For the BBC teams, the Labs has been a great experience, helping us build better relationships with indies across the UK, and with regional partners like North-West Vision and the London Development Agency. We're currently planning next year's Labs, and hope to include more regions across the UK. If you are a representative from a Regional Development Agency and are interested in hosting a Lab in your region, email Matt Locke for more information.

Yorkshire Lab Winners
Technophobia - Podium
Technophobia developed their idea for a micro-community archive space during the Labs, identifying a real need for minority sports organisations to increase their media profile online. The resulting project - Podium - provides a space for sports organisations to publicise their events and rising stars in the run-up to the 2012 Olympics.

Dubit - Catcher in the Rye
Dubit's project proposes a simple yet effective graphic interface for navigating links between BBC content and websites. During the Lab the team used user-centred design tools to refine their idea, building a richer understanding of how users navigate and share online content.

Synergy - Bleep
Bleep is a mobile application that lets users creatively mix archive sound footage and share it with other users. Synergy focused on the BBC context during the Lab, exploring the types of content that might be available, and how the idea could provide additional value to BBC audiences.

North-West Lab Winners
StarDotStar - iRadio
StarDotStar came to the Labs with a simple question - how can we make Radio as interactive as TV? They used the Lab structure well to fully explore this question, looking at how people's relationship to radio is changing, and the barriers to interactivity. Their final idea was simple and elegantly presented, and will be developed for trial during the Eurovision Song Contest

Reading Room
Reading Room's project aims to help users in their search queries by finding out more about why their searching for something, as well as what their searching for. Contextual search is an important area of research as we move towards an on-demand world, and Reading Room presented a well thought out and focused idea that will help the search team develop the BBC's search products.

ICDC - iTabloid
One of the three ideas from ICDC's business incubator, i-Tabloid was a well researched proposal to make it easier for users with poor literacy skills to navigate the website. The team clearly understood their target audience and the problem, and even brought along a test-user to help their development during the week. Accessibility is a strategic priority for the BBC, and ICDC's project will help us make our online content accessible to as as large an audience as possible.

London Lab Winners
Luckybite - CBeebies Kidsize
The luckybite team recognised that very young children have a problem using standard PC interfaces, and proposed a new model for kids interaction. A well researched and targetted presentation that address a real problem for the BBC internet team

Ymogen - Local Heroes
Ymogen came to the Lab with an interesting technological idea, but used the Lab to really understand user need, and ended up with a radically different proposal. Local Heroes uses mobile technology to help local communities support emerging atheletes in the run up to the London Olympics.

Poke/Amberlight - Courses for Horses
Poke also explored the world of contextual search, with a proposal to track users' 'taste buddies' via a limited amount of user information. They used the Labs participants for a live trial during the Lab, and demonstrated that their approach was truly innovative. The idea will now be developed as a concept prototype for the BBC internet search team.

Delib - AMap
AMap is a way of representing the range of issues around a particular debate, allowing users to explore different perspectives and understand what influences opinion on news items. AMap was a well-researched idea that needed to demonstrate exactly how users would access and navigate the additional contectual information. The pitch will be presented to BBC news teams for further development.

Headshift - Coolbooks
Headshift wanted to explore ways of encouraging users to Tag content. We're seeing a lot of tagging activity on sites like Flickr and Delicious, but will everyone want to tag? Coolbooks adds value to tagging for a specific community, in this case, teenagers. Coolbooks is a good example of how understanding users and audience helped develop an idea from a pure technological question to a fully rounded proposal

Limitless Innovations - BBC Keywords
Many of the projects we recieved for the Innovation Labs looked at tagging, but the few that we picked for the Labs added a partiular feature or idea that made them stand out. In the case of BBC keywords, the idea was mixing the BBC's existing formal metadata with user tags, creating a richer resource of metadata to help users find and share content.

So thats it for 2006 - we'll be launching the next Labs later this summer, so watch this space!

In the meantime, thanks to all the regional funders and partners, Frank Boyd and the mentors for making the Labs such a success, and all the participating companies for their time and energy. We look forward to seeing you next year!

Matt Locke

The facilities that the BBC provided were great. We’d taken our baby along for the week (possibly not a great idea in hindsight) which made the week more interesting and everyone, BBC, hotel and the other companies made a real effort to fit her in. Thanks to all.

The day of pitching was pretty good I thought. Everyone was nervous, but it was good to see all the presentation come together and the quality of the work was very high. I thought that we were lucky in being one of the only applications that wasn't strongly tag based. It is amazing to see how much our original idea evolved during the week, a lot of which was down to the very good input from the mentors - we knew what we wanted to say but not how to visually represent it and they all put a lot of effort into helping us with that.

One thing I hadn't realised in putting our idea together, was that it wasn't enough to have a well reasoned idea that targeted a specific user group and addressed a BBC need. It was equally important that Jem learn something from spending innovation budget on the project. For those that go on the Labs next year, it's worth thinking about this, a couple of the ideas were knocked back for this reason.

