RESIDENTIAL FAQ AND BIBLE

LAMP FAQ

“If I submit an idea if we don’t get selected will it be safe?”

Your submission is seen by a very small number of LAMP and AFTRS selectors. We do not a) disclose the idea to any 3rd parties b) use them ourselves and c) take any of those ideas into the residential labs. We appreciate your concerns and make every effort to keep the submissions secure too. If you feel your idea has high commercial value and IP sensitive then we suggest you submit a variant that does not provide as much concern. The value of the lab is to offer you far wider scope for your property than you probably have considered.

“What does the Lab actually cost me?”

Each team pays an admin fee of AUS$100 each and has to pay flights to the nearest airport (some help can be arranged for distant states). LAMP and our sponsors pay everything else. Ground transport, accommodation for the duration, food, excursions and of course access to international and national mentors, and a range of the best computers, cameras and software suites.

“Does the team really need a designer?”

We require a designer primarily for the rapid prototyping phase of the week. Although we can provide some limited design help from some of the mentors we give preference to those teams who have a permanent, visually creative team member.

“What about my idea, can others pinch it on the lab?”

As part of coming on the lab all speakers, mentors and other participants have to sign a CDA (confidentiality disclosure agreement). This basically means any intellectual property that you bring into the lab remains with you when you leave. We do encourage exchange of ideas and that is part of the attraction of coming onto the lab – in that you do leave with far more than you brought in.

“What exactly happens during the week?”

The process is very tightly controlled and we try to avoid releasing the precise details before the event as this is part of the transformative nature of the residential and also to partly avoid the consideration of some teams thinking they can partially attend. The process requires teams to be there for the duration. In general terms the week involves presentations, exercises, one to one mentoring, lots of pitches and of course producing prototypes. Your evenings apart from Thursdays are generally free to socialise and relax although we encourage cross-fertilisation with the other teams.

“I have special dietary requirements?”

If you have any special needs, dietary or physically please inform as soon as you are accepted. You will be reminded of this at acceptance time.

“Do I need to bring any equipment?”

Each team will have a high spec’d dedicated workstation but it is our experience that teams will prefer to bring their own laptops (or other technology) to more efficiently develop the prototypes as well. We will have digital video, lighting, media and stills cameras – but again you have and be familiar with your own equipment. We will also have a range of CD, DVD and print media. A small Epson printer will be available too.

“What about the internet?”

We will have wired and wireless internet access for all participants. We recommend you bring a laptop equipped with a 802.11b/g adapter, airport card in that case.

"What about the final presentations to VIPs?"

Yes there is a formal, tightly managed presentation on the Friday morning to a range of invited guests (commissioners, sponsors, interested parties) so we encourage you to think about bringing clothing that you would use in a creative or business presentation for that. Each team will have 15 minutes to present including a q and a session.

"What assets do I need to bring to the lab?"

As your project may go through some transformation, the assets we suggest you bring along should include a broad selection of graphics, sounds and video. From a design perspective we also suggest you do not begin to over design, build or structure your project in any great detail (such as finished flash movies etc:) but it makes sense to have elements such as branding graphics, logo and colour ‘look and feel’ worked out for the property. Also photoshop layers with elements already on for flexibility.

We recommend you consider the following assets for an average cross-platform project:

Video footage. Around 10-15 minutes of DV format video. This will allow easier editing on final cut but we can compress short clips from uncompressed footage. This should be brought on firewire or USB 2.0 drives or DVD data discs (rather than pre-encoded or commercial DVD!). Some teams have lost a lot of production time ripping footage off DVDs, we advise against this. We can accommodate DV tape capture but this will slow your project down of course.

Graphics. The more relevant graphics you can bring the better. We are happy for you to build a few suggestive interfaces for general platforms, but again would ask you not to begin detailed cross-platform design. A few variants of branding and property graphics is also recommended. Photoshop files and layers suggested. Formatting for screen will be done on the lab, so keep at high res for now.

Sound and other media. Bring any further content such as CD’s, MP3s etc: even short flash files if appropriate.

Physical media. We will have scanners and digital cameras for paper or objects

New content. Your project maychange significantly from the original concept and during the rapid prototyping phase you may need to generate an amount of original footage. We will have a range of DV camera and sound equipment if you need to shoot short ‘budget’ excerpts of your 'updated' project. We welcome you bringing your own av capture equipment if you anticipate this.

Interactive TV. For those who are considering using the Emuse, Modelstream interactive TV software running on the LAMP PC laptops there are specific requirements for this – Video must only have one audio and video stream The width of the AVI file must be a multiple of 4 pixels. Frame rate 25fps (for PAL) and the codec – Ligos Indeo 3,4 or 5.x, MJEPG, Cinepak or MS Video. Max keyframe interval of 20 frames – best format Ligos Indeo 5.1 – 95% quality, keyframe at 10.

"What actual technical resources will we get?"

Each team will have their own working space and an iMac Intel G5 20” Apple computer with 2GB Ram. The latest OS X and Windows XP are installed on those and you can develop in either. There is also a very highly specified PC laptop which will run among other things, Emuse Modelstream for iTV creation. The final presentations will be fed to two main screens a 1) TV AND a 2) large screen.

1) Most projects will have a TV component which will be fed from a Mac Mini running OS X. Simple video applications simulating broadband or broadcast interactive TV will be built in Director for OS X.

2) For the other platforms this will be fed from a computer which will be a dedicated iMac Intel G5, running Windows (particularly to speed up the flash presentations). We may in extreme cases run a second Mac OS X computer to the screen via a switcher if required.

The suite of software on the Macs (all latest versions as far as possible) OSX and XP is as follows: Mac OS X suite - iMovie HD, iDVD, GarageBand etc: Adobe suite - Acrobat Pro, AfterEffects, GoLive CS2, Illustrator CS2, InDesign CS2, Photoshop CS2 Final Cut Production Suite - DVD Studio Pro, Final Cut Pro, LiveTyp2, Motion, Soundtrack Pro, Cinema Tools, Compressor Macromedia Suite FOR XP - Director, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash, Freehand Microsoft Office X - Entourage, Excel, Powerpoint, Word Miscellaneous - Sharepoints, BBEdit Lite, TextWrangler, MPEG Streamclip, OSEx,

We invite teams to bring their own laptops etc. You may also want to install one or two items on the machines if you require.

Note that all machines will be initialised after LAMP. We will back up your projects on the main presentation computer and a terrabyte back-up drive but you should also consider your own method of archiving the project at the end. We will have DVD-R media so you can also write out to DVD in the final stages of the week.