Lunchtime Talks are a series of informal presentations at Watershed's Pervasive Media Studio. They normally take place at 13:00 on a Friday, are free and are open to everybody who is interested in what they do. Come along, bring a sandwich, and get to know more about the Studio community, current and up-coming projects, or residents' work.

Smart mobs. Flash mobs. Subtle Mobs. Crowdsourcing. Participants in the Arab Spring. These and crowds of other types have become the subject of much interest in recent years. While a visiting professor at ITU Copenhagen for six weeks in October & November, Tim Kindberg started a project on Crowd Computer Interaction. Among the main motivations were the needs of Occupy and other protest movements; plus interest in the extent to which riots and looting were coordinated and documented in the Summer of '11 using mobile phones.

If you're the 'wrong' sort of crowd, 3G may be switched off by the authorities. Or 3G could fail in a disaster scenario. What's a crowd to do?

Equally, outside of those extreme scenarios, Tim was interested in thinking about what types of applications and experiences remain relatively unexplored for physically collocated crowds. He was inspired by the Bluetooth Generation, the kids in the mid-00's who swapped files over Bluetooth and in doing so made up networks that mixed up radio waves and bodies in a way he calls Ironic mobs.

The idea he came up with was Mesh Mobs. Think of a conventional WiFi mesh network that routes data over an area greater than any one access point. Instead of mounting that mesh in buildings, streets and rooftops, mount it on ... people. Hold on. They already have WiFi in their smartphones. So they can form a mesh, a mesh that lives within the crowd and which the crowd uses. The crowd ferries data around the crowd and beyond itself. And what those ferries have in their holds -- the mobile phones in their pockets and in their hands -- is Precious Cargo.

This will be the story of Precious Cargo.

After the talk, you can stay at the Studio for the afternoon to continue the conversation or work on your own projects. The Studio provides chairs, tables, wireless and a great space. You bring what you need to work with (laptop/mobile). The open afternoons close at 17:00, usually with a trip to the Café/Bar.

The Pervasive Media Studio is now located within the Watershed building. Let us know if you'd like a tour of the new space and we'll be happy to show you around! Send an email to jason@pmstudio.co.uk