Jon Howard
Bio
Jon is the Executive Product Manager for Future Development for CBBC & CBeebies.
In this role he works closely with Interactive/TV producers, User Experience experts, the renowned BBC Research and Development department and many of the world's best digital agencies to set strategy for the games portfolio on UK's most successful children's websites.
Jon had a key role in the massively successful CBeebies Playtime app and over the years has designed, developed and lead on hugely successful games for major UK and international kid's brands - including Scooby Doo , Tree Fu Tom, Rastamouse, Shaun the Sheep, Charlie & Lola, Dick & Dom, Horrible Histories, Sarah Jane Adventures, Scorpion Island, and many more.
Jon takes a keen interest in creativity, innovation, and technology advancements - is a creative coder, a prolific game maker, and an enthusiastic mathematician/statistician with a great passion for BBC Children's, digital media and interactive experiences.
Session
Where in the world? Intercontinental Ballistic Flash
The Earth is flat...at least in the browser.
This session is a journey into how to build the world in 3D. Not just any old 3D world, one we can zoom into, access content and visit landmarks.
I'll dig into the maths of latitude & longitude, rhumb lines and Mercator projections. Tips for non-mathematicians will have you building speedy exponential and polynomial equations in no time. (No, trust me they are REALLY useful.)
I'll explore methods to map 2D content to 3D spaces and give explanations of the optimisations that can help bring the whole scene up to speed. (Including a quick tour of an awesome use for hash tables.)
All of this opens up possibilities for game ideas. I'll demo a few fun prototypes and game elements that demonstrate what can be achieved with a little bit of maths.
FYI: Another interest of mine is blowing things up.
