Developers will be invited to be amongst the first to view technology to help support the next phase of the Internet's evolution when the Hub-of-All-Things (HAT) platform is revealed at a “Mad Hatters' Tea Party” later this month.

Professor Irene Ng, from WMG at the University of Warwick, will announce this forthcoming opportunity while speaking at the Innovate UK event in London on Wednesday 5th November.

The 2nd Mad Hatters' Tea Party on November 24, 2014 will be demonstrating the HAT, a technology and market platform for individuals to collect, use, share and trade their own data amongst themselves and with firms.

The event, hosted by the Connected Digital Economy Catapult at its new Digital Catapult Centre in London, will mark the first round release of the inbound and outbound APIs of the HAT with the aim of helping developers and firms prepare themselves to participate in the next wave of the Internet – an internet of data-driven decisions, empowering individuals to make smarter decisions in their day to day lives.

The HAT enables individuals to reclaim and control their own data for their personal use. Crucially, this digital data repository is owned by the individual and preserves their privacy. This is particularly important in today's increasingly connected world, where much of our lives is being captured digitally as data, giving rise to concerns about security, privacy, confidentiality and trust.

Through the use of the Internet-of-Things, the HAT enables individuals to collect their personal data generated by their consumption, behaviour and interaction in the home. Individuals can then use the data to selectively trade with firms for more personalised goods and services. In doing so, the HAT effectively creates a market platform for the exchange of contextual personal data and future personalised products and services such as grocery bundles tailored for diets or even fashion that matches their existing clothes, helping individuals make decisions for a smarter and more effective life.

Built as a Multi-sided Market Platform, the HAT also enables firms to offer services to individuals to analyse their own data in a scalable way, giving individuals a central role in the design of future products and services.

"Everyone should have a HAT of their own data, just as you have your own email or bank account. I hope it will start a revolution that sees us all owning, controlling and using our data for the good of the economy," says Irene Ng, Professor of Marketing and Service Systems with WMG at the University of Warwick who leads the HAT project.

Professor Ng gave a preview of the HAT during her presentation at Innovate UK 2014, the leading networking, conference and exhibition event for business hosted by Innovate UK, which is the new name for the Technology Strategy Board, together with UKTI.

Following the 2nd Mad Hatters' Tea Party, there are plans to release the HAT to its first batch of 20,000 beta users in the first quarter of 2015. The eventual goal is to deploy the HAT globally with a few HAT providers in a full scale-up plan that will be announced in 2015.

As a market maker, the HAT also aims to generate new businesses, new innovation, new jobs and employment, to help create an upward spiralling effect on the digital economy.

About the HAT project

Launched in June 2013, the HAT is a £1.2m Research Councils UK Digital Economy Theme-funded project involving a team of business researchers, economists, computing experts and arts academics from six UK universities (Warwick, Exeter, Nottingham, Cambridge, West of England and Edinburgh). The two-year project is led by Irene Ng, Professor of Marketing and Service Systems with WMG at the University of Warwick, and also Director of WMG's International Institute of Product and Service Innovation (IIPSI).

The project also engages and collaborates with innovative, forward-looking businesses that recognise the huge commercial potential of the HAT. Current industry partners include Cogent Elliot, Telefonica, Fibaro UK, DCS Europe, Droplet Pay, Dyson, Enable Software, GlaxoSmithKline, Osram, Sprue Aegis and Strand Hardware.

For more information, visit: http://hubofallthings.com To register for a free ticket to the 2nd Mad Hatters' Tea Party, visit: http://www.digitalcatapultcentre.org.uk/event/second-mad-hatters-party/

About WMG

WMG was founded by Professor Lord Kumar Bhattacharyya in 1980 to help reinvigorate UK manufacturing. From its inception WMG’s mission has been to improve the competitiveness of organisations through the application of value adding innovation, new technologies and skills deployment, bringing academic rigour to industrial and organisational practice. The Group has grown into an international role model for how universities and business can successfully work together, with Professor Lord Bhattacharyya continuing to lead as Chairman of WMG.

WMG is currently working on a number of major capital projects in collaboration with our industrial partners, including the National Automotive Innovation Centre; Automotive Composites Research Centre; International Institute for Nanocomposites Manufacturing; Energy Innovation Centre; and WMG Academy for Young Engineers.

For further information please contact:

Professor Irene Ng
Director, International Institute of Product and Service Innovation
Professor of Marketing and Service Systems
WMG, University of Warwick
http://www.ireneng.com
Mobile: 07775 927726
irene.ng@wmg.warwick.ac.uk

Or Lisa Barwick,
WMG, University of Warwick
Tel: 024 76 524721 or 07824 540845
L.Barwick@warwick.ac.uk

PR350 4th November 2014