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.