by Si Biles, co-host of the Forensic Focus podcast
What do JFK, the most powerful battleship of the Victorian era, unexploded World War Two ordinance and cremated pig bones have in common? Can’t guess? No great surprise unless you attended the Leica Geosystems conference this year – I went, and even I’m still not entirely sure how we covered such a range!
Naval History Meets Forensic Science
This year’s “Public Safety & Forensics Conference” was hosted at the National Museum of the Royal Navy in Portsmouth. Marcus Rowe, Leica Geosystems Director of Public Safety and the conference organiser, appears to be the embodiment of continual improvement – having taken previous feedback from earlier years (hosted at Red Bull F1 last year…) and secured an excellent lecture theatre with comfortable seats (to handle a previous year’s “numb bum” feedback) and superb catering (OK, I’m a sucker for a mid-morning bacon sandwich). He also scheduled an excellent range of topics and speakers over the two days (earlier than usual this year at the end of February).
Expertise Without the Hard Sell
It’s a full-on two days – with eleven speakers filling the schedule and registration opening at 0830hrs each day. The most astonishing thing to me though is that this is a free event. Yes, it’s the Leica Geosystems (LG from here on for my sanity) conference – but there’s no hard sell. The only talk given by an LG employee (Dan Prewitt) actually had little to do with the products that they sell – focusing on Evidential Storytelling and leaning in to true geekdom by using Lord of the Rings as an opening example! LG had some of their equipment in the small exhibition area outside – and it is immensely impressive technical kit – but the ethos here is about knowledge transfer.
The community that comes together is highly varied, but there is one common theme, which is that these are people who deal with hugely complicated real-world scenes. They range from the criminal investigators working crime scenes, to fire and crash investigators dealing with charred and crushed remains, geospatial-intelligence consumers, academics and trainers.
Slides from the presentations are not made available – this is a conscious decision, and I wholeheartedly support it. These aren’t academic papers – like they are at DFRWS, for example – and therefore the presentations are much better appreciated live. LG are about creating community, so just downloading another slide deck would miss the point.
Standout Talks and Fresh Voices
It was a welcoming and open atmosphere; I think that this was particularly evidenced by the fact that there were two speakers who gave their very first public talk here. I wouldn’t have been able to tell if they hadn’t said, and the audience were universally supportive. I note that, so buoyed up by her success here, Fran Peacock – after her excellent and admirably geeky talk, complete with Terry Pratchett references – spoke again barely two weeks later at the National CCTV Conference (at which she also acquitted herself admirably!).
It’s tempting on the one hand to call out each and every speaker, as there genuinely wasn’t a single one that didn’t educate and entertain me – and to that end, I’ve included the schedule above – but I am going to shout three more on top of Fran and Dan and our good friends at Amped, represented ably by Sam Abbott talking on timing accuracy in video, as examples of the breadth of topic that was on display:
Firstly – Gary Delaney’s talk on “The Long, the Lat and the Cocked Hat” was a fascinating dive into both naval history (starting with us being piped with a bosun’s pipe!) and the GPS systems and evidence used in a large drug running case.
Secondly – Jarrod Carter’s talk on “Can we add ‘I’ to ‘AR’ ?”, which looked at the implications of machine learning on accident reconstruction (AR). This was the best talk on the way that AI/ML works and the pitfalls of it that I’ve ever seen – and I’ve given some – so I walked away with tips and tricks there!
Finally, but by no means least – Caighley Logan discussed “Analysing the Effects of Fire & Trauma On Skeletal Remains”. I had skipped lunch on the second day, as I opted to go for a walk around some of the museum in lieu of food. I was secretly quite glad that I did, and I don’t think that I’ll ever look at barbequing a piece of pork in quite the same way again.
Sea Shanties on HMS Warrior
Marcus secured HMS Warrior for the evening – no mean feat being an 1860s frigate – and the most fantastic entertainer. With his sharp wit, encyclopaedic knowledge of the ship, and skills with a mandolin, our compare – Martin Jakeman – was absolutely brilliant.
There is a wonderful truth about mass singing that – on average – people can follow a tune. Those singing sharp are cancelled sufficiently by those singing flat, those ahead are cancelled by those who are behind, and – in sea shanties – no one actually cares anyway.
Martin in his nom de guerre as Commander Tryon (who in reality, in June 1861, was selected to become the second in command on HMS WARRIOR) led, and Marcus encouraged, us in increasingly loud if not increasingly competent shanties – my personal favourite, and probably the globally best known, “What shall we do with the drunken sailor?” is a memory that I will never forget.
The JFK Mystery Continues
Having opened with JFK as click bait, it would be remiss of me to leave the reader unsatisfied as to the connection. The very final talk, of the final day, was on additional research carried out on the JFK assassination. Using the same tools we’d been discussing over the previous two days and bringing the weight of modern science to bear on the matter, we had a small preview of future work given the additional material now coming to light. This is the second year that this topic has come up – with enhancements each year on the additional research – so I’m in for next year to see if it really was an alien conspiracy.
I’m going to close simply with: I don’t know how Marcus is going to outdo himself next year – but I can’t wait to find out, and I hope to see you there!
