Mayors William Wynn and and António Costa, of the cities of Austin and Lisbon, respectively, will be presiding over the launch of the Creative Cities Network in the Portuguese capital on July 7th at the Portuguese Pavilion at Parque das Nações.
For more information go to http://creativecitieslisbon.org/
We are forging ahead with our first major interactive project for the Spanish market, more precisely for Group Santander’s new HQ at Cuidad Financeira in Madrid.
Read more about it here.
Moving to the new building in the FCT campus was a very important milestone for the company’s corporate culture.
Our old offices couldn’t keep pace with the company’s growth, people were sharing desks and the Alcântara’s office (central Lisbon), albeit strategically located, was slowing creating the feeling of a YDreams that was physically divided into backoffice (Production and R&D) and front office (Sales and Marketing). Project Managers where in the middle, almost literally, since they spent more time going back and forth the Tagus bridge than anyone else.
So it was great when all the company came to be reunited on one building. Moreover, it was a building that we designed and conceived to fit our own needs - band studio included.
Nevertheless, after the reunification joy settled for a bit, we realized that with the explosive growth, new people constantly arriving and frantic work rate, we were in danger of losing a bit of the DNA that defined us as a company.
Looking around at all the shiny gray walls that were now surrounding us, some YDreamers realized that they needed some life and provided a great canvas for some funky signage to shake things up. Moreover, why keep the initiative to walls and not devise a series of actions to shake everything up? This is how YShakeIt - Project 363 was born.
Entrance to the Quality Test Room (left) and the Sound Studio (right)
Staff Only Door
The project is really a series of activities aimed at keep corporate culture and foster creativity, involving people from all departments which “lead” each activity. There’s a Project Manager also, of course, someone needs to keep an eye on the budget.
Some of the stuff we’ve been organizing so far:
- Close Encounters Sessions
Close Encounters are small internal weekly conferences we have. The format varies, it can be a round table discussion, a talk about a specific topic or an artistic presentation. Speakers can be YDreamers or external guests. Nuno Artur Silva (Produções Fícticias), Artur Arsénio (Robotics), Manuel Lima (Data Visualization) or Prof. Rui Aço (Oficina do Desenho), are some of the guests we were lucky to have so far. Internally we’ve also had people speaking about Interactive Narratives in Cinema, the Power of Collaborative Tools, Digital Art, Finances for non-financial People, among many others. As you can see the idea is not to discuss work, but to inspire and inform in different ways.
- Cinema Sessions with commentary and discyssion
Kicked off recently, some of the movies included Switching, by Morten Schjødt and Man with a Movie Camera, by Dziga Vertov.
- Friday After Work Caipirão
I think this one is pretty self-explanatory. 
- The Other Side of the YDreamer
YDreamers often have hidden talents, this way they can share them with the rest of us. The photography exhibition is a good example.
There are many others kicking off or in production like podcasts or arduino workshops, and maybe Close Encounters will soon have an external format. Keep tuned!
Patrícia Martins, young Portuguese tennis hopeful, stopped by the other day and interacted for a bit with our YVision platform. The result is the video below, and as you can see, it’s kind of a different ball game than the one she’s normally used to, but she still excels.
Patrícia’s tennis career is relatively short (she is only 14) but shows incredible promise. On top of that, while visiting us, she was very courteous and nice to everyone around. It’s striking how much focused she seems regarding tennis, but genuinely passionate for the sport. You can see she’s having a lot of fun. Talking to her mother, you could also notice that her other priorities, like school and growing up as a teenager, are also kept in line. It was an honest pleasure having her here, and being able to support and witness her early steps into tennis fame.
Eduardo Dias, one of YDreams co-founders, has recently started a blog called “ATREVE-TE” (in English, “dare to”).
It is written in Portuguese and will focus on Eduardo’s experiences as a young entrepreneur and the company’s building up towards the external investment, among other topics. Eduardo will also shed some light on what he calls the three major assets on which the company was build: the people, the product and the image.
