Barry Vercoe presents his journey to found the MIT Media Lab at the 2015 Innovation Forum

1. Professor Barry Lloyd Vercoe
Co-Founder MIT Media Lab, Boston
Youth Innovation Forum
Tauranga Aug 7, 2015
Fostering Innovation

2. The Vision
• “Future is not to predict, but to design.”
– Interdisciplinary research across arts, design,
science and technology, to invent new means
for human expression, learning and life.

3. The MIT Media Lab (1985 -)
One Laptop per Child (2005 -)
Echo Nest Corp (2006 - 2014)
3 organizations that have used
innovation & creativity
to effect world-wide change:

5. Seymour Papert

6. LEGO MindStorms (1998)
1st Successful Collaboration with Industry
• Programmable Bricks designed by
Fred Martin at MIT
• LEGO MindStorms products

7. Where do good Learning Ideas come from?
• Seymour Papert’s work in Constructionism
• Children’s programming language LOGO
• LEGO Logo, LEGO Mindstorms
• Jean Piaget
• Sylvia Ashton-Warner

8. Microencapsulated
E-ink

9. E Books

10. Radio
Paper

11. The audio spotlight
Loudspeaker
Ultrasound Audible

12. The audio spotlight
Only those within
the beam can hear
the sound
Directed Audio Projected Audio
Sound can be
projected -
just like light
Audio
Image
You can put sound where you want it.

13. Application: Automotive Interiors

14. In-Place Performers

15. New Zealand application

16. Where does innovation spring from?
- clash of cultures
- clash of disciplines and ways of thinking
- clash of different ways of doing things
- high tolerance for failure

17. Where does innovation spring from?
- clash of cultures
- clash of disciplines and ways of thinking
- clash of different ways of doing things
- high tolerance for failure
What are its deterrents?
- walls and buildings
- funding streams
- measures of success
- mid-level management

18. How can we FOSTER INNOVATION?

19. How can we FOSTER INNOVATION?
- create an open research environment that will
maximize lateral connections
across a broad range of disciplines

20. How can we FOSTER INNOVATION?
- create an open research environment that will
maximize lateral connections
across a broad range of disciplines
- encourage experiments
-

21. How can we FOSTER INNOVATION?
- create an open research environment that will
maximize lateral connections
across a broad range of disciplines
- encourage experiments
- avoid prescriptive goals

22. Multi-processor Csound
DSP0
Code
Data
Threaded
Instances
Audio
samples
DSP1
Code
Data

23. Karaoke with a Difference

24. Distributed Music Performance

26. One Laptop per Child
(OLPC)

27. What's different with olpc
• Free and open source software
• Learning through design, construction,
expression & collaboration

29. Maori School in Manaia Coromandel

32. What should education be when
information is only a few clicks away?

33. • What should children learn?
• Is computational thinking
the new literacy?

34. • What should machines learn?
Acoustic skill and understanding

35. Robust Audio Matching For Music Identification Wei Chai
can computer easily identify its
title even if there are some
variations?
Given a short audio clip,

36. Structural Analysis For Indexing And Thumbnailing Wei Chai
Find the most representative part of a piece
Find the repetitive structure of music
I want to hold your handYesterday

37. • What else should machines learn?
• Linguistic analysis of chat rooms
to gain insight into social trends

38. Query by description
Brian Whitman
• Relate Community metadata to Audio
What does Loud mean?
Play something fast with an
electronic beat
• Find a Natural interface for music
retrieval that captures style

39. P2P trend maps
• Far more #1s/year than ‘real life’
• 7-14 day lead on big hits
• No genre stratification

40. • 2006: THE ECHO NEST founded

41. • 2006: THE ECHO NEST founded
• 2012: Echo Nest becomes the
leading Music Intelligence company
Customers include MTV, Spotify

42. • 2006: THE ECHO NEST founded
• 2012: Echo Nest becomes the
leading Music Intelligence company
Customers include MTV, Spotify
2014: Spotify acquires Echo Nest
as its Music Intelligence engine.

44. Today’s Take-away?

45. How to FOSTER INNOVATION:
- create an open research environment that will
maximize lateral connections
across a broad range of disciplines
- encourage experiments
- avoid prescriptive goals