We're resting the format this year whilst we carry out some research into Open Innovation Calls across the BBC - basically if you've ever applied to take part in a Lab, or are on the ASL, we'd love to ask you a few questions about how you interact with these calls - in particular BBC Innovation Labs and Content 360.

Over the coming days you'll receive a short email from us with a few questions, please do take the time to answer them - your answers will help us build a system that will encourage innovation, but importantly help us find ways to fund your ideas!

Any questions about the research, or if you'd like to take part, please contact Edward Perkins, via email or you can call +44 (0)20 8008 0612

1. iTV – Mentorn Media – Error Code
2. Vision – Wyndham-Leigh – Backyard Olympics
3. Vision – CMS Video – Play Music
4. Vision – Total Recut – Total Recut
5. Audio & Music – Shoreditch Consortium Ltd – Total Recut
6. Audio & Music – Peter Gill & Associates – Bring new music to the masses
7. Nations & Regions – Frontline AV - My Manor
8. Nations & Regions – Box UK - Travel by Text
9. Mobile – Plectic Communications – Open Source Voting
10. Journalism – Cube – VisualNews

Looking forward to seeing you all there, and as ever if you didn't get through, drop us a line if you'd like some feedback

1. Mobile – SUMO - BBC Lifecasting
2. N&R – twentysix Leeds – Local Live Desktop
3. iTV & Mobile – Rocket – Magic Moments
4. iTV – Fluid Pixel Ltd – Friendly TV
5. Journalism – Rattle Research – OSMOSIS Engine
6. A&M – Enigma Interactive – PodcastPLUS
7. A&M – Community Media Solutions – Making Music on the MOve (M3)
8. Mobile – Digital Zenith – Location Aware Event Promotion
9. Vision – Different in association with Mint – Dr Who: In Parallel
10. Vision – Numiko – Zeitgeist (Leeds)

Congratulations on those that have made it through, and once again if you've not made it onto the lab please do drop us a line if you're looking for some feedback.

1. Audio & Music – Reina Yaidoo & Motionlab.co.uk – Music Collection
2. Audio & Music – Queue Media Limited – DOME
3. Audio & Music – Seven Software Development – User Managed Content System
4. Journalism – LUXSON - Breaking News Auto Push / Pull
5. iTV – Krypton TV Ltd – Meta TV
6. iTV – Hat Trick North – What makes Britons blood boil?
7. Mobile – Greenhouse Marketing – My Story
8. Mobile – Onteca – Bluecloud
9. Vision – Rusted Image Productions – The Virtual Spy
10. Nations & Regions – Blue Fountain Systems Ltd – local_internt

Once again, if you've not made it please feel free to drop us a line.

If you have been successful we look forward to working with you at the North West Lab on the 31st March to the 4th April.

This week we're announcing the places awarded for the Scottish Lab. The Lab will take place at the MacDonald Forest Hills Hotel on the 10th to 14th March, just four weeks from now.

The places have been awarded to:

1. Mobile – Momedia Ltd – BBC Mobile Replay Service
2. Journalism – The Fifth Business – Instant News Presenter
3. Journalism – Cereproc Lrd – iTunes News Flash
4. N&R – Forthview Research Networks – Telescreen 2008
5. N&R – Chris Garrett Media Ltd – isMyCity
6. iTV – User Vision – Cross Media ZUI
7. iTV – Two Worlds – Slipstream
8. A&M – ThinkTank Mathematics Ltd – Audio Hyperlinks
9. Vision – Anthill Design – Invisible Kingdom
10. Vision – Calico Jack ltd / Mark Grindle – Creating Social Drama

If you've not won a place this year and would like specific feedback on your idea please do contact us.

Congratulations to those who have won a place - on Monday or Tuesday you'll be receiving a pack through the post with all the details you need. Any questions - drop us a line.

Looking forward to seeing you next Month.

The good news is that we've secured a new £20,000 angel investment fund - the money comes from BBC R&D and is there to pick up projects or ideas which may not fit into the commissioners briefs, but have potential in other areas.

This money is in addition to the £5,000 you get for coming along and the commissioners money which is awarded on the Friday (anything up to £30,000).

Remember, applying is easy, just 400 words to briefly outline your thoughts and we'll take it from there.

Remember that this year you're guaranteed to have the PO for funds (if commissioned) within two weeks, we'll also make sure you have your time-scales and deadlines in place within a week. We're looking to get all prototypes built and working within six months of the end of this years labs - that way you'll get your money and work faster than ever before.