Check it out!
http://senaotentaresnuncaconseguiras.blogspot.com/
Ever since moving into our new headquarters on the FCT New Lisbon University campus, just across the river from Lisbon, we’ve made a point of keeping our company culture well and alive.
We play just about as hard as we work. After all the time spent programming, pitching presentations, brainstorming, developing concepts, crunching numbers and so forth, fun and healthy outlets are required to keep things balanced.
While we may not be located amidst the hustle and bustle of a big city, we are about five minutes away from some of the best beaches in Europe, as well as some pretty great hiking and biking trails just outside the nation’s capital.
So given our serendipitous surroundings, it wasn’t long before people started to get together to organize some pretty cool extracurricular activities.
Those were my exact thoughts when Ivan Franco, our R&D Director, told me he was off to Lisbon’s Electricity Museum to give a talk at Pecha Kucha Night about interaction design, its potential consequences and how it relates to the work we do here at YDreams.
Well, the name alone was enough to trigger my curiosity, especially because I thought he was referring to some vanguard Karaoke trend or something (I’m a big fan 
)…but no, Pecha Kucha (which is Japanese for conversation) is a “patented system where each presenter is allowed 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds each – giving participants 6 minutes 40 seconds of fame before the next presenter is up. This keeps presentations concise, the interest level up, and gives more people the chance to show.”
The Japanese have long been known for reducing the subject to its necessary elements. In this case they inspired Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham, ‘founders’ of Pecha Kucha Night to take minimalism beyond design and architecture, and the Pecha Kucha system seems to be catching on just fine, having so far spread virally to close to 200 cities in little over six years.
Interesting post with plenty of visual examples by Ori Inbar, from Games Alfresco, on how Augmented Reality may be used to reinvent a number of industries .
Searching for way to start this post I came across this definition of a project manager: “A project manager is a facilitator. The ideal project manager does whatever it takes to ensure that the members of the project team can do their work”
For the YWay I would add the following: “…and to make sure the job is delivered with the highest standards of quality possible!
Truth is we are facilitators. When you see us running around the company we are on a facilitating mission. We pretty much do whatever is needed to steer the project in the best direction possible.
Thinking of this phrase I remember a situation that really represents this well. I was still a developer and Nuno Capeta was the project manager for the Portugal Telecom Roadshow. The truck used in the roadshow was parked in Alverca (on the outskirts of Lisbon) near the river and we were making the final adjustments to deliver the project. Late one night (one of many) we were literally being attacked by a swarm of rabid mosquitoes, which pretty much made getting any work done impossible! Capeta was there (that’s right, the project manager stays with the team and does whatever it takes to get the job done) and because he was a facilitator he went to buy some insect repellent and netting so the team could do their work. It didn’t entirely solve the problem, and by the end of the night mine and Capeta’s arms resembled huge wooden trunks, but we were there anyway, facilitating or trying to!
YFacilitators braving the mid-winter cold in Berlin, to finish work on the Adidas EyeBall for the 2006 World Cup
This is the challenge set forth by EnerFixe to over 300 schools in the north of Portugal and so far more than 2000 students have chosen to participate!
During 2008 Union Fenosa, an integrated energy operator, challenged YDreams to create a fun, innovative and educational game about energy efficiency. The goal was to reach students between the ages of 8 and 14 and teach them basic day-to-day actions that can lower energy consumption and reduce carbon emissions.
Working alongside BlueShark (a Lisbon-based game-design studio), we developed a point and click game concept. With the help of Union Fenosa’s Familia Blue, the gamer leads the avatar through several scenarios to detect appliances, light switches, air-conditioners and other objects and then make energy efficient choices, which will ultimately affect the electricity bill at the end of the month.
The design concept, created by Spanish designer Antonio Coca, was adapted to fit the game giving Enerfixe a really cool and distinguished look. We than added a fun and hip sound design by YDreams’ very own Nuno Pereira to set the right mood.
And that’s it!!! It really was that easy, because everyone pulled together by pitching ideas, choosing scenarios, defining game behaviors and essentially enjoying themselves.
