The Media Innovation Studio’s Civic Drone Centre team have beaten off over 3,000 applications to win a panel session at the prestigious 2015 international SXSW festival.  

Journalist and Knight Foundation Scholar from Nairobi’s Star news team Dickens Olewe will accompany Darren Ansell from the Civic Drone Centre, Clare Cook from UCLan’s School of Journalism and Media and Becky Darby from BAe to discuss ‘Drones for Good: journalism and crowd sourced UAV’s’. The media Innovation studio’s John Mills convened the panel.

Paul Egglestone, Director of the Media Innovation studio and project lead for the Civic Drone Centre said: “SXSW is getting to be a habit for us but it’s a great habit to have. We’re delighted to be selected, not least because we really feel the slightly edgy, connected and ‘on it’ SxSW audience are absolutely right for us. Particularly with a subject as controversial and exciting as UAVs.”

Success at SxSW follows immediately after the successful exhibition of the Civic Drone Centre’s AeroSee project at the Design Museum on London’s South bank. The AeroSee project was nominated for the Design of The Year 2014 award and displayed at the Design museum until September this year.

The Civic Drone Centre is a collaboration between the Media Innovation Studio and Engineering Innovation Centre designed to examine innovative drone uses and marketplaces. It works closely with established aerospace SMEs, multi-disciplinary academics and the UK’s manufacturing sector to provide progressive hardware and software development for UAVs in non-military uses.

More information on the SXSW panel session is available here