So don't delay, get your pitch in now.

If you haven’t yet applied, submit your ideas now to Content 360, the cross media competition at MIPTV featuring MILIA, the world's audiovisual & digital content market in Cannes, France.

The BBC is seeking ideas in 4 categories this year, each of which has £15.000 in development funding to the winning project which will be selected during MIPTV 2008 in Cannes (along the sunny French Riviera).

Why not apply today?

If you need some inspiration then check out the BBC Judges’ video interviews for each of the BBC briefs they offer really good explanations of exactly what the BBC is looking for.

The BBC covers the following four categories:

- Mass Participation Fiction & Entertainment
- New IPTV concepts
- Advanced Mobile Interaction with TV Content
- Audio and Video Aggregation

Above all, this is an incredible opportunity for you to meet with the global TV industry and brands.

Tim Morgan, Commercial Director, Mint Digital Ltd (UK)
BBC winner in 2006 & finalist in 2007.

“Content 360 was truly a great opportunity for a creative and technology company like ours to engage the global TV industry,”

For info on the Content 360 competition and application form, just follow the link below:

http://www.miptv.com/App/homepage.cfm?appname=100526&moduleid=286&campaignid=12340&iUserCampaignID=42484974

If you have any questions about how to apply that are not answered on the miptv web site, just drop an email to Yael.CHIARA@reedmidem.com Content 360, Digital Media Manager, Reed Midem

Good luck and look forward to seeing you in Cannes!

Holly Hinmers – Content 360 Project Co-ordinator for BBC FM&T

IP neutrality is not something you come across an awful lot at big corporations - mainly because most systems for dredging for ideas are just that - a way for the corporation to get their hands on shed loads of ideas and then play with them - they don't care about you and they certainly don't want anything other than the idea from you. That, however is not what Labs is about.

Labs is a way for the BBC to work with you at a very early stage in your idea development - essentially paying for and supporting R&D within the UK Indie sector. In effect we're taking a gamble that by working with you at a very early stage, when the idea is ready for the big time you'll work with us to make that happen - that however is not guaranteed. When you submit an idea to Labs your giving us a very rough outline that we can use to judge if we'd like to spend that money with you, and if we think it has potential that could be revealed in more detail by attending a five day rapid prototyping lab.

It's at that point that we ask you to sign a contract with us - not before, not when you're submitting your ideas, but once we pay you £5000 to come to the Lab itself. The contract we ask you to sign doesn't assign us any of your IP - but what it does do is give the BBC a first refusal on the idea for a period of three months. If during that three months we've not moved the idea along as you'd like, or if we feel it's not going to work with the BBC you've lost nothing. The IP remains with you and you're free to take that idea to other people - except you now have an idea that's had at least five days intensive work with peers and mentors alike.

If you have any questions about IP then drop us a line.

We're back in the office and are more than happy to answer any outstanding queries that you may have about the application process or about the application itself.

We're getting some great ideas coming through so just a reminder that the deadline isn't very far away - 17:00, the 31st January.

Details of course can still be found here: http://open.bbc.co.uk/labs/2008_how_to_apply.php

Good luck!

Well here it is!

Download the full version as a .mov file

Primarily those improvements come down to simple project management after the lab. In the past there has been some confusion about which projects have been successful, which projects are receiving funding and which projects have not got through the process. So this year we're changing things very slightly to address these points.

On the final day of this years Labs you'll present your pitch as normal to the BBC Commissioners - that's when things change. This year when the Commissioners feedback to you about your project proposal they will let you know exactly what level of funding you are going to receive, and what level of work we'll be expecting.

That funding can range from - 'we'd like to talk to you some more about this project and we'll pay you £2,500 to move the idea on a little' all the way to 'we love it, here's the full funding you have requested'. I should point out that as you move up that scale, the fewer commissions there will be.

In addition to clarifying the funding options we're also introducing two new stages to the process.

1 - Within one week of the lab finishing you'll have agreed milestones and access to the project management system with your commissioner.

2 - Within two weeks of the lab finishing you'll have the Purchase Order so you can submit your invoice.

I spoke about this at the Lab Launch Days, but in case you missed it here's the video

You can also download this video to watch on your PC - it's 50mb

Again, if you have any questions about this years process do drop us a line via the contact us page.