The game was published online a week ago, and the results are awesome: more than 2,000 players have registered from 110 schools and over 5,500 games (and counting) have been played!
So, I dare you to beat the current best score! You can try it out at: www.enerfixe.com.pt
Just register and start playing. And remember you really can help planet Earth by reducing your daily carbon emissions.
EnerFixe on YouTube
This year the European Commission is organizing the first ever European SME (Small and medium enterprises) week from the 6th to the 14th of May in Brussels. The week will promote entrepreneurial spirit and emphasize the contribution of entrepreneurs to the European economy. To mark the occasion, the EC has published a brochure with portraits of entrepreneurs from each of the 33 countries participating in SME week.
The goal of the brochure is to serve as a guideline to aspiring entrepeuneurs and to highlight the challenges and excitement of running one’s own business, and we are thrilled to anounce that our CEO, António Câmara, has been nominated by national and European experts to figure in the brochure for Portugal!
Opening day for the 1st European SME Week will kick off with an exhibition entitled “The SME experience – How it feels to be an entrepreneur” with all 33 successful entrepreneurs on hand to tell their stories, an art installation where visitors can experience a day in the life of an entrepreneur, and a ‘Portraits Hall of Fame’ complete with interactive touch screens for exploring each nominees’ portrait. Visitors to the event will range from journalists to groups of students interested in entrepreneurism.
Text by José Carlos Danado, Afonso Tavares and Paulo Ricca
These wise words recorded by John Lennon, back in the seventies, inspired past and present generations to fight against different barriers and limitations, and still inspire us to tear some digital walls down. As mobile devices became ubiquitous, everyone’s pockets became incredibly rich with processing power but poor on real possibilities.
Mobile world is a promise and YLabs (YDreams’ in-house R&D lab) is following its trends. In the past YDreams has developed well-known ground breaking games for mobile devices such as Undercover, Spooks, or Cristiano Ronaldo Underworld Football,. Recent YLabs projects are improving this incredible legacy by gathering ideas from the folks that matter – the users - to come up with something both useful and unique!
We are all carrying devices more powerful than the computer that took Neil Armstrong to the Moon but the most advanced possibilities available to most of us are taking blurry pictures and sharing our meal menus on twitter. Mobile device communication and processing capabilities make them the preferred tool for engaging users in an interactive experience at home, work or when on the go. Read the rest of this entry »
Last week a YDreams’ team travelled to Cannes, France with one objective – show the TV and Entertainment content industry some of the coolest technology out there.
It all started on Tuesday afternoon – while the Grand Auditorium of the Palais des Congrès in Cannes filled up and waited for Sir Martin Sorrell’s keynote, everybody had the chance to interact with the virtual bubbles that filled the screen.
Later that evening we set up another interactive installation, this time at Digital Creative Party at the Carlton Hotel. The lively party was the perfect setting for our interactive waterfall, where guests could play with the water effect and splash each other.
The last event of the week consisted in the session Experience This! Content 360 Technology Showcase. Among several remarkable panellists and in front of a packed room, YDreams presented 3 real time demos that got the audience going.
The first one was our mind reader application that allowed us to add thought bubbles to our panellists for a few minutes (we found out that they all loved Cannes and thought YDreams rocked!). Our second live demo consisted in a shower of cubes, which the whole audience could play with. Last but not least we showcased SpaceDog, Audience Entertainment’s latest game, which debuted at Cannes. The audience was invited to raise and lower their arms, acting as a human joystick that guided SpaceDog safely to his Bone Planet objective.
The presentation ended with a showing of the Augmented Reality Interactive Playground featuring YDreams’ famous mascot Flapi. The audience was excited to find out that YDreams technology can mean inviting your favourite virtual character into your living room, as well as letting a real character become part of a fictional world, all of it in real time. We call it the future of television. I look forward to us making it happen sooner, rather than later.:)
( The BTEK project is particularly close to the hearts of our fellow YDreamers over in Barcelona, as well as our neighboring country For this reason we’ve decided to include the Spanish version of the text after the English.)
