London Lab starts...
2 down, 2 to go - we've just started the 3rd of the four BBC Innovation Labs we're doing this year. Earlier this month, we spent a week working with 10 Scottish teams in Aberfoyle, and a week at the Swinton Park Hotel in Masham, N Yorks with 10 teams from across North England. After a week to return to the office and catch out breath, we're at the Baliffscourt in Climping, W Sussex, for the London Lab.
Halfway through this year's Labs programme, there are some similarities to last year's Labs, and some new wrinkes to the experience as well. We've got more varied briefs this year, from a broader range of BBC commissioners, so this has created more variety amongst the projects and teams on the Labs. This seems really healthy, and is creating some interesting exchanges and collaborations during the week.
The increased number of commissioners has also changed the dynamic of the Labs - we've got around 5 commissioners from the BBC turning up halfway through each Lab, and it means that the way the week works has changed a lot. Last year, with one generic brief and only two commissioners, all the teams developed pretty much in parallel, and the structure of the week focused gradually towards the final pitches on Friday. This year, the different needs and perspectives of the commissioners effectively splits the week in two - the first two days we're encouraging everyone to explore and challenge their idea from a variety of perspectives, then to present their emerging thoughts to the commissioners on day 3 to get more specific advice and guidance for the final pitches. This then sets the way the teams work for the last 2 days - some teams have to do more work on proving the technical aspects of their pitch, whilst others will be focusing on user scenarios or BBC contexts.
The positive outcome of involving more commissioners is a higher success rate - 7 out of the 10 ideas from Scotland have been selected for further development by the commissioners, and 6 out of 10 from the North England Lab. This is much more than last year, when we averaged 3/4 per Lab. We'll post the details of the succesful projects at the end of all four Labs.
its also great seeing such a variety of talent from indies across the UK - particularly in Scotland and the Northern Regions that hadn't participated in the Labs. There's some teams here on the London Lab that we've seen from last year- Ymogen and Limitless Innovations; some teams that I've heard of before - Something Else, Picture and Radarstation and some that are completlely new to me - Pretty, MovieActive, Enabled and PureGrass. I'm looking forward to the Southern Lab, as this will be the first time we've done Labs in this region, so I won't know any of the teams...
Matt Locke