It turns out that a lot of the companies at this year’s lab are in Hoxton/Shoreditch area, so I'm looking forward to the post lab piss-up (without the baby). Thanks to the BBC and all the mentors, we're looking forward to working with you.

• We knew, and were repeatedly told, it wasn't meant to be a competition, but the fact that only a handful of us were going to get a commission was always hovering at the back of our minds, especially when some of the ideas had a lot in common. (...she said TAG!) Generally I found all the teams to be incredibly helpful and fluffy, but some did more mingling than others. It would have been nice to have at least a day after the presentation when we could just hang out together in a relaxed way and kick around ideas with no agenda except mutual inspiration (Beeb included).
• It might be interesting to try a different way of developing ideas through the week, aside from a straight logical approach to user-centred design. Now, we all know how terribly important UCD is, but the kind of process we went through (in this author's humble opinion) tended to mould more standard solutions. I'd like to see what the labs might look like if a more playful route were chosen. Innovation driven versus results driven. The YBAs versus the Bauhaus. Almond versus Gropius. Or something.

I understand that the BBC has to be accountable for its output, and the "de Bono" approach to invention is much more risky, so I can see my thoughts might be a little controversial in this regard. Although, given the current propensity for success of content which doesn't (in the eyes of the top brass) address user needs in a logical manner, perhaps logic is just as much of a risk? (See Myspace, South Park, John Peel.)

Hey, just my £0.02. I'm still a long way behind the designers of the lab in terms of experience. Just kicking off the debate...

PS: I've just run Gropius and Almond through Googlefight and Gropius wins hands down! D'oh.

rechord's idea got the thumbs down, at least for now. It was disappointing but expected. Past experience, however, teaches us that something better than we'd hoped for usually comes along right after such a disappointment. And we have a fantastic solution to take to other potential clients after the 3-month embargo runs out.

No post-match analysis would be complete without thanking our mentors, including Nico, whose wine we finished off without realising that it wasn't on BBC expenses, and whose sleep deprivation we engendered. I have no idea what we'd have done without the supporting characters of Plot, who kept us going when we despaired, and encouraged us at exactly the right moments. Thanks also go to Ben who was a major help, even after the base/apex inversion incident. We owe you all a pint (or 2, or 3...)

We'd like to offer a hearty congratulations to those companies who did attract a commission from the wonderful Beeb. You are all thoroughly deserving, and we are genuinely pleased and excited for you. Good luck, and let us know when the prototypes are finished because it will be great to play with them after such tantalising presentations.

Here's to next year...

It took about an hour and a half for people to get it, which appears to be about average. I love playing this game, purely to see other people going through the same process that I went through when I was "inducted", for the same sipmle pleasure of pitting your brain against a problem andn seeing which gives way first. So remember - if you know the answer, or you work it out - DON'T tell anyone else, just let it be known by giving correct answers, and next time you are in a gathering of geeks who need to unwind, you know what to do....

Timecheck: 1.13am.

The rechord team have almost finished and are about to hit the sack. Doubt we'll be able to sleep much with all the pent-up adrenaline floating around ready for tomorrow.

It's been a long emotional drop and then a happy climb upwards over the course of the week. Now, finally, we feel like the process has been worth it. Thanks to our lovely mentors, our idea is now substantially mutated and has been heaved out of its puddle, with some gleaming caterpillar tracks affixed. (It is of course an all-terrain commenting system.)

We feel like even if we don't get the commission, we'll still be very proud of ourselves, because, given the time and workpower constraints, we can't (currently) think of any way our proposal could be improved. It's been a 16 hour day, and we've worked our socks off.

Now, let battle commence... (all in a good friendly pacifist spirit of course).

Arguments have now quietened down, and all is moving along smoothly. Perhaps if we'd invented aMap at the beginning of the week we'd have sorted out all our arguments alot quicker and saved some time . . .

Before arrival, we were unsure whether we were walking into a modern day Bletchley Park, or a dodgy suburban Travel Lodge (it is called the Spread Eagle, after all). It's turned out to be a very comfortable middle ground between the two.

Over the last few days, our initial idea has bucked and turned into the lean mean machine we see before us now.. the repeated pitch process has helped us refine the idea further and further... now we just need to make it work!

As it is the penultimate day, its a case of less conversation, more action as we try to get something viable infront of the audience for tomorrow. And *thats* a scary thing indeed - turns out that this collegiate ideas factory has a sting in the tail in the form of a 'yay or nay' commission decision within 30 minutes of us finishing our pitch. Someone described it as "Geek Idol" and the phrase has been haunting me...

Of course I can't forget the new Delib team member no.4 - a black labrador named Brains, who might well be the brains behind the whole operation . . . see Flickr photos to a get a glimse of the loverly mutt!

