JOINER

Inside the University of Bristol’s Smart Internet Lab, there’s a new mission control: JOINER, the UK 6G Experimentation platform. Its launch is an important milestone in the race to advance future connectivity, as Dr Alex Mavromatis, PhD, Madevo, emphasised at a day of talks in the Will’s Memorial building.

"If we can't build fast, test fast and fail fast, we'll never be able to compete with start-ups in the USA."

The event kicked off with introductions by JOINER project leads Prof Dimitra Simeonidou OBE, FREng, FIEEE OBE and Rosalind Singleton followed by an impressive line up of speakers discussing plans for the platform, who it will help and how it can make a difference. The accelerator programme is in essence a physical and intellectual network connecting the knowledge and research capacity of 11 world-leading universities and labs from across the UK.

We were there as attendees, because over the last few years Beeston Media has made numerous videos for the Smart Internet Lab covering topics such as a Hero / About Us film, 6G overview and the REASON, mATRIC and SWAN projects as well as an animation about GNSS vulnerabilities in agri-tech.

Our role as filmmakers is to pull out simple and engaging messaging from complex topics. We’ve had lots of great input from academics and industry experts, but a special mention goes to Prof Mark Beach for his clarity of explanation to help focus storylines. It's a very satisfying process to take cutting edge technical detail and simplify it down for a lay audience. Years of editorial experience is often not so much about what you know. It’s about identifying what you don’t know and not being afraid to ask. It’s important to realise that this works both ways – so if you’re ever working with a film crew and something unfamiliar pops up, or it looks like a point’s being missed, do highlight it. This type of filmmaking is all about being on the same team, as we’re all passionate about promoting UK tech.

We weren't filming anything at the launch but making time to attend events like this really helps with background knowledge, getting a sense of the ecosystem as a whole and identifying narrative threads to unite behind.

A few specific takeaways from the day:

- Telecoms innovation is complex. Sounds obvious perhaps but you rarely have the luxury of a clean slate of tech – instead you have to amalgamate vastly different legacy networks. If JOINER can help with standardising the many approaches to next generation connectivity then it'll be a great achievement. Great chat with Lon Barfield, UX designer for JOINER about all this.

- JOINER has a mobile mobile network, in the form of a VW Multivan kitted out with the latest 6G connectivity gear, as parked next to the Wills Building for inspection. See pix below.

- Amazon Web Services are going large in this area. As noted by my colleague Penny Beeston in her recent post about the last Bristol Innovation Foresight event - the Convergence of Critical Technologies in AI and Telecoms - the mood in the traditional Telecoms community can come across as cautious and downplayed when discussing the latest advances in the sector. Why this may be the case is not for here - see the comments on Penny's post - but I thought it worth mentioning that Robert Belson, Senior Solutions Architect / Generative AI Innovation & Ecosystem Development at AWS, was incredibly buoyant (fresh off an overnight flight) and optimistic about both what JOINER could do for AWS and the sector in general. One notable slide outlined a wealth of case studies where JOINER could be crucial in product development.

- Health and social care applications are really challenging. Jessica Ellis mentioned the problems you can run into with Faraday cages affecting connectivity in vehicles and operating theatres, meaning a lot of talk around 5G in theatres had gone quiet. Limited skillsets within the health service, combined with integrating sensors into homes are further limitations.

- Freyja Lockwood discussed the challenges of rural connectivity, but also mentioned WECA’s advantage of having an overview across sectors to act as an innovation convenor focussing on delivery, not just the nuts and bolts issues.

This WECA take resonated with us, as the type of films we make are naturally optimistic, whether they’re a funding bid or product explainer. Local government and platforms like JOINER have important tales to tell and targets to aim for that should begin with the end in mind. The legacy tech and hard science is undoubtedly frustrating, but that’s no different from many different innovation drives that have gone before. Ros Singleton was quite right to begin the day with a quote attributed to Socrates:

"The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”

Thank you to all the speakers, as well as attendees that we had some great chats with during the day.