YDreams has been commissioned by Bizkaia Technology Park to conceive and develop interactive solutions for the BTEK Center, a scientific interpretation center set to become a landmark, on the inside as well as the outside.
The BTEK Center’s impressive building is located in Zamudio, inside the Technology Park, which rises like a jagged black crystal withstanding the harsh winters of Biscay Province. The small town of Zamudio, minutes away from downtown Bilbao, is nestled amongst verdant mountains so characteristic of the Basque Country.
The Technology Park, one of the biggest in Spain, was established in 1985 by Basque Country public institutions and designed to promote diversification in industry as well as the transfer and diffusion of technology and innovation. The future BTEK Center aims to help visitors connect with technology and science, thereby stimulating rational thinking and a more critical spirit among audiences. Read the rest of this entry »
YDreams’ CEO, António Câmara, Ivan Franco and Inês Henriques sat down with ‘Falar Global’, a program on SIC Notícias. which looks at the impact information and knowledge technologies have on our daily lives.
The interview covers a range of topics that include YDreams’ take on what we can expect from televisions of the future, as well as the company’s work in the field of augmented reality, and in transforming the objects and surfaces around us into screens people can interact with.
For more see video!
I always download the “This Week” show, with Dan Fernandez and Brian Keller, onto my portable player and listen to it during my commute. They mentioned the “Show Off” contest on one of the last episodes and I thought it was a great opportunity to literally ‘show off’ YDreams at the Microsoft MIX09 event.
I was busy and left it for later but after a sleepless night preparing a presentation, I suddenly noticed it was the last day to submit a video, so instead of going to bed, I screen captured a couple of demos we’d made using our YVision platform, quickly edited the video on Movie Maker and sent it off.
Only after receiving an email from Dan the following day, ‘asking if the video had no audio’, did I notice that I had an extra day (I had read the deadline date after midnight, thus the date mix-up!) The good news was that I had time to find a great song in Jamendo, add it to the video and re-submit it (thanks Dan).
The honorable mention awarded the video, by our peers at MIX09, goes directly to the great team that YDreams is. Their commitment to excellence allowed me to create this video in just a couple of hours.
We’re pretty excited about this cool piece of news! We just found out that our ‘Playing in an Augmented World’ demo-mix submitted at this year’s MIX09 Showoff contest, and presented to hundreds of peers in Las Vegas, received an honorable mention!
The demo put together by YLabs (our in-house R&D lab) shows-off some real- time interaction with 3D objects using a webcam.
Again, congratulations to all involved.
Have a look as one of our YLabbies tests some YVision-based apps on Magalhães (the made-in-Portugal classmate pc) with an Intel(R) Atom(TM) N270 CPU @ 1.60GHz and an Intel(R) 945 Express chipset.
Camera-based interaction on a netbook from YDreams on Vimeo.
My last week was spent at the South by Southwest Festival (SXSW) in Austin Texas. It’s a full week of events with three main subjects: interactive, film and music. It’s really a magnificent event that completely overtakes Austin, with people from all around the world presenting their work both as panelists or performing artists. I came to present my own panel on “New Interfaces for Performance” at the Austin Convention Center. Soon I realized that with simultaneous panels happening in around 20 different rooms, there’s so much going on that you just wish you could be in more than one place at a time.
Interactive is mainly dedicated to tendencies revolving around new technologies. There was a big focus on web 2.0 and social networking. It’s not a subject that particularly interests me so I looked for good alternatives. Read the rest of this entry »
The folks over at YLabs (our in-house R&D lab) wanted to show-off what our YVision platform could actually do so they put together this good-natured demo of the many ways people can interact in real-time with virtual elements in most any physical scenario.
Watch as the gang plays with something resembling a runny version of The Blob, has their minds read, volleys soapy bubbles about and oozes what reminds me of a virtual Slinky from both eyes, yet they seem to be genuinely enjoying themselves
Playing in an Augmented World from YDreams on Vimeo.
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