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Children learning from kiosks in the street, learning maths by designing levels of popular video games and saving the planet with some DIY tech? These are some of the products in which I helped the MacArthur Foundation, Chicago, invest.
Earlier this year I was delighted to be asked to work with the MacArthur Foundation and the Universities of South California and Duke's HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory). I was part of a great team in Chicago making the call on investments totaling more than $2m, not investments that necessarily have a financial return but ones from the Digital Media Learning Competition, which will have a return on the learning of hundreds of thousands of children.
The Competition is part of MacArthur’s digital media and
learning initiative designed to help determine how digital technologies
are changing the way young people learn, play, socialize, and
participate in civic life.
There were several strands of investment. In Game Changers, $5-50k packets were awarded to those designing creative levels in LittleBigPlanet™ or Spore™ Galactic Adventures that helped players learn new concepts. The 21st Century
Learning Lab Designers shared $1.7 million for learning environments and digital
media-based experiences that allow young people to grapple with social
challenges through activities based on the social nature, contexts, and
ideas of science, technology, engineering and math.
Hole in the Wall: Activity Based E-Learning for Improving Elementary Education in India Hole-in-the-Wall Education Limited, New Delhi, India Bridging the digital divide by reaching previously underserved youth in the developing world—urban slums and remote-rural populations, ethnic minorities, juvenile home detainees, and children with special needs—Hole-in-the- Wall has installed over 700 internet-enabled public Playground Learning Stations across India, Bhutan, Cambodia and countries in the African continent. Game-activities promote experiential learning that is mapped to prescribed primary grade curricula across various subjects, Hole-in-the-Walls Activity Based E-Learning Solution imparts a playful learning environment by encouraging learning through self and group exploration beyond the classroom. (Picture from paiksegelase)
Nox No More: Connecting Travel Logs with Simulation, Gaming, and Environmental Education Rosanna Garcia, Northeastern University, Boston, MA Nox No More is an online game that personalizes environmental education by linking learning to a players personal life to illustrate the positive impact of simple, everyday choices. Players upload real, GPS-gathered personal travel data into a competitive game. During the course of game play, players attempt to save the planet from carbon emissions and are provided with an analysis of potential fuel savings and ways they can reduce pollution by making alternative transportation choices, such as alternative fuel vehicles, public transportation, consolidation of trips, bicycling and walking. Aimed at college students, a beta version of the game will ultimately be available to middle and/or high schools as part of an environmental science curriculum.
Sackboys and The Mysterious Proof Kan Yang Li, New York City, NY In Sackboys and The Mysterious Proof, LittleBigPlanet players must escape from the Proof family's century-old mansion by solving a series of puzzles using geometric reasoning. With puzzle mechanics driven by geometric theorems, students will convert geometric concepts from the classroom into active knowledge through collaborative play inspired by precision learning. (Pic from annieok)
Mission:Evolution Jennifer Biedler, Blacksburg High School, Blacksburg, VA In Mission: Evolution, high school students thoroughly analyze the evolutionary science driving the Spore game engine and investigate the scientific accuracy of the game. Working together to identify principles of evolutionary change that are absent from the off-the-shelf version of Spore, students collaborate to introduce these principles into their own missions in Spore Galactic Adventures.
Scratch and Share Mitch Resnick, MIT Scratch is a free, graphical programming language that enables young people from age 8 up to create their own interactive stories, games, animations, and simu- lations. Originally launched in 2007, this next generation of Scratch expands opportunities for young people to share ideas, collaborate on projects, and develop as creative thinkers. Scratch & Share enlists youth and teen online community members as active development partners, and allows them to share projects across mobile platforms, to integrate them into social media including Facebook and Twitter, and to remix them more seamlessly.
ECOBUGS Stephen Sayers, Futurelab Education, Bristol, United Kingdom A game aimed at learners aged 7 to 11, EcoBugs encourages learners’ interest in the environment as they explore their surroundings to create, collect, and monitor the health of virtual ‘bug’ species. Players design their own virtual bugs to release into the wild, but must consider the environmental conditions of their particular surroundings to insure survival after release. Bug colonies are located using maps, accessed on player’s phones or computers, and specimens are collected when a player goes to that location— whether in a school, a local neighborhood, or a national park — with a GPS-enabled mobile. when biological or environmental factors cause a population decrease, players must work together to figure out how to improve the situation.
