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Innovation Labs

March 27, 2006

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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!

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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