What we have noticed is that our pitching technique leaves a little to be desired in terms of clarity, focus, and punch. The current headshift strategy seems to be to stand either side of a flip chart and babble rapidly and excitedly about our project until we are asked to stop. This obviously will not do. With this in mind, we figured we might want to look into resources on the 'art of the pitch' via the magical intarwebs. And because we are 'social software' geeks and love to SHARE, here's what we have found so far:

• Presentation Zen - a Presentation/pitching blog
• Guy Kawasaki's Blog (former Apple evangelist and Presentation guru, apparently)
• Guy Kawasaki's "Art of the Pitch" MP3 (7MB; from his "Art of the Start" book)
• Garr Reynolds Presentation Tips

Guy K. believes that you shouldn't try to make more than 10 key points in any pitch (since normal humans can't keep track of more than about 10 concepts in a meeting), that you should hone your pitch by repeatedly delivering it until you know it inside out (about 25 iterations, he recommends), and that you keep your slides simple, preferably one word per slide, in a big-ass font. All seem like solid recommendations to us. Keep it simple, keep it focused, keep it short.

We are thus sadly abandoning our plan to present our pitch in a perfect recreation of the Spread Eagle built within the Second Life game, wherein we would pitch with avatars in the form of a giant Knight in shining armour with a cuckoo clock for a head (Al) and the ghost of a small boy (Rik). It would have been cool.

I PITCH, therefore I am.

tag tag tag tag tag...

This morning, Matt is telling us about the BBC objectives which I hope will prove useful information to people following in future labs or hoping to develop content for the BBC. Generally the BBC must provide "public value".
Public value is driven via 5 metrics:
* Democratic (active citizenship)
* Cultural (celebrating and supporting best talent in media - drama etc)
* Educational (formal and informat learning, springwatch)
* Community (discuss issues that are geographic and interest based)
* Global (world service and global value. recognising the huge cultural diversity of the BBC)

Priorities for new media development are:
On demand (imp, mybbcplayer, e.g. BBC2 online),
Navigation (autonomy for search but new ways of searching are important. e.g. Stapler which uses semacodes), Engagement (moving from passive to active engagement, how do we drive engagement with BBC sites).
e.g. Action network.

BBC uses software including DNA, Creative Archive and it's worth looking at these to understand how the BBC works.

Finally, Ubiquity is critical. Make it work across devices so that as many people as possible can use them. For example, bbc.co.uk/mobile

Your concept needs to address fit with the public values and will undergo a public value test. I.e. If it's all about making money, it's not likely to be a BBC thing.

The peaceful surroundings and the piles of food do make this kind of shuddering halt a lot more bearable.

Although I've just done a nicely embarrassing comedy fall on the polished wooden floor of the 13th Century Jacobean hall. A great way to impress your colleagues.

All too soon we were on - and luckily the laptop had sprung back into life some 10 minutes before. Once our presentation was over we got to relax and enjoy everybody else's presentations. We were both really impressed by the strength of the ideas and the presentations. Although not everything got commissioned, there is loads of potential for those ideas guys!

Jem and JK's feedback was really valuable and we're delighted, if surprised to have won a commission along with Reading Room and ICDC's - Sen Toolkit. Well done guys!

I think we both spent most of the weekend asleep and back to work on Monday was like being jetlagged - we haven't even had a chance to present to the rest of Stardotstar yet....

Overall we loved the event, found the process informative and very well run, the mentors were fabulous (helpful and ruthless in equal measure), and the hothousing of the ideas about the most useful way we've ever developed an area or idea. Pitching pitching pitching was great practise as well as a great development process. We've learnt a lot and looking forward to developing our idea further...

A big thank you to the BBC: Jem, JK, Matt, Anna, Luciana, Mario and the mentors: Frank, Nic, Gill, Matt and Nico. Thanks for making the event an extremely valuable experience and a huge success.

Looking back on the week it’s amazing exactly what we managed to fit in. I think a big congrats has to go to Matt and Frank for the massive organisational skills needed to get so much out of all of us!

I’d particularly like to echo the comments of Idaho in taking advantage of the mentors. One of the most memorable (and certainly the most valuable) experiences of the week was on Wednesday afternoon. We’d got our pitch to the point where we thought it was just about finished, only to have it torn into tiny pieces, screwed up and burnt to a cinder by Matt Marsh. Amazingly though, he’d actually made us feel better about it and really got us a million steps closer to our (really) final pitch, which was then cemented by a group effort from all of the other mentors.

We were one of the few to be selected for a commission by the BBC, so their work definitely paid off!

This was a great week and it was a great opportunity to have a week away with our peers. Learning what everyone is up to and forming new relationships was invaluable. I really hope to keep in touch with many that I met in Keswick and look forward to seeing how successful their ideas become!