FAB@SCHOOL: A digital fabrication laboratory for the classroom Glen Bull, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA Fab@School introduces k-12 students to the excitement and power of mathematical analysis and modeling, digital fabrication, and engineering by encouraging imagina- tive and collaborative experimentation, invention, design, and creation. Adapting a low-cost open-source emergent digital fabrication system for school use, Fab@School provides students the satisfying experience of taking their concepts—from geometric structures to simple machines to usable products—from mind’s eye to physical form. A complementary curriculum aligned with school standards fosters the further development of STEM skills by posing challenges and presenting models that spur inquiry and inspire students’ original designs.
There were hundreds of proposals to get through, but not nearly enough from Europe and none from the Far East. The quality of the winning ideas is certainly high, but I'm convinced that there is just as much innovation taking place (or trying to take place) in corners of the EU, Far East, Middle East and South America that could benefit from the significant investments made by this superb organisation. It has been a pleasure to be part of that journey, working with such talented individuals. I hope that next year we see even more ideas to get through from further afield.
Last month I was at Thinking Digital Conference in Newcastle, UK, and heard Jonathan Drori give a superb talk on how not to manage the relationship with a potential investors, commissioner or, indeed, business advisor. He repeated in an entertaining fashion some of the biggest pitfalls we see every day in our work. Along with Carole and Fran at Northern Film & Media I made the cheeky video above which, in two minutes, reflects many of the elements Jon mentioned in his talk. My notes, below, were originally posted on The Digital Dockyard.
As a small organisation you can screw
up the relationship in many ways.
23. Go all the way on the
first date. When they first hear about you, ask for money. 22. Only
engage at the highest levels. Only take executives to meet important
people. Minimise links lower down the organisation. 21. Cloak your
pitches in buzzwords, jargon and boss-speak. Use words like "notion(s)"
(e.g. "we're exploring notions of the self"), "synergies", "solution
provider", "appropriate" 20. Don't support the commissioner's aims
and, if you do, avoid convincing evidence. Forget Public Service
Agreements that all government departments have and don't ever talk
about return on capital investment. 19. Don't ask for anything
specific, give long menus of things you could do for them and if you do,
avoid reasoned arguments. 18. Be sure to include minute detail. Make
sure that the first 20-25 minutes of a 30 minute meeting to go into all
the detail. Don't talk about the big picture. 17. Confuse useful
challenge with being lippy. 16. Never give contacts some tools to
persuade others. Avoid practical examples they can understand and easily
share with others.
As a large
organisation you can also botch the relationship with smaller suppliers
15.
Design pilots to test the easy things: scalable, sustainable,
replicable are not vital. 14. Develop a handy one-size-fits-all
procurement process that works as badly for purchasing a £1.50 bucket or
a £1.5m stretch of motorway. Process is what matters, after all. Better
still, get a large consultancy to devise the procurement rules. They'll
be impartial. 13. Stubbornly misinterpret EU procurement law. Make
sure that buying a media service is the same as procuring a bridge. 12.
A tender should come as a nice surprise to anyone who might apply.
March 24th is a good date to throw up a tender (a week before the end of
the financial year) and the second half of August. 11. Frequently
introduce surprising new rules, which are tricky to understand. 10.
Keep 'em keen - make people jump through as many hoops to make it hard
to do business with you. Make sure that preconditions are hard to find,
that dresscode is changed on presentation day. 9. Call distant
meetings at short notice when working with small companies. 8.
Government lawyers always know best. Civil servants are rarely fired for
not doing something.
It's also
possible to botch both ways
7. Specify everything you're going
to do first then get the technologists in. Be smug about your ignorance
of everything technology and media. The technology will always work out
in the end anyway, 8. Choose bad measures to measure success. 5b.
Confuse project-management with editorial vision. Don't take lessons
from the media world where an Executive Producer type understands the
creative bent and takes the final call when things are a bit crap. 5a.
Never do a storyboard together, picture diagrams of who does what when. 4.
Never confuse a neat idea with strategy. A strategy in public service
world is "I want to build a pyramid". A strategy in the private world is
"I want to build a pyramid whose opportunity cost will be x and costs
of supply will be y..."
Understanding
and communication: no-one understands me
3. Reinforce
prejudices - it's reassuring. Act the way people expect you to act. 2.
Misjudge the knowledge of your audience. Patrionise, lecture and
confuse people at the same time. 1. Try to avoid understanding who
your audience is and what it is they really want. Don't try to work out
the difference between what they say they want and what they really
really want (credit, personal profile, money, power). Ignore how those
people work - don't bother finding out about how they live and work.
Three weeks without writing these weeknotes and I feel disjointed. I need to catch up with what I did to know where we're headed, so here goes...
