The aim of the Manchester Multimedia Centre

"To promote the take up of advanced telematics and multimedia by small and medium sized enterprises in the Manchester region."

...contributing to...

"the creation of employment and economic development through the application of the multimedia and networking technologies."

JARGON BUSTER

DTP
Desk Top Publishing - The revolution in the 80's that enabled you to design and print high quality documents with your desctop computer.

Multimedia
A new type of media bringing text, pictures, sounds and videoclips, presented interactively using the contemporary desktop computer, delivered via CD-ROM and increasingly, the Internet

Networking
The joining together of computers so they can communicate with each other and exchange data. Connecting computers with each other is the single most powerful and significant development since the invention of the computer. It's given us e.g.

SME
Small to Medium-sized Enterprise, basically small business. They're reckoned to be the driving force in the post-industrial economy, and so qualify for special grants and other support.

Telematics
A word originating in French, and used very often in European Union contexts, it means the use of new communications technologies in business: E-mail, the Internet, Multimedia are examples of telematics in action

portal website
A website which acts as a "door" to other websites. Compiled by humans, but can also be automatically compiled, as in the case of the North West Regional Chambers website

metatag
Words on a web page, hidden from the user, which describe the content. Used by search engines to find content.

Quick Time VR
Special software technology, developed by Apple Computer, which can be incorporated into a computer's system (IBM-compatible and others too, not just Apple) to handle still and moving pictures, sound, music, 3D models and other features. A special use of Quick Time VR is QTVR panoramas (see panograhpic below)

panographic
The presentation of photographs and other graphics as 360 degree panoramas. The frame of view can be spun around in all directions, rather like a remote control camera, giving a sense of being at the centre of the action

NICK CLARKE WAS BORN ON WERNETH LOW, near Hyde, to the east of Manchester. He grew up in Gee Cross, and went to Hyde Grammar School. At age 18 he moved to Manchester and started an art & design foundation at the Polytechnic (now MMU). After graduating in graphic design, he became a professional musician, playing guitar with influential Mancunian R&B musician Victor Brox. He also did postgrad studies in computer graphics at Coventry University.

Nick went into advertising, and later left to become a freelance designer, doing covers for computer games. It was about the time when the computer games industry was starting to "bubble up". His first contact with an Apple computer was a formative one.

"It was the first time I saw an Apple computer, not an Apple 2, but a very expensive computer called an Apple Lisa, around 1983. It was the first computer that I'd ever used myself, and I thought "Hey there's something here, I really like it", and in 1984 I got one of the first Macintoshes.

From there onwards, I ploughed all my energy into learning about the Macintosh, about the software, and I used it in my business, I began to do consulting in it, training, and I started to advise agencies, design groups. The desktop publishing revolution of the 1980's bubbled up, and I was very actively involved in it. In fact, right into the 80's I struggled to convince colleagues in the industry that computers were viable. The computer typesetting industry was completely destroyed by DTP, good or bad as it was at the time."

After teaching first in FE, at City College, Manchester, he became Senior Lecturer at Salford University in 1990.

In 1987 he was asked to write for one of the first Mac magazines, Apple Business, where he became technical editor. Later he moved to MacUser magazine - he's now contributing editor for online graphics and does reviews of software. He also wrote "Kai's Power Tools, an Illustrated Guide", published by the Peachpit Press.

In 1996 he left his tenured position at Salford University to become Director of the Manchester Multimedia Centre and Network. The MMC was set up with funding from the European Community, Manchester City Council and the Manchester Metropolitan University.

What does the job involve?

"As Director, I'm responsible for the day to day running of the Centre, with its SME's, the Network - which involves the Electronic Village Halls, community partners, and partners involved with European Projects,

My role is to translate user needs and technical needs and match them together.

It's also my job to encourage industrial links and sponsorship. Apple Computer UK Ltd support my position here, by funding part of my post. I've also brought in large industrial partners, and helped develop the Electronic City Consortium, with partners Sun Microsystems, SEMA and EMAP for the kiosk development.

Nick is also involved with linking Multimedia Centre partners with other industrial partners. A good example of this is Museum of Science and Industry and Communcation arts who helped to develop some of the Multimedia Centre's advanced database work

I'm a facilitator, I creatively input with the SME's, including Cake and the Boot Room with their Madforit and Midas projects.

I also work as an evaluator for European Commission for Director General 3 Software Systems and Best Practice. For the past 18 months I've been going out to Europe and evaluating other telematics and multimedia projects.

In 1997 the Multimedia Centre won the Bangemann Challenge Award for support for Multimedia centres. It's an acknowledgement from Europe that it is achieving the goal it was set up to do.

I started here in September 1996 - this was a shell when I arrived. But since then, we've given a huge amount of public money to bodies in Manchester in terms of grants, done training programmes, and established powerful serving and networking facilities.

The hope for the future is that we begin to form some form of sustainable development, that we encourage a more transparent relationship with small businesses, and that we operate on a 24 hour basis, which we don't do at the moment.

The Multimedia Centre exists to develop advanced products for local enterprises, using the most powerful technologies...

"We've been developing a database in partnership with the Museum of Science and Industry for their fabric and textiles collection. We decided to rub the slate clean in terms of what we thought online databases were all about, and we created a system that allows users of the database to search in natural ways other than boolean searches

So for example you can search through the search engine using colour, shape, texture, trademarks and so on. We've done that with technologies that are being used by one of the largest online archives, which is the Holocaust Archive founded by the Schuler foundation, which was established by Stephen Spielberg.

All backbone technologies used in the project are based around those being used in the Holocaust Archive, primarily Cinebase and Object Store, which allow the creation of extremely large databases with large multimedia objects. The Fabric and Textiles Collection Database, which is housed at the Museum of Science and Industry is the first example of that type of advanced product

Another type of advanced product we're designing at the moment is for the North West Regional Chambers website, which will be a portal website. It will have both automatic and human editorial control over the websites that it lists in the region. A portal website is a site that contains links to relevant sites within the north west region.

Instead of having a standard search engine that basically trawls through a set of URL's and metatags, a portal site by its very nature, is one that's been refereed, has editorial control on it and has some sense of quality as regards the sites that it's going to link you to.

It's planned that every aspect of North West life and business life will be reflected in the portal site for the regional Chamber. So from that we're developing extensive SQL querying systems that are linked to Apple's web objects technologies that will allow a certain amount of automatic editorialism on the site but with a human editorial adviser on top.

It's a very ambitious project, and we're very proud to be facilitating it. The Boot Room will be the designers, and we'll be the hosters, but we're actively involved at the centre with the database system design.

We've been developing fasttrack visualisation systems for the building and construction industry with Building Interactive Futures. It's advanced multimedia, combining the skills of Building Interactive Futures, Simon Mabey, and his associates, in being able to do these very rapid prototyping systems and visualise them within a Quick Time VR environment or within a panographic environment.

We've supported BIF for the last two years within their development work, and now we're beginning to feel confident that we've got a product that's marketable as a joint venture.

The Multimedia Centre is only at the beginning of its development. In the coming years, it will be helping to ensure that Manchester remains at the centre of the the digital communications revolution