In conjunction with MIPTV, the BBC, National Film Board of Canada, Korean Broadcasting Commission and Ogilvy have called for new media content ideas as part of the Content 360 pitching competition at MIPTV featuring MILIA 2008.

IPTV, mobile, and branded content feature strongly in this third Content 360 competition. Digital creators, interactive agencies and producers will have until the 21st January 2008 to apply for the opportunity to share in over £100,000 in development funding which will be awarded at MIPTV featuring MILIA 2008, 7-11 April in Cannes.

Content 360 competition categories and rules are available at www.miptv.com/content360/

We're resting the format this year whilst we carry out some research into Open Innovation Calls across the BBC - basically if you've ever applied to take part in a Lab, or are on the ASL, we'd love to ask you a few questions about how you interact with these calls - in particular BBC Innovation Labs and Content 360.

Over the coming days you'll receive a short email from us with a few questions, please do take the time to answer them - your answers will help us build a system that will encourage innovation, but importantly help us find ways to fund your ideas!

Any questions about the research, or if you'd like to take part, please contact Edward Perkins, via email or you can call +44 (0)20 8008 0612

The teams here are really great, there's a real sense of 'team' that I've not had at any other Lab so far, and a really feeling that something great is going to happen... I'll keep you posted. For now, I'll just let you see where we are... courtesy of Mr Frank Boyds flickr stream.

Noam from Mint Digital is keeping his blog up to date with what we're up to:

The mentors run a series of workshops. The workshops are designed to push the ideas to the limits. All the techniques are user-centered. This is a very important part of the development process at the BBC.

Whilst one of the commissioners from Audio & Music is singing the praises of the process:

Every time I start to contemplate leaving the BBC (its 5 and a half years and counting) I get the opportunity to participate in something which I I probably wouldn't get the chance to elsewhere.

(thanks Chris! ;-)

The North East and Yorkshire region is incredibly strong, Labs always has a mix of ideas, some good, some not so great - but there's not one here that's beneath the contempt of the commissioners.

I've really enjoyed this week and I'm sure that tomorrow we'll see some truly innovative ideas commissioned for further development.

One of the tools we use to do this is getting people as physically far away from their office as is sensible. This has two advantages. Firstly it allows people to have an excuse as to why they can't run back to the office to solve the latest crisis, secondly it's massively cheaper for us. Booking in-city conference venues is horrendous - there's no 'out of season' in a city - but up here in the Lake District, it's amazing how many hotels and conference venues are willing to do us a fantastic deal when they're otherwise only inhabited by a couple of lost American Tourists.

The Low Wood hotel we're at this week is wonderful - perfectly balanced between a modern conference venue and a quaint hotel - it somehow manages to pull off 'small country hotel' whilst also being bigger than most of the larger venues in London.

We're well into the second day now, and the teams are all working on their user profiles. Much conversation about users in the bar last night - it's amazing how simply putting yourself in someone else's shoes for just one day can make you see where the problems are with your idea.

We were really impressed with the way the people involved took hold of the process and engaged in such a complete way - I often find with these things that the more someone suspends their cynicism the better results everyone sees.

Everyone pulled together and was happy to share their knowledge - I sometimes feel that's the greatest achievement of the labs process.

Paul Sergeant wrote:

The lab itself was excellent. One of my stated goals was to learn eight times more than I did at the BBC Innovation Labs open day.

Over on his blog at Calico Jack

Two Worlds were also blogging away over at Two Worlds

The denouement comes at the end of the week, as the teams all gather in supplication to the Conclave of Commissioners, who perform their ancient Reithian rites (the local goat population is already looking decidedly nervous), before sending up either the white smoke of success or the black smoke of burning pitch documents. We've just had our introductory, "I want to be a tree" loosen-up-and-feel-foolish session, so where else can the week go save onwards and upwards?

So thanks to everyone that took part - it was a cracking week - and I'm looking forward to reading more about how people thought the process went on the various blogs over the next few weeks.

It always amazes me how an idea changes just through the process of telling others about it - then to hear your idea read back to you in detail, alters in many respects what you thought you were pitching.

We're already seeing the blog entries coming in from the team, Fearghas from Forthview Research Networks wrote:

Our first pitch went ok - we need to focus on the compelling content, a quick session at the end produced a few ideas. We are now talking about being an Ambient Media device - feedback was generally good, but we need to find the absolutely compelling content.

He's also kindly starting publishing his images to a pool over at flickr, which is well worth a look.