Week 2297 saw us launch the £18m collaboration R&D fund in Scotland at the brilliant venue of the Scottish Youth Theatre, one of these hard-to-find gems that is now locked away in memory for the next event I want to do. Cheap and vast and funky.
Low-cost high-impact: leveraging partners
We also worked with our new partners at the Scottish Qualifications Authority on the development of a human network to take advantage of the amazing work they've done in the past three years developing DIVA - the Digital Vendors Alliance - that brings trade qualifications in IT, resources and real-world platforms to colleges and schools for free. The network is required to start sharing some of the practice that has emerged, and show the causal link between education in the classroom and getting industry involved early on in the curricular planning process so that industry gets the qualifications it needs and learners get the best possible learning experience possible. We're going to run the whole thing off the new pay-for Ning platforms, meaning that for about $200 this superb initiative can take advantage of many tens of thousands of dollars more in vendor alliance partnerships, resources and platforms.
I was also lucky enough to meet Rachel Elnaugh that week, she of Dragon's Den and Red Letter Day fame and fortune. She gave a passionate talk to a group of entrepreneurs about how she had made it through the highs and some truly low lows - the lessons are vital for anyone working in business. Note to self - get the blog post summary up!
A week on the road - just the warm-up
Week 2296 was on the road, and the reason things started to slip on the Weeknotes front. I still need that routine of a free morning or afternoon to gather thoughts, process them and work out what's coming up. That said, I had a brilliant week with some superb feedback on talks given on both the education front (at the Cre8 Partnership West Midlands conference, and in East Sussex) and on the business front (talking about how one crowdsources to solve business challenges at the KMUK10 event in London's Canary Wharf). The education and creativity talk/chapter that I've been pulling together for the past few months was recorded and will appear here soon.
Week 2295 is related to that, as I begin to hone down my summer holiday work of overhauling this site, my education blog and separating out what has become two companies: an education and technology specialist, and startup product marketing, investment and business development consultancy. I've enrolled some world class help to make this happen (and to make it fun to happen). Hopefully by August the changes will become all too apparent, and make more of what I've got tucked away online more transparent and easy to find.
August is also the time that a season of tours kicks off, taking me to Australia, New Zealand, the Middle East, Canada and the USA. If one week on the road threw my routine, I'll have to find better working practices - and a business partner I can trust back home - to help me through it. Any ideas you have on how I can use the expertise out there - crowdsourced for free or paid for their expertise in organisation, planning and carrying out great new projects, would be most welcome.
I've also been helping the Scottish Poetry Library to hone down and finalise their own business plan, seeing new services emerge, some old lesser-used ones put to the side and a new web service emerge from what we've discovered users really want. It's going to be fantastic if/when it's put into action. That very much depends on a few investment bids but, in the meantime, NoTosh has been able to direct them to other sources of finance. It means that there's a damned good chance these plans will take shape over the next year, and provide a way for this brilliant institution to really start generating more of its own revenues.
TV still makes a shedload of money, but it also costs a heck of a lot to make high quality stuff that people want to watch. This week the annual report for 2009 was released by my former employer, Channel 4 Television Corporation, revealing that its digital activities offset losses in TV.
I was delighted on a personal level to see the section in Scale and Impact, where the department I joined as Employee #1, 4iP (Innovation for the Public), was mentioned (pdf). Of the four featured products, two were ones from my commissioning in Scotland and the North East, including MirrorMe which since the report's writing has won a Media Guardian Innovation Award.
And of all the stories of how 4iP has changed the state of independent companies in the UK it was the classic tale from Digital Goldfish that comes through: from a small company I met in a cold roofspace in Dundee to the company that produced one of Apple's Top 30 all-time games for iPhone, it was involvement with 4iP that helped get the company into iPhone development - and into the papers :-)
Public service and its potential to generate revenue is one of the hardest things to explore, even harder to make successful in the longer term. I wish my colleagues, current and former at Channel 4, all the best for 2010 as this bumpy ride of revenues and ratings continues.
I was invited to speak at the KMUK10 event in Canary Wharf, London, surrounded by swarms of pin-stripe-suited bankers more than the apparently chaotic world of crowdsourced innovation. I think I could argue that the latter has proven more reliable over time than the former, and my talk showed a few pertinent examples of where asking your customers or users to help you make better products or services, or to solve a problem, nearly always trumps so-called 'expertise', large organisational structures and over-zealous project management.
