Innovation Labs

Swinton Hall photography

This is an HDR shot of the place we've been staying for the past week, whilst we've been having our ideas tweaked and hopefully perfected with the help of the excellent mentoring team.

One thing I was amazed at this year was the number of photography "Geeks", at the labs I attended with Onteca last year there was just me and Matt Lock who were photo geeks, this year it seems like every other person has some reasonably in depth knowledge of photography, and if I had a beer for every time I've seen a flash firing around the hotel I wouldn't be sobering up for the next couple of months.

There have been people covering an increadibly wide range of experience with photography from people who take the odd snapshot to one guy who is a photography teacher, plus pretty much everything in between, and there have been discussions at various points throuought the week covering many wide and varying aspects of photography including the perenial film vs. digital debate (whose conclusion many times surpised me, given the high-tech new-media background of the people here I was expecting everyone to say digital wins hands down, but alot of people seemed to believe as I do that digital is great for convenience and immediacy, but for more abstract things such as look & feel and the 'spirit' of an image film still rules the roost)

One great thing about the number of photography geeks is that there have been an impressive number of images added to the labs flickr pool anyone who hasn't checked it out already definitely should.

Dark horses, last night nerves and geordies

Final day nerves hit, but as Frank says, nerves are good things; we just need to harness them. And now it’s all over.

One of the things I said at the start was if I could learn 50% of what I learnt at last years lab, I'd be happy, regardless of '...and the winner is...' So here's a random dump of things that what I is learnt from the lab:

The BBC public service remit remains at the heart of its offer more so than ever, and there's pressure on it to remain distinctive and not tread on the toes of commercial services; flickr is more popular than it was a year ago; 360 commissioning could be a good thing or a bad thing for new media, depends on the commissioner and if they hark back to single-channel television; you only manage to talk to at best half of the labbers, so the final day is sometimes the only time you hear what they've been doing all week; twitter is a good site; ideas take time to nurture and develop, its best not to be scared of throwing out ideas or approaches, even at the eleventh hour; NM indies need to get closer to commissioners to better understand the BBC's needs and interests, so we don't waste either of our time; people from Newcastle are generally nice.

How to better embed the process of the labs into ideas development is the biggest challenge - there's an intensity to the experience that's hard to replicate. Moreover, you get constant feedback from mentors (outsiders) as well as, most significantly, commissioners themselves.

And it's good night from me and good night from him.

DS and SN. http://www.desq.co.uk