With assistance from the Edinburgh Convention Bureau, the Potato Council (GB) and World Potato Congress Inc have signed the deal to host the 2012 international conference for the ‘spud’.

Booked to cover PR photography for the ‘signing’ at the Royal Highland Show, I wanted to add the Edinburgh Brand to the background and collected the pop-ups to add an identity for Edinburgh as host city.

Potato Congress confirmed for Edinburgh 2012

Allan Parker World Potato Congress President, Allan Stevenson Potato Council Chairman and Douglas Harley, World Potato Congress Board member give the thumbs up!

Two blocks of seats of bloggers and tweeters in the auditorium were putting out live titbits from the UKSG’s annual conference in Edinburgh last week (12-14 April)

Indeed Twitter was used by some in the audiennce and even those not actually there to pose questions to speakers and panels.

As someone who was ‘avoiding ‘ Twitter, I now have to rethink this. Within minutes my online eCommerce gallery for the 3 day conference going live, the URI was Tweeted by a delegate (thanks Tom Roper), then on Friendfeed and then on Tweetmeme (??). I only found this out as I subscribe to Google Alerts with various photography terms.

Fred MacAulay (BBC Scotland) was the keynote speaker at the gala dinner at the Signet Libraray in Edinburgh during the annual conference for the British Universities Finance Directors Group (BUFDG).

Err… dead pan funny as ever. I only intended  to get a few shots at the start of Fred’s piece but found that I would have advertised my departure right in the middle of the 230 guests and of his delivery.  A sure target to be picked on!!

Covered a tourism conference at Edinburgh Unversity – the new John McIntyre Conference Centre at Pollock Halls – on 27  Jan. Very interesting speaker from Florida who had worked for many years at Disney and laterly in the Disney Institute before starting out on her own.

Host - Keith McDermid MD of Brilliant Red

Main conference room at the John McIntyre Centre

Main speaker -Mary Cooper LSA Partners

I was commissioned to cover the 2009 AGM of NASC which was held at the 5 star Sheraton Grand Hotel and Spa on 20 Nov 2009.

NASC AGM at Edinburgh Sheraton Grand Hotel & Spa

The NASC is recognised as the national trade body for access and scaffolding in the UK, producing a wide range of industry guidance for scaffolding contractors, their operatives and their clients.

Members of the NASC are strictly regulated to ensure a continuous high standard of practice.

NASC AGM 2009 Edinburgh

NASC AGM 2009 Edinburgh

Edinburgh Ambassadors at Sheraton Hotel Edinburgh

Thurs 19 Nov 2009 – Two lucky winners with dinner for two each at the Sheraton Grand Hotel and Spa for their desserts on. Under the watchful eye of the hotel’s Head Chef, Malcolm Webster, they took part in a competition to design a dessert.

This is the third Edinburgh Ambassadors event I have covered for the Edinburgh Convention Bureau. This is a programme run by the Bureau that encourages those in influential positions within their organisations to persuade their conference organisers to choose Edinburgh for their event.

Euronoise Edinburgh Conference 2009

Enjoyed another stint at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre 26-28 Oct.

I was commissioned by the Institute of Acoustics for the European international conference for 2009 – Euronoise 2009. Fascinating talks from speakers from all over the world, yet again a learning curve on what affects all our lives every day.

One  session was on railways and the methods of improving on sound suppression of rails with trains going over them in tunnels and above ground. So, as  I was crossing Princes St in Edinburgh the oterh day where the tram rails are nearly complete I noticed a works manager taking photos of the work. Being out on an assignment and Nikon on the shoulder I stopped to chat about rails and the rubber sheathing laid under them. He must have thought I was a bit of a train nerd but then explained that only the previous week I was the photographer for Euronosie where this was one of the topics.

Anyway a good 3 day conference with a gala  dinner at Murrayfield Stadium.

Looking  forward to another interesting conference that I have recently been commissioned to cover.

Being held at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre 26-28 October 2009, Euronoise is the European conference on noise control, co-ordinated by the EAA Technical Committee Noise and organised by a national acoustical society on behalf of the European Acoustics Association (EAA).

RSS conference Edinburgh 2009

I completed three and a half days covering the Royal Statistical Society conference in Edinburgh last week – WOW an eye opener that was too.

We just don’t know how much these experts in statistics affect our lives. In one session there was a statistician talking about her company’s work on the gap between trans Atlantic flights in terms of a safety gap and improving air traffic from the UK to the USA.

There was a talk on ” Genomewide multivariate association discovery in imaging genetics studies” and another on ” Spatial variability in relative survival from female breast cancer”. The first probably won’t mean much to most of us but the latter may well. I think we don’t realise how much statisticians and their research,  the ‘controls’  they implement, and the interpretation of it affects us.

Another great conference to cover.

I am in the middle of covering the 2009 annual conference in Edinburgh over three and a half days at Edinburgh University for The Royal Statistical Society which is an international membership organisation with members in over 50 countries worldwide.

This is the Society’s 175th year.

Another fascinating conference that actually I thought might have been quite boring. But we the public are provided with the results of statistics in pretty well every facet of life today and without which the human race would very messy affair. One session was about the movement of flies, another about bananas and manure, and in aother I learnt that in some parts of South America massive fields being harvested by rows of around 50 machines are followed 30 minutes later by another row of machines planting the next crop. The machines were fueled from bio fuels from sugar beet so all eco- friendly. No talk though of any use of fertiliser though that would be in the equation somewhere.

I never did get to grips with algebra at school but some of what I saw today was just incomprehensible to the lay person.

Will comment more after the conference.

www.rss.org.uk