'I love the BBC' evolved a huge amount during the week and even up to the last day bits were being chopped and changed. It ended up as BBC Dreamer and looked into the ways in which we use tv as a background medium much more now. BBC Dreamer was an experiment in opening up the vast BBC archive to everyone through large public screens, in gyms, hairdressers, train stations and the living room.

It seemed the Commisioners liked our idea and presentation but felt it wasn't an area which they needed to explore - we got loads of good feedback on the presentation though. We look forward to working with the BBC in the future and would like to thank Frank and Matt and all the mentors for all the advice and time they put into the week.

If I could give any advice it would probably be don't get too attached to your idea - it'll be in shreds by the morning and you'll be scrambling around trying to piece it back together again. You'll reach a point around 11pm on Thursday though where you'll think - 'yep, that's come along way since Monday'.

thanks again

I (and the other team members) found the labs to be a very valuable experience even though our idea was not taken forward. Most of the people on our team are technical developers and although we do get to talk to clients we never do any pitching or developing of our own ideas. To be given the chance to get away from the office to develop and pitch our ideas was a great learning experience.

Personally I feel I have grown more confidence when speaking publicly and have learnt some useful principles to use if I ever need to pitch again.

In terms of advice to other teams I think ShareView below has summed up very nicely. If I were to add to the advice I would say that you should take full advantage of the mentors whenever you can. The most useful question I kept asking to them was “what are the main weaknesses of our project/ideas”. If you ask this after you explain your idea or do a pitch you can strengthen your projects. Often you will find that you did not articulate your project well enough to the mentors and you need to amend your pitch.

many thanks to Frank and the BBC, Ben Aldred

We were obviously disappointed we didn't get the nod - we had worked very hard during the week and with the help of the mentors the idea had completely changed and become more lean, focused and *useful*. It seems that the project just wasn't right for the BBC at this time. We're still pleased with the idea that came out, so we hope to take it forward in other ways.

It's back to the real world now, a world where food is cooked with spices and herbs, a small piece of random fruit doesn't accompany every course and you don't flambé each meal in an arbitrary spirit (Real example: Shellfish flambéed in Sambuca served with Cape Gooseberries).

My advice for the London teams, while there is still time:
**Focus - Even if you think your idea is as focused and specific as possible, focus more! There is always more fat to trim.
**Be Useful Now - You may have a fantastic idea for a project that will take advantage of the huge BBC archive being digitised, but if it can't be live and useful within months, it is too early to pitch it. The BBC seems to know all its problems and wants solutions that help fix them as soon as possible, no waiting.
**Know Your Next Steps - Will it take one or two months to get a prototype? Who in the BBC do you need to talk to? How much will it cost? These are direct questions you will need to answer in your pitch. Be prepared and have figures for costs in time and money.
**Mix With Others - Get to know the other guys on the lab, you don't get to mix with your "competitors" often in the real world, so take this opportunity. You may find there are people who's skills could complement yours on other projects. Take a truck load of business cards!
**Know the Format - The final pitch is performed in X-Factor style. The commissioners watch all the projects then only get half an hour to decide between them and make decisions. This seems a ridiculous way to do things, but it's the way it's done. Be ready for it, listen carefully to their early comments and adjust the angle of the pitch directly to them - not to you, the mentors or anyone else.
**Get Out - Get fresh air, take your laptops outside to do work, go see the local town one evening, just get away where you can.
**Don't Make Plans - It's now the Saturday after our pitch, and I am completely mentally and physically exhausted - working intense 18 hour days takes it's toll!
**Don't insult the commissioners on the blog - I have the nagging feeling that calling Jem Stone a "Gigantic Tentacled Ghost" might not have been the smartest move!!

Apologies for what was a long post, and probably a bit too much advice (it would be interesting to see if the others agreed with me on those points). I hope everyone has fun, despite the long hours and hard work it was good fun and a great learning experience.

- Ben Kirman

10:00 Idaho - Podstitch
10:20 Reading Room - BBC Knowledge
10:40 Stardotstar - Reach

11:00 Coffee

11:15 Magnetic North - Signpost
11:35 ICDC/Semaphore
11:55 ICDC - iTabloid

12:15 Lunch & Checkout

13:30 Idaho - BBC Dreamer
13:50 ICDC - Shareview
14:00 Onteca - Sense of Place

14:20 Break

15:00 Feedback and announcement of selections from Jem and Jon
15:45 Closing Session - Chris Moll, Head of Funds for North-West Vision

16:30 - Close

It's going to be a great day.

First time I've had a chance to blog, even though I'm usually Mr Bloggy, at least compared to the rest of the team. Up till now it has been exhausting, continuous, but great fun. Now it is a brief hour of entirely technical build and 'programmer art', so this seemed like a good time to contribute here.

