Re: Academic/commercial collaboration

Jesmond replied before I could, and I endorse what she say and have several additional points.

Firstly, I am one of the two academic supervisors Jesmond mentions (the other is that David Benyon fellow) and this is our university's fourth TCS
programme (out of around 100 that Napier have done) that deals explicitly with usability-related issues. This indicates both the novelty of
regarding UCD as technology that is now fit for transfer as opposed to research (jury is still out there!) but also the difficulties of achieving this
without someone, such as Jesmond, who has good commercial experience.So...are they funding research or are they funding technology
transfer? Or is it pointless to differentiate, in a knowledge economy?

There are typically around 1000 such Technology Transfer programmes in the UK as a whole at any point in time, and it takes around three
months to gain approval. A new company (TTI ltd) has been formed to managee these schemes, and some enhancements are expected in
April/May, foillowing the current reviews by the UK government (things like commercialisation of the knowledge base etc).

The total funding for each programme is typically around £50k from the government's DTI, and around £30k from the company (this ratio assumes
the company is an SME), funding one fulltime position (TCS Associate) for two years, with half a day a week of input from staff in the knowledge
partner (university or commercial research provider) to the Associate, and this includes around £10k for training/equipment, as well as four
well-regarded one week residential management training courses, as well as various other support mechanisms.

TCS programmes, historically, have been shown (see TTI's promotional publications!) to create several permanent jobs for each funded position,
and to make a sizeable difference to the bottom line. The ones I've been involved in certainly have, although there are always projects that end in
failure. The main tension I have found is that TCS forces us to plan 2-3 years ahead, when many in industry want to keep the horizon to 3-6
months. Resolving this is the most enjoyable aspect for me, as both a past practitioner and a current academic.

As regards conferences, BHCIG, BCS etc, the situation is a little more complex, but as a BHCIG Exec member and also on the committee for
HCI2003, HCI2002 (inc EUPA2002) and IHM-HCI2001, hopefully I can elucidate usefully.

Conferences: the above titles are significant. This year sees the 17th British HCI Group's conference. They can be joint between partners - with
equal financial risk and administrative contribution to achieve a single entity (2001), they can provide a shelter and sustenance for a partner
organisation to get their own conference series off the ground - with either a conference within a conference or a thread running through (2002),
they can incorporate a specific day that is designed to be more attractive for most practitioners (2003 and its Industry Day). There are obviously
other permutations but these are recent examples.

 It's a bit fallacious to say that university = academics = theory = research and industry = practitioners = realworld = pragmatism. Some are in
both camps. Some move between the two. Some industrial research is very theoretic and never sees the light of day.etc etc Each conference
committee has its own objectives, its own view about what was good about the last time and what was a waste of time. Time is valuable for both
academia, industry and public sector. It can be just as bad to have papers that point out what is already known (or worse still, known to be
wrong) as it is to have angels-on-a-pinhead debates. But rest assured that this conference committee person reflects on comments like the ones
earlier in this thread.

BCS/BHCIG interface: We have recently woken up to the fact that half of BHCIG members are in the BCS, but that >99% of BCS members are
not in BHCIG. Until now perhaps the committee has been more reflective of the half not in BCS! But BCS know we exist - the BHCIG Magazine
Interfaces has been voted best specialist group newsletter publication for the last two years in a row.

We are actively in touch with BCS now - to provide input into their own web-based services to members, to find commonality with other SIGs
(SGs as we call them in the UK!), to ensure that BHCIG members' consultancy skills can be found from the BCS website, to get the HCI/UCD
message across to that 99%, to get 13407 competency built into the BCS ISM, to provide authoritative commentators for media, and more
besides. However this all takes time and requiresus  to build carefully and professionally. You don't have to look far to find, for example, IT
professionals who complain that usability people come along afterwards and charge you a fortune to tell you what you already knew, but couldn't
fix without more budget. We all know that this perception is unfair/wrong, but to pretend that the perception doesn't exist is to overstate our
current influence. Lists like this, sites like usabilitynews.com and usabilitynet do a lot to shape more positive attitudes, and we need to build on
these successes as we seek to influence the national and international agenda.

Tom McEwan
BHCIG Communications Chair
Napier University, Edinburgh

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