It’s just under a week until London Social Media Week, which includes the third running of the Be2Awards presentations, which are being held at London’s Building Centre on the afternoon of Wednesday 25 September, along with the 2013 Be2Talks.
As with the two previous years, the winners are decided by online voting, and across most of the 11 categories I have begun to see Tweets, Facebook and LinkedIn updates, blog posts, emails and other messages created by some of the contenders to get their supporters to vote for them. The candidates in the best AEC collaboration category, for example, are: 4Projects, Asite, Conject (all three featured last year too – with Conject, formerly BIW, twice a victor), plus Unit4 Business Collaborator, and a slightly left-field nomination for GooglePlus.
2013 Be2Talks feature BIM
As we count down to the day, speakers for the TEDx-style talks that intersperse the Be2Awards presentations are being announced, and two of the first three are intending to talk about building information modelling (BIM) as part of their presentations:
- David Burden of Birmingham-based Daden Ltd is a long-time friend of Be2camp movement, and previous events have featured his presentations about the Library of Birmingham project where Daden showcased the use of Second Life and related virtual world technologies to help users visualise the building (see March 2011 post: Virtual worlds and the built environment). This time, he will be relating this to BIM, arguing about the need for a more social model.
- Andy Hudson-Smith, from the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at London’s Bartlett school of architecture, makes a welcome return to the Be2Awards (in 2011, he championed Tales of Things, which won a Be2Award for Best ‘Internet of Things’ application). This time he returns as a Be2Talks speaker and will be talking about Smart Cities, BIM, GIS and, of course, the ‘Internet of Things’. (see January 2009 post about Geographic information in a web-based world)
At least one further speaker will be talking about BIM at the event – and the #UKBIMcrew Twitter community is also up for an award or two – so if you are interested in BIM, social media, or just the general role of technology in the built environment, this could be a great event to attend (and a bargain at just £15 per seat!).
[Disclosure: I am a co-organiser of the the Be2Awards and Be2Talks event, and co-founder of the Be2camp community.]
