Flockr - Future Platforms
Your Local - Hinterland
Concept Search Engine - Broadsight
Be Olympian - Persuaders

In addition, the projects developed by BDH and Panlogic were invited in to pitch to Radio 1 commissioners, who couldn't make it to the Lab that week.

Congratulations to all the teams above, and to everyone who participated in the Lab!

Some truly creative performances followed, we laughed and were delighted at how the projects had shaped up over the last few days. Whether it was Post It Notes, sandwich boards or bloody fully engineered computer programmes from Broadsight [amazing guys well done] everyone had a great time telling their stories.

Finally our turn came; we don’t remember much other than it got funky.

An idea too big for the BBC alone, lets see……… you can stay connected as to how our project is shaping up on our blog here.

Thanks everyone it was emotional,
Stay in touch, Steve & Fitz
www.persuaders.co.uk

With a sense of ‘our work here is NEARLY done’ and truly shattered we head for a post presentation analysis………….. in the Jacuzzi to work out the next phase.

Another late night was to follow, sketching out the plans and sharing them with our mates Simon and Rupert from Designers Ink. We finally gave up in the early hours and headed to our rooms where we rehearsed by playing the blues on Fitz’s bass guitar, this led us to another idea which meant we now had to remix the whole presentation. We later find out that this kept one of the commissioners awake; if you are reading this we are sorry it was the adrenalin of it all.

Jacks Tee shirt once again sums the start of our day up, the commissioners arrive in a few hours the suns out and its time for the post it notes to return with vengeance. Homework needs to in by 11am so we have better finish it.
Blimy 10:50 and that’s it! Our homework to our surprise brings the last couple of days together for us, nails the idea and gives us a real sense of purpose.

Claire our commissioner makes a real impression on us and understands exactly what we want to achieve and genuinely seems really excited about our plans. This galvanizes our passion and spurs us on and we reward ourselves with a nice single malt, but there is a still a long way to go.

Meh……Jacks Tee shirt from FuturePlatforms sums up how we feel today especially as Fitzroy insists on a 7.30 pre breakfast meeting each morning. At 9am sharp we start off again, kicking and screaming we are dragged through a series of exercises with the mentors that we don’t really want to do, we just want to focus on figuring out exactly what our idea is and they seem to be very good at distracting us from this…lets just go with it. As it turns out that this is exactly what we are doing, we just don’t quite realise it yet

More presentations are to follow, but how can we dramatise an idea that we have not pinned down yet. Needless to say that although Fitz played a 14 year old girl very convincingly we were annihilated- but in a nice way, and they were right! ……..

Time to take the idea apart, get to grips with it and put it back together. But when are we going to be able to do this as its 7pm, time for dinner and then there is more homework to follow! Our families now report us as officially missing. Have we really only been here 2 days?

How wrong we were.

Day 1

Yes and…..
We arrive nice and early and meet our new friends from 383 Project over coffee and croissants, due to TomTom we are not quite sure where we are but we do know we can not see the sea.

As more of us arrive it is clear that there is a wide variety of people and skills here, thankfully most people seem as unsure as us as to actually what their big idea actually is. This is a problem as we are presenting them in just a few hours! What’s more there will be no time to think about them as we have a whole load of stuff to do first.

After a very agreeable lunch we all take it in turns destroying each others ideas, not a great way to make friends we think- but actually the reverse becomes true

We finally break at 7pm for dinner where we are given our homework! This needs to be finished by 9am so head fizzing, buzzing and spinning a full 360 I managed to crawl into the sack in the early hours.

We have talked a little more about what our particular project is on our own blog at Broadstuff, if anyone is interested.

What has been interesting about the week is seeing the range of other ideas, the range of skills and talents that the rest of the participants have to share, and the infectious nature of creativity being unleashed.

All in all a great experience (not always fun, but always useful), we have met some most excellent people and had some amazingly insightful conversations. In fact, as a process alone it has much to recommend it. And it has forced our ideas forward far faster than otherwise.

Over the last couple of days I've been wonderfully surprised and refreshed by the ideas coming out of this lab. Most are totally unique and have a deep insight into some of the problems that face the BBC at the moment. All of the teams are being really receptive, and at least two have totally changed direction since getting banged around by the other teams and mentors - it's amazingly energising to see ideas grow, get beaten up, grow more, iterate and then flourish into something that makes you go, wow. But not in the Windows Vista way.

Matthew Cashmore

South-West - BDH & Hinterland
West Midlands - Persuaders Media & 383 Project
South-East - Panlogic, Clickwheel & Future Platforms
East England - Red Brick Pictures, Broadsight & Designer's Ink

Red Brick Pictures
Designers Ink
Future Platforms
Panlogic
Hinterland
383 Project
Clickwheel Ltd
BDH
Broadsight
Persuaders Media

Congratulations to all the winning teams! The Southern England Lab will start on Monday, 26th March, and the participating teams will be blogging about their projects and the Labs on this blog throughout the week.