Social TV & Film
I picked up on the examples of social film & TV, particularly Alex Krotoski and co's approach in Virtual Revolution, where they charted production through tweets and video shorts, Flickr photos and blog posts, and then released all their raw rushes, in HD, with which fans were encouraged to make trailers for the show by downloading, ripping, remixing and uploading their own versions. I've already written about what makes this particularly special in terms of audience and user engagement.
Social music
I then looked at the juxtaposition we see in the world of music, where the fan is even creating the inspiration for the 'professional', taking crowdsourcing as a means to create new forms of improvisation. There is, of course, the effective outsourcing in part of a band's marketing in allowing fans to liberally record, share and copy live music performance as a means to get more people paying for concert tickets - the product with, arguably, the biggest margin these days.
Social writing
I turned to 'social writing' as something that many see as a relatively new phenomenon - that writers would have readers 'proof' and suggest improvements to a text before it is published 'for good' in a hard- or paperback: Naked Conversations, Here Comes Everybody, What Would Google Do?, and Free are all examples that spring to mind. However, I pointed out also how a quick look to the blogosphere at large, and in particular to schools' use of blogging platforms, would reveal plenty of folk using the crowd to vet their ideas before sending off a manuscript, or writing a final draft before submitting the paper. Far from plagiarism, we see the influence of the crowd helping form thought before the author commits. I did it for an Economist article, and still do it writing these posts in the hope that future talks and presentations will be all the better for it.
Social problem-solving
The social problem solving that crowdsourcing allows is not limited to the fun and frivolous. Whether it's working out from a video who an animal abuser might be, or helping to update Open Street Map at a pace for rescuers in Haiti after the earthquake, crowdsourcing has, indeed, helped incarcerate and save lives:
There is a catch - crowdsourcing anything requires investing in the longer haul, investing in relationships and potential customers with no immediate, or even obvious means, of making back the time and energy you spend there. However, for those who take the risk there's nearly always a return, one that can be demonstrated.
Crowdsourcing for CIOs or those wanting to test ideas might be thought
of as the focus group par excellence. Its ROI is demonstrable, I
believe, when combined with pretty traditional, if underused, business
planning skills that we see working with startups. By harnessing an Elliminate,
Reduce, Enhance and Create framework to hone down the crowdsourcing
idea you have in mind, understanding what its goals are to be, and
demonstrating how many pounds or dollars are saved on focus groups,
creating unsolicited and unsuccessful surveys and the distorted results
they produce, you can show the benefits of using a community-driven crowdsourcing
approach over a scattergun-email-list-in-one-hand-telephone-in-the-other one.
It's been a great week, with a cheeky day off on Thursday. The sun is out, summer is here, and the first batch of projects we've been undertaking are coming to an end, with new projects now lining up to take us through to the end of 2010.
The Education Project
We were confirmed for our first ever Middle East gig, coming this October in Bahrain at The Education Project, an amazing two-day jamboree with educators from around the world exchanging practice and provoking discussion on some of our most challenging issues. Ewan is working alongside Jeff Utecht, with whom he's also writing a book chapter on the potential (or not) of social networks in the world of schools and schooling.
We've also been finalising arrangements for another tour this year across Australasia. More details soon, but there are already around 15 dates confirmed throughout New Zealand and Australia this August.
Startups news
We've been working with partners Northern Film & Media and Northstar Ventures on several potential investments. Lots of discussion with the startups, lots of discussion with the various fund managers and, hopefully, some news before summer. It sometimes feels like this is the 'invisible work' - it takes up large chunks of your day without necessarily leading to anything and, when it is getting somewhere and is really exciting you can't really tell anyone about it. Great fun and frustrating at the same time.
We've also been developing a concept to create several new companies, generate scores of jobs and up the game in Scotland's startup scene. We know the model works; wish us luck in bringing the model and amazing backup of coaches and mentors to Scotland.
The Technology Strategy Board £18m R&D Fund Opening
This week we opened the floodgates of applications to a new £18m R&D fund for innovation partners: content creators, network operates and/or audiences. The focus in the opening keynote for the event was very much on where good ideas come from, and what stops the poor ones getting anywhere. Feedback was positive, showing a general appreciation that we don't spend enough time on getting the right teams together to make our ideas happen or, worse still, we get no teams together at all. That whole thing of folk not wanting to share their ideas for fear of having them stolen came up (again), and (again) I made the point of how an idea not shared is a dead idea. We'll be doing the same in Glasgow, June 8th.
AmbITion Scotland Keynote: Digital media and the arts
Another keynote on Thursday with AmbITion, an arts and cultural organisation consultancy with whom NoTosh is working on a number of projects, notably with the Scottish Poetry Library and the