Dear Multi-Touch friends,

We are pleased to announce that we are organizing a come-together workshop on “Multi Touch Surfaces”. In this workshop, we plan to explore and discuss the latest research and new paradigms of Multi Touch Interfaces, including hardware and software issues.

The impact of Microsoft’s Surface and an increasing number of videos of multi-touch surfaces available on YouTube, show that users’ expectations about using these devices in their daily lives have increased. The reaction to these natural interface implementations has been very dramatic. This is because people are still interested in a simpler way of navigating information and content where the computer interface is not a barrier, but enables them to accomplish tasks more quickly and easily.

A lot of researchers are working on different multi-touch solutions. The goal of this workshop is to bring researchers and developers together from Europe to share knowledge and expertise, to discuss all topics relevant to creating Multi Touch Interfaces, and to evaluate opportunities for close cooperation.

It is planned that each group will introduce their hard- and software set-up briefly and will describe their typical application scenarios. Then we should identify common interests and hot topics and discuss where and how we can engage in closer cooperation.

The detailed agenda will be defined after the registration (May 2, 2008) and we kindly ask you to send us the presentation title and brief abstract. We would be pleased to receive your planned presentation one week ahead of the workshop to facilitate the planning.

The workshop is free of charge and there will be no printed proceedings.
We are explicitly encouraging you in participating!
Important Dates:
=================
-) registration (incl. presentation title & abstract):  May 2, 2008
-) preliminary version of the presentation slides: May 12, 2008
-) Workshop: May 19, 2008

We are looking forward to seeing you in Hagenberg

If you are interested in participating, please send an email to or .

Cheers,
Michael Haller (Media Interaction Lab)
Felix Flentge und Max Mühlhäuser (Technische Universität Darmstadt)

Jakob, Michael, Felix.

It sounds like an interesting workshop. Please, could you post information about the closest major airport and how to take the train to Hagenberg? Also, information about inexpensive hotels would be nice. Thanks, and good work!!

The closest airport is Linz, which is prob. 30 km from Hagenberg but i guess Munich or Vienna are ok as well.

If you decide to go to Linz airport the best thing would be that I (or one of my colleagues) picks you up at the airport. If more people plan to fly in we can probably arrange a group-pickup through the forum here. If you go to vienna or munich take a train to Linz and from there you can take the bus to Hagenberg. But again… I live in Linz so I am sure we can arrange something.

About hotels… There is the possibility to stay in Hagenberg (student halls of residents have some guest rooms) or , which I would prefer, to stay in Linz because except for the University there is nothing in Hagenberg. Linz has a lot of places to go out and make sure you go and see the ars electronica museum (http://www.aec.at/en/index.asp), which is pretty neat.

In any case, please write an email to my professor (michael haller) and he can arrange accommodation and stuff. I am at LAVAL VIRTUAL next week (http://www.laval-virtual.org/), so if anybody is there please come by so we can talk directly! Being at this event I also might not have time to reply right away but I will try to check the forums regularly.

Cheers, Jakob

Here is google maps link for Hagenberg:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Hagenberg,+4232+Hagenberg+im+Mühlkreis,+Austria&sll=48.36563,14.520879&sspn=0.025005,0.067635&ie=UTF8&ll=48.360812,14.515686&spn=0.050015,0.135269&z=14

Man wish I could attend We gotta work on setting up similar event in San Fransisco

We should set up an nuigroup exhibit and workshop in LA.

I also have a bunch of other ideas were the nuigroup should exhibit some of it member project that will get attention from large agencies, interactive firms and more… pm or shoot me an email if you’re interested.

Thanks

We’ll be exhibiting one of our projects at Siggraph 2008 in LA and for that we will also ship our multitouch/multipen table to LA! If you’re interested we could talk in person there! The project we are showing is a tabletop-game and is called “increTable”. See the video below:

So maybe we can meet in Summer!

Cheers, Jakob

@jakob… had to say that is a hell of a demo great work!

It was a blast to work on… is based on my diploma thesis work “Comino” and features most of the technology we could get a grip on

But it’s a fun project and never gets boring, that I can promise!

Jakob