Funny thing is, I've sort of lost my own 'voice' as we've been channeling Charlotte and Derek, our hypothetical users so they can interact with our project demo. Charlotte, our late 20's walker, has been pleased to discover that with her new mobile phone she can take photos on the walk suggested by the BBC and, when she takes them, they are fixed to a point on the map, so others can get a sense of her sturdy outdoor fun. I'm not big on the walking, so Jon and Paul got the sex change and the camera. Derek, our 56 year old retired local history nut, needed some pedantic articles to attach to a point on our map of the Lake District, He uses a 10 year old PC to give us the benefit of his researches and photos along the way. Adding them on his return. Problem is, I can't get out of his writing style. The old rogue.

Watch this space!

Day 2 was very useful for us and really narrowed and focused the idea in our heads. Gill and "Haddock" were really helpful mentors, pointing out seemingly obvious questions like "What's the hook? How does the user find out about the service?". We felt our pitch went pretty well, and we didn't feel we had any huge spectres lurking behind the curtain. While the extremely detailed back stories for our users Stephen and Sam seemed superfluous at first, later on the value of the detailed texture the characters had became apparent as difficult questions became easier to answer.

We meet Jem for the first time this afternoon - Matt and Frank have been talking this morning about our pitch to him, and helped build up the fearful illusion among the groups that the man who holds the purse strings may be some kind of gigantic tentacled ghost, just waiting to destroy our ideas and devour our souls.

If we don't make another blog post, maybe someone should call Mulder, Scully and the GhostBusters...

Search
A transcript of the audio file is used to allow more precise searching for audio. Audio would have a transcript attached by a speech to text system which would be used in a search. Podstitch would also allow users to attach keywords, or tags, to a created stitch. This would allow users to search for user created audio in different ways. The system would also offer subtle suggestions to audio files in a ’my suggestions’ section based on user preferences and the channels they are subscribed to.

Stitching
The user can grab audio from sources, be it BBC content, user created stitches or content from other sources and ’stitch’ it together to create their own programs. The audio files can be in three levels of building blocks.

1. The smallest is a segment or chapter. It’s a smaller snippet of audio, maybe a news story or feature.
2. The next level is a show or program. This is made from segments stitched together into larger audio files.
3. The top level block will be a channel. This will consist of shows stitched together. This channel could be pod cast to subscribers or be created as part of a social group i.e. Year 1 Law Lectures pod cast.

Social
As mentioned above there would be a community element to Podstitch. Users would be able to create groups containing people with similar hobbies or interests, share audio via a pod cast and blog or comment on particular audio files.

Of course this is all subject to change as part of the iterative design process.

Wow that was serious, we are having fun, honest ;)

She'll be joining our happy throng of two, working on the ideas (such as they are) and helping us pull the presentation together. Apparently she'll also be giving us a 'female perspective'.

** Girl news ends **

Activities so far...

Day 1
We're finding it really therapeutic doing mini-presentations to one another, especially then having your pitch explained by another person. It was interesting hearing Neil (Reading Room) present back our approach and make more sense of it then we had.

Day 2
Matt Marsh - we've only been told off by him twice but, damn it, he's right. He was working hard to get us us all to understand the users need(s) and motivation to use a particular service in a much more formal and detailed way than we'd otherwise do. It's actually giving us some great in-points. Which is a good thing as we only have an area, an opportunity, to try to fill at the moment - rather than a nice grippable idea...

Later that evening: Gareth tries to show off a card trick. Top Tip: Never play cards with Matt Locke.

Food
Don't believe all the news on the food - it really was very good last night, although I have started to find myself humming 'downtown' quite a bit recently. Can it really be looped on 8 track casette.

1. One line 'sell'. See the Idaho sell for Podstitch: Stitch me time into your time
2. One paragraph (up to 100 words) description/sell for the launch of your project, that might appear on a 'BBC Services' page, if one existed. (It might be like the Google Labs page, though with a longer descriptions.)
3. Press release for your product/service that would convince a journalist or editor to write about it. See a sample press release on the BBC - Press Office - New Media page.

A press release should have a clear 'hook' (including the relevant date), name the key players involved, indicate early on the significant development (including the benefit to users), give some context and indicate what has changed that makes this announcement important, offer quotable quotes, and give all the key related information, including re-stating the nature of organisations and products/services references. See the recent press release BBC New Media must 'innovate through strategic partnerships' says Director Ashley Highfield.

When thinking about the press release, bear in mind that classic news runs in an inverted pyramid, telling you the core information (who, when, what, where) in the first par and gradually extending the depth of the story. If you can help a journalist with these approaches, you are more likely to get a story written about your product/service.

Your sells will also be collated for the BBC commissioners to help brief them on your projects.

Please post your one line ‘sell’, one paragraph description/sell, and press release for your product/service under the appropriate headings on the BBC Innovation Labs Writeboard (Wiki). There is no login, and the password is the same as for the Labs Weblog (and is on a board in the John Peel room).