Scottish Lab:
Monday 26th February - Friday March 2nd
Location - Macdonald Forest Hills Hotel, Aberfoyle

North England Lab:
Monday 5th March - Friday 9th March
Location - Swinton Park, Masham, North Yorkshire

London Lab:
Monday 19th March to Friday 23rd March
Location - Spread Eagle Hotel, Midhurst, West Sussex

South England Lab:
Monday 26th March - Friday 30th March
Location - Bailiffscourt Hotel, Climping, West Sussex

Remember - the final date for entries for the Labs is 5pm, Friday January 12th, 2007. We'll then score the entries with the BBC Commissioners and get back to all successful entrants asap.

Also note that we've recently added two new briefs - online documentary and mobile - in the Briefs section. You can enter as many ideas as you like for as many briefs as you like, so get cracking!

And to everyone who has participated in Labs so far - have a fantastic Xmas and New Year! Here's to a creative and innovative 2007...

The event will last from 12-5pm, and will consist of presentations from BBC speakers, information about how the Innovation Labs project works, and an idea generating exercise. Its an informal event, aimed at giving all attendees the opportunity to meet, network and ask questions. Here's the agenda:

12:00 - arrival
12.00 - Matt Locke, Head of Innovation, BBC Future Media & Technology
Introduction to Innovation Labs
Overview of BBC web strategy
Overview of the Briefs for Labs 2006/7
12:45 Background to Briefs from BBC Commissioners:
James Gunn - CBBC Interactive
James Thornett - BBC Nations & Regions
13.00 Matthew Cashmore, Development Producer, BBC Backstage
Technical architecture and web services at the BBC
13:30 Lunch
14:00 Idea Generation Exercise
led by Frank Boyd, www.unexpectedmedia.com
16:00 Idea pitching and feedback
17:00 close

The ideas generation and feedback exercises are 'rehearsals', giving attendees the opportunity to explore ideas and test the response of the BBC commissioners. Its a valuable way of finding out about the kinds of things the BBC commissioners want before you develop and submit ideas via the website. This exercise is just a 'rehearsal', however, and is not a replacement for the actual application process on the website. Throughout the afternoon, the BBC attendees will be availble for informal enquiries and questions about the Labs process, briefs and the BBC technical architecture.

The event will last from 12-5pm, and will consist of presentations from BBC speakers, information about how the Innovation Labs project works, and an idea generating exercise. Its an informal event, aimed at giving all attendees the opportunity to meet, network and ask questions. Here's the agenda:

12:00 - arrival, lunch
12.30 - Matt Locke, Head of Innovation, BBC Future Media & Technology
Introduction to Innovation Labs
Overview of BBC web strategy
Overview of the Briefs for Labs 2006/7
13:00 Background to Briefs from BBC Commissioners:
Claire Stocks - BBC Sport Interactive
Johnathan Crisp - CBBC Interactive
James Thornett - BBC Nations & Regions
13.20 Matthew Cashmore, Development Producer, BBC Backstage
Technical architecture and web services at the BBC
13:40 Break
14:00 Idea Generation Exercise
led by Frank Boyd, www.unexpectedmedia.com
16:00 Idea pitching and feedback
17:00 close

The ideas generation and feedback exercises are 'rehearsals', giving attendees the opportunity to explore ideas and test the response of the BBC commissioners. Its a valuable way of finding out about the kinds of things the BBC commissioners want before you develop and submit ideas via the website. This exercise is just a 'rehearsal', however, and is not a replacement for the actual application process on the website. Throughout the afternoon, the BBC attendees will be availble for informal enquiries and questions about the Labs process, briefs and the BBC technical architecture.

The event will last from 12-5pm, and will consist of presentations from BBC speakers, information about how the Innovation Labs project works, and an idea generating exercise. Its an informal event, aimed at giving all attendees the opportunity to meet, network and ask questions. Here's the agenda:

12:00 - arrival, lunch
12.30 - Matt Locke, Head of Innovation, BBC Future Media & Technology
Introduction to Innovation Labs
Overview of BBC web strategy
Overview of the Briefs for Labs 2006/7
13:00 Background to Briefs from BBC Commissioners:
Ben Gallop - Editor, BBC Sport Interactive
Simon Cobb - CBBC Interactive
13.20 Matthew Cashmore, Development Producer, BBC Backstage
Technical architecture and web services at the BBC
13:40 Break
14:00 Idea Generation Exercise
led by Frank Boyd, www.unexpectedmedia.com
16:00 Idea pitching and feedback
17:00 close

The ideas generation and feedback exercises are 'rehearsals', giving attendees the opportunity to explore ideas and test the response of the BBC commissioners. Its a valuable way of finding out about the kinds of things the BBC commissioners want before you develop and submit ideas via the website. This exercise is just a 'rehearsal', however, and is not a replacement for the actual application process on the website. Throughout the afternoon, the BBC attendees will be availble for informal enquiries and questions about the Labs process, briefs and the BBC technical architecture.