked through the wrong door because I found myself outside without any particular pain points. In saying that, there was very little information around data use and privacy — perhaps they figure the mere act of leaving your house means you’ve signed all that away?
So that’s it! I did do non-geek things during my month away but you can see it was rather impossible to completely escape thinking about our digital future — it’s everywhere.
If you find yourself in San Francisco, do get yourself along to the Autodesk Gallery and if you’re even vaguely interested in cars, add Goodwood to your bucket list.
