Innovation Labs

Exhausted but happy

So the Friday pitches started just as our laptop died... Oh - how we laughed. Gareth took the whole thing apart and left it at our feet 'to cool down' whilst we tried to concentrate on the Podstitch pitch.

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.

What a Week!

It’s Monday and we’re just finishing a normal day back in the office. It feels odd having gone through a full day without doing at least one pitch! And there’s not even a two hour dinner to look forward to…

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!

Reflecting on a hectic week

Well, the labs week is over and we've definately taken a lot from our time there. The week was bound to be a great one from the start - finding out my wife Ruth was pregnant for the first time on Monday certainly proved as a distraction from the very 'tasteful' decorating - cheers for the Champaign as well Sean!

'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

Lab reflections

After having a proper night sleep not thinking about new ideas and pitches I have had time to reflect on the whole experience.

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

Grab the Cheese and Run

Well, our BBC TOGETHER idea didn't get taken forward. No one else seems to have posted their results yet so I won't spoil their fun by posting the outcomes, but Jacob and I are very pleased for the project(s) that did go through - even though they weren't ours you can't help but get close to the people and the idea(s) over the course of the week.

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

Final pitching day for the North-West Lab

Its the final day of the North-West Innovation Lab. We have 9 companies pitching ideas to Jem Stone from the BBC Commissioning team and Jonathan Kingsbury, Head of External Supply for BBC New Media. Here's the day's schedule:

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

And they're off!

Podstitch have just started their presentation – the first of the teams to go, after a gruelling and thrlling week. Seeing the results of their work (as we will with all the other teams) is stunning. What you can do in a week, eh?

It's going to be a great day.

Time for bed

Well it's 2:15 am on Friday morning and we've finally finished our pitch for tomorrow! Maybe we shouldn't have had that Tiramsu in the pub down the road - we might have got things done a bit sooner! So it's off to bed now and we'll see what the morning brings.

The Method Overawes

We arrived with the usual mixture of terror and cockiness. On the first day they took our project apart, as we were introduced to the honest but necessary cruelty of the pitch process. Next day we picked ourselves up and started reformulating until we felt we had a more popular proposition. Once again we were dragged into a bit of revolutionary self-criticism and had to start all over again. Each time we had our egos stripped away and forced back onto the needs of our potential users, and who those users were. As this went along we were introduced to a strange new methodology, 'NABC', 'object orientated', 'boiling oceans'. We started dreaming in Needs Approach Benefit and Competition. Or at least I did, but then I'm highly suggestible. It is rather like being introduced into one of those 70's cults, except a little more user orientated. Now on the penultimate day we feel we have a project that has a strong resemblance to the one we started with but more muscular, in a caring and open sort of way. Like a fire-man in an Athena poster. 6 hours is a long time in the lab, though, so we'll see. And we've got the rehearsal soon.

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.

What's New Pussycat?

I was full of good of intentions to keep posting each day, but suddenly after our initial posts on day 1 we find ourselves on day 4 at the start of what is going to be a busy day building our presentation in light of the comments from Jem Stone. Day 2 was all about the user, sorry people/person and ended with us acting out a scenario set in a pub in Barnsley, complete with fake pints of beer, background sound effects and bad Yorkshire accents. Day 3 was leading up to running our idea past Jem. At the end of day 3 we went for a walk to mull over what we now need to do, inspired by the site of Trotters World of Animals, which is a bit of an oversell calling it a world, more like a backyard. So day 4 begins and we're ready to get stuck in, spurred on by mN winning at the Design Week awards last night for Blueprint Studios Have it!