On March 6, Fair Tracing held its annual Advisory Board meeting at Royal Holloway, University of London, followed by a presentation titled “Global Social Responsibility, Technology and Consumer Choice: the EPSRC Fair Tracing Project” at the New Political Communication Unit of the Department Politics and International Relations. It was really interesting to receive feedback first from industry (particular thanks to Roger Tucker from Outside Echo) and then from an interdisciplinary audience of political science postgraduates, geographers and computer scientists. We take away a set of feedback points and suggestions which we will engage with as the project progresses. Many thanks to all who contributed!

In attendance were Elsbeth Fabels (Project Manager, Certificering Leveranciers, Dutch Association of Worldshops, Netherlands), Matt Jones (Future Interaction Technology Lab, Department of Computer Science, Swansea University, UK), Paul Palmer (PRIME Faraday Partnership, Senior Research Fellow, Loughborough University, UK), and Roger Tucker (The Local Language Speech Technology Initiative, Outside Echo, UK). Unfortunately, Carol Bergin (consultant based in Ireland), Rachael Wilshaw (Oxfam, UK) and Tim Unwin (Department of Geography Royal Holloway, University of London) were unable to attend.

The meeting began with a presentation from Dorothea Kleine on the Fair Tracing project, including its origins, methodology, and background on its prospective partners in the two case studies located in Chile and India. The presentation also included a section on tracing technology using google mapping by Christian Wallenta. The presentation sparked off a number of interesting and valuable comments from the Advisory Board on a number of issues, including the particpation of retailers in the project, the attitude of consumers to various means of accessing digital tracing information, and the suitability of peer-to-peer (P2P) technology for the project. Following the end of the formal part of the meeting, the discussion contunued over lunch at the University of Cambridge’s Riverside Restaurant.

Emmanuel_070108Originally uploaded by Fairtracing.

On January 8th the Fair Tracing Team and members of the Advisory Board all met in Cambridge. We held the Advisory Board meeting in the morning, with members coming from the North (Bradford, Loughborough), the West (Swansea), the South (London) and the East, well, with a bit of water in between (Amsterdam). It was an informative and lively event, and we received lots of good and useful feedback. Over lunch, we tried some Chilean wine – of which the “Big Red” variety came out tops. Thanks to all our Advisory Board Members!

For the next two days (Jan 8/9, 2007) , the FT Team were part of the Network meeting of the researchers involved in the four projects funded under the “Bridging the Global Digital Divide” Call of the EPSRC.