Please read the instructions first and ask me if you have any questions. I am also available to help with finalising and finessing your texts and will visit each team accordingly.

Throughout the week the mentors' input was invaluable to help turn our seedling idea into a tangible concept - we can't thank you enough. It was a pleasure to work within such a positive environment and the fact that so many great ideas were established by all companies is testament to this.

We were lucky enough to have had our idea selected by the commissioners and now look forward to working with the BBC to develop it further. Apparently Saul's long, flowing golden locks mesmerised the commissioners during the final pitch (see exhibit A - http://www.flickr.com/photos/93727562@N00/110448807/).

Location: Swinton Park – a luxury castle hotel set in 200 acres of parkland, lakes and gardens – near Masham, North Yorkshire. The castle is surrounded by an estate in which guests have access to rivers, reservoirs, moorland, dales and beautiful countryside bordering the Yorkshire Dales National Park.

Dates: 6th to 10th March 2006

Five intensive days (and four late nights) of brain-storming, market research, prototype/concept development, end-user profiling, mentor meetings, group meetings and ‘run-thru’ presentations culminated in a 15 minute pitch to two BBC commissioners (Jem Stone and Jason DaPonte from the BBC internet commissioning team).

The mentors made the difference between a good event and a great event. A well-trained and highly motivated team - they kept the energy up and the attitudes positive. Daily briefings were a must - reminding everyone of their goals, the key messages and helping us all to make adjustments where necessary.

Reminiscent of BBC TWO’s Dragons’ Den, where entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to secure business funding, each team’s Friday presentation was the climax of the entire event. Although ten companies were invited – not all of them, including Save9, walked away with a BBC project commission on the final day. The lucky few deserved their accolade – they delivered great pitches (some very entertaining) and innovative ideas that had to be explored for their potential.

I’m sure most of us came away with much more than we had expected; a great experience, the kudos that comes with working with the BBC, some free publicity and business contacts that will hopefully last for years to come. A major bonus of the Yorkshire Innovation Labs 2006 is that each team will also be invited to another BBC workshop to pitch to venture capitalists and business angels - for exploring other development opportunities and financing.

In summary this was a significant event for new media companies in Yorkshire such as Save9 – with the BBC clearly demonstrating their interest in the creation and growth of new media talent within our region.

Our idea, due to be birthed in the morning of Day 5 took somewhat of a U-turn at about 6.30pm on Day 4 when we read the press release for 'Get Smarter in a Week' and realised that our baby was going to be too close to someone else’s. We'd been pipped to the post by Michael Aspel and Saturday night red button light entertainment. Doh! We couldn't see a beeb exec - with or without a soaking of Chardonnay - commissioning something so close.

So, we had the night and a few hours in the morning to put together Plan B. Over dinner, we stormed an idea we'd 'parked' earlier in the week and did a quick and dirty impromptu pitch to Frank and Rachel before retiring to bed for a early night. Getting up whilst the lark was still tucked up in its nest, we refined the idea and put together a presentation in the lab time we had left. With the clock tick-tocking, we presented what I think was, in the circumstances, a pretty decent proposition. Without a doubt we'd applied the processes we learnt in the lab and put something together with audience and their needs in mind.

My recommendations for lab virgins. #1. Research - make sure your idea is unique or takes a fresh twist on something that's already popular or that's just emerging; search the BBC site and your preferred search engine high and low for similar projects. #2. Get to know your trusted Volvo; look at the BBC's core values, what it wants to achieve and what it has to do to comply to its public broadcaster remit. #3. Get into the head of your target audience, live their lives, be them for a day. And if you haven't got an audience in mind, by heck, refocus so you do.

Monkey tennis anyone?
http://www.davidsquire.co.uk

Here's the schedule for the final pitches today:

10:00 Dubit
10:20 Gamesauce/Firesoft
10:40 DESQ
11:00 BlinkMedia

11.20 Coffee

11:40 Synergy
12:00 Sense Internet
12:20 Technophobia

12:40 Lunch

14:00 Save9
14:20 Beacon-Dodsworth
14:40 Quba

15:00 Commissioners' decision making time
15:30 Commissioning announcements and wrap-up
16:30 Close

I wasn't sure whether to try some airy description of the concept and what it might mean (I might have got away with that at a technology art conference, but the question and the context seemed to deserve a better answer), or let Pete chip in with something about the technical nuts and bolts.

We talked to Stuart Nolan about this afterwards, and after a while we came up with the line "It lets you get and add comments about the place you're in."

That seemed good enough, except that there is something about the word comment that sounds a bit one-off, not very active, and even a bit knit picking.

I thought it might be worth adding -tary.

Commentary makes me think both of a commentary to a book - extra information, useful facts, clarifications - and also the sports commentator, "they think it's all over" kind of exclamation, lasting for a period of time during an event. Those senses of commentary fit with some of the many ways people like to use their mobile phones.

