Hi everyone. Just wanted to quickly address some concerns that were expressed yesterday about the subject line and lead item in our SPARView newsletter: We were in no way trying to allude to or “riff on” the riots in London when we used the phrase, “Set any cars on fire lately?” This was the result of a completely unfortunate coincidence.
Our lead item was about Tom Greaves’ recent trip to Neuss where he had the opportunity to attend a gathering of police officers interested in using 3D data capture techniques to help them in their field work and investigations. As part of that conference, there were a number of practical demonstrations: a bicycle accident, a building blown up, and, yes, a car set afire. By scanning these crime and accident scenes, organizers demonstrated, valuable information about the scene as it was found could be documented and preserved for later examination.
Tom’s lead sentence – “Set any cars on fire lately?” – was attention-grabbing, of course. But he was merely trying to pull in those of you who might have heard and discussed laser scanning accident scenes in theory, but maybe hadn’t worked with the tools and seen the demonstration with your own two eyes. I thought it was a great lead, and used it as the subject line of our newsletter.
There is much to be gained, we were saying, in seeing, smelling, and touching the technology in a real-world situation.
I guess we could have led with, “Scanned in the rain, lately?,” but that probably wouldn’t have been as interesting.
Let me reiterate that we were in no way trying to associate ourselves with, nor make reference to, the London/UK rioting. It was simply thoughtless on my part not to realize that people would make that association when they saw that phrase in the subject line of our SPARView newsletter. I apologize for that thoughtlessness and hope everyone knows that we’ve been very much concerned with the events in London over the past few days and our thoughts are with those experiencing that turmoil.
Please feel free to contact me directly should you have any further concerns.
