Keynote Speaker Blair Parkin

Blair Parkin
Visual Acuity Limited
www.visual-acuity.com

Blair is the Managing Director of Acuity. He has extensive experience of the collaborative visualization, simulation, presentation and computing market places. As a Consultant Director at Acuity, Blair works with clients to define the project objectives, including timescales and digital and new media technology, content and show production. He understands the implications these have for the requirement specification and the vendor selection process. Blair is currently working on ongoing projects for The Foundation of the Hellenic World (Athens ,Greece) the California Academy of Sciences (San Francisco ,USA) and Freedom Park Trust (Pretoria ,South Africa) while his recent assignments include the “Virtual Mummy" exhibit at The British Museum (London ,UK).

Visualization - “Can It Make a Difference?"

Blair will look at several uses of visualization ranging from expensive complex projects with a high return on investment to modest projects with more of a social context.
Blair is originally trained in technical theatre design. He moved into Product Management at a series of control system, audio visual, lighting and technology companies. This included a short spell working with Dataton AB in Linkoping, Sweden. He then spent a decade at the Barco Corporation working in executive and technology related roles throughout the world. In 1996 he left Barco to found Trimension Systems, a developer and integrator of large-scale immersive visualization systems. Blair positioned that company as a World leader in the provision of virtual reality and visualization technologies to the Museum, Planetarium, Science and Visitor Centre market and the academic/research, oil and gas, automotive and aerospace industries. He initiated and led many of the most notable projects around the world including the digital Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History (New York ,USA), The NBC Experience (New York ,USA) and CASA Pedro Domecq (Mexico City, Mexico) as well as a multi-site programme for Texaco (including the first Collaborative Visualization Environment installation for the oil & gas industry) and several academic installations in the UK and the USA. Trimension changed ownership in 2001 and Blair spent a sabbatical teaching in South Africa and consulting with venture capital organisations investing in the visualization, simulation and pro-audio visual market places.

In April 2002 Blair founded Visual Acuity as the world´s first independent consulting firm focused entirely on visualization. The company are based in Brighton, UK with offices in Virginia Beach on the US east coast and San Francisco on the US west coast. They work with industry, academia, governments and non-profit organisations applying technology to projects ranging from museums and science centres to pharmaceutical research and development.

Blair is highly regarded in the sector and worked with Dave Hughes of SGI on the design and installation of the World´s first Reality Centre™ sited in SGI´s European HQ. He has a leading role with TiLE (Trends in Leisure and Entertainment), is a board member of RCSIG (Reality Centre Specialist Interest Group) and is a highly sought after speaker on collaborative visualization technology generally. Blair is also a visiting lecturer on technology issues on Masters Programmes at the Universities of Salford, Teesside and Cardiff
 
Blair is also a central driver in  ViZSIG - a new special interest group bringing together those with the common interest of large scale visualization centres. ViZSIG aims to gather industry, academia and technologists around the core theme of large scale visualization. The ViZSIG is a natural evolution of the RCSIG group that was successful up until 11 September 2001, when the last meeting was overtaken by world events.