Maybe that's what it is, a kind of two way (or many way) ongoing commentary organised around places. Maybe.

Note to self. Never put pun in title without checking spelling first.

There’s been tons of useful stuff this week particularly ‘good cop – bad cop’ where you get to pummel someone else’s idea – put it back together and present it back to them.

One of the disciplines we’ve found useful this week is to describe a typical user for your idea (age, likes, dislikes, how they use technology etc) and then write a story about how they experience it.

Once you start presenting that story to a range of different people you quickly discover the strengths and weakness of your approach and identify the areas you need to work on. There’s no doubt this has helped us hone the idea.

ps thanks for the strap line Ian, we’ll keep you posted.

Tim & Cliff
http://www.synergy.tv

Jem Stone and Jason DaPonte from the BBC internet commissioning team will arrive today at midday, and will be around for consultation until the final pitches on Friday. We've timetabled 20min slots for each team with Jem and Jason this afternoon. This will be the only structured time you have with them - other than that they're around for informal chats. Here's the schedule:

14:10 - Technophobia
14:30 - Save9
14:50 - Synergy
15:10 - Dubit

15:30 - Break

15:50 - Desq
16:10 - Gamesauce
16:30 - Blink

16:50 - Break

17:10 - Quba
17:30 - Beacon Dodsworth
17:50 - Sense Internet

We found yesterday that it really helps to take half an hour to go for a walk around midday and change your surroundings otherwise you can develop a one-track mind.

Amongst other things we've learned a great new buzzword - “Snacking.” In the context of... “Simon generally visits the BBC website to snack on news content.” This was one of the terms used to describe web user behaviour in terms of how they browse and search the web and we liked it!

We're here (that's me, David Squire and my esteemed co-collaborator Stuart Nolan) to try to create something that draws on our collective experience in thinking about games, the aging population, play, enjoyment and enrichment. We're also here for the ride, for me to learn more about pitching and about how to develop an idea better and for Stuart to apply his thinking on play and games and to do some magic tricks of course!

The feeling of being on a roller coaster comes partly from the relentless but exciting pace the lab operates on - despite the vast amounts of food available, I can't imagine Matt, Frank and the mentors piling on the pounds - but also because your feelings towards your project/your baby alters every couple of hours or so. One minute you think you've got it strapped, you've found the killer app, the next it's back to the drawing board and you're down in the doldrums.

The premise of shaping your idea around Needs, Approach, Benefits and Competition helps. As you think more about your audience's needs and their journey, your idea starts to reshape into something far more interesting and more considered. I must admit I was somewhat sceptical about spending an entire day on 'who's your user?' but having someone in mind (from usual demographic profiling to how their average day pans out) really tunes you in on how people use interactive content and what they want from it. If we get this bit right, the rest should follow on nicely.

I'm sure everyone here would admit that the fact this is a competition with the potential prize of a commission is in the back of your mind all the time. But what's great and amazing, in an increasingly competitive marketplace, is that people are genuinely helping each other shape and focus the development of other people's projects. We must have pitched our idea now 3-4 times over the first 2 days, and the response, feedback and interest gets more helpful and more heartfelt each time.

Luckily, and despite a little gushing there, we're managed to avoid any hippy bonding exercises - things that involve having to close your eyes or pretend to be someone (or worse something) else. Thank the DG for that!

So, as the dawn breaks over the misty hills of Masham, its day 3 in the Swinton House.

10:00 - Introduction to the day and some of the user-centred design tools we're using
10:30 - 12.30 - project teams working in pairs to help each other develop user contexts and user modes

1:00 - 2:00 Lunch

2:00 - 4.30 - Teams working individually to develop user journeys for their products. Mentors will be available throughout this time if you need specific assistance or ideas for design tools
4:30 - 5.30 - Project teams back in their pairs to develop user benefits
5:30 - 6:00 - Prepare user-centred 5 minute pitch
6:00 - Teams split into two groups for pitching and feedback

Save9's project proposal aims to address all three of the main elements of the BBC's internet strategy - how the BBC makes content available on-demand, how people navigate BBC content and how people engage with BBC content.

Background

Broadcast TV permeates the lives of millions of people across the globe and on-demand video content is reaching an ever-increasing audience. Innovative digital television services are in abundance and the cross-over between linear media broadcasting and interactive media on-demand is blurring. It is not unusual to find internet web browsers built into modern televisions or for viewers to use interactive services supplied via digital terrestrial and satellite broadcasts. IPTV is a prime example of broadcasting and Internet convergence that has support from major electronics manufacturers such as PACE Micro Technology (PACE announced the worlds first ever hardware H.264 IPTV set-top-box in June 2005)...

http://www.pace.co.uk/corporate/newsroom/pacenewsitem.asp?id=10270&template=0

Project Summary

An opportunity now exists for Save9 Limited, in conjunction with the BBC Innovation Labs, to explore the potential of flowing synchronous meta data, split into topics of interest, with current digital video content via TV transmissions (DVB-SI) on a set-top box and/or on-demand digital recordings accessible through the MyBBC Player (or BBC iMP - integrated Media Player). http://www.bbc.co.uk/imp

Tech Note: DVB transmissions include a metadata transport layer called service information (DVB-SI). AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) in conjunction with an EPG (Electronic Programming Guide) and the BBC Infax database is another possible value added service that would simplify the roll-out of this concept without the need to affect original broadcast transmissions at all.

Our main task for this week is to develop a prototype 'plug-in' that works with the MyBBC Player and/or an in-built digital TV-web browser that could theoretically support the user-insertion and viewer playback of annotated video content. The result would be an enriched and interactive BBC experience that is attained through the true convergence of broadcast television and internet services – with a minimal resource burden from broadcasters such as the BBC.

How it works - User Profile Scenarios

Key thought - 'Bubbles in a stream'

Example Scenario - THE ENTHUSIAST

'Frank', our imaginary sports enthusiast, is a UK Manchester City fan who eats, drinks, breathes and sleeps football. Frank feeds his interest through a range of media types; websites, newspapers, TV and radio. Frequently there are times when Frank gets very emotional about his sport - so much so that he would like to clearly demonstrate to the world why Man City's lead scorer (i.e. Andy Cole) is such a genius or how a particular section of the BBC televised game was ruined by a referee's decision. Frank may even want to highlight a few seconds in their most recent televised match to explain the off-side rule to his american friend. :-)

Using Save9's Synchronous Hyperlinking plug-in for the MyBBC Player Frank can now watch an entire digital video stream of any football match and insert topics of interest ('Bubbles') that can span from a split second to an entire section of the video. For example - at 15 minutes and 12 seconds into the second half a superb goal is scored by Andy Cole - is at that precise moment when Frank decides to insert a 'Bubble' comment icon and associated text/graphics into that defining video moment - captured for the posterity of his fan club (or even the whole of the UK!). Such annotations are accessible to other viewers who may watch the video at their leisure. Franks comments can be visualised in a side panel window via a simple toggle on/off button.

GUI (Graphical User Interface): A narrow window immediately below the media video screen represents the 'Bubbles' of annotations in the video 'Stream'. Put simply, different 'Bubbles' of information topics are represented by simple icons that stream slowly from right to left, as the video plays forward.

The power of our interactive concept is realised when you consider that almost any interest group can add topics of interest so that other parties may consume that content whether it is embedded graphical/video/textual data or a link to a 3rd party website. The 'Bubbles' stimulate interest depending upon the topic classification's icon. E.g. a 'i' icon for information, a star icon for a movie actor, a musical note for a piece of interesting music or a tree icon for an item relating to nature.

More later...

We quickly found out after the first presentation that we wouldn’t get very far in this exercise without having a specific target audience to map our idea onto so this was the real aim of today. We sat down with 2 of the BBC’s mentors and began to pick their brains about the strengths of our idea and where it would sit best. After some
deliberation we came up with two main groups where it would fly:

+ Parents - a group that is vocal, social and keen to make their experiences public - even if only within a closed community. We quickly ruled this user group out because it was deemed by the BBC to be too competitive, with sites already in place to serve this niche.

+ Minority sports groups (e.g. Wrestling, kayaking, shooting, archery…). With the Olympics coming to London in 2012 investment is being channelled into sports and there are minority sports out there that don’t get the platform (can’t afford an all-singing, all dancing website/journalists don’t sniff out these news stories) that is
afforded to events such as track and field. Therefore there is a gap where our idea may sit to provide these sports with a voice on the BBC website. This will serve to allow local clubs to upload their news stories, details of upcoming events and results for this data to be easily accessed by BBC journalists. Members of the clubs will have
control over content and be able to publish and comment. Anyone can also access this content and find out how to get involved so the site encourages positive action.

So we sit poised and ready for day two with a sound idea of who our users are and in a good position to develop this further today.

13:00 - Lunch

14:00 - Team exercise
Each project 'interrogated' by two people from another company, looking for strengths/weaknesses
15:30 - Feedback on each project from interrogators
17:15 - Website and blog info
17:30 - Wrap-up

Monday - introductions, expectations and initial feedback on projects
Tuesday - the audience - building user scenarios for each project
Wednesday - the idea - refining the project and focusing the pitch
Thursday - the pitch - building the prototypes and rehearsing the final pitch
Friday - The final pitch

Jem Stone and Jason Daponte - the commissioners from the BBC internet team - will be arriving on Wednesday to give feedback on the emerging prototypes, then will hear the final pitches on Friday. The other mentors and support team members will be here all week to work with the teams and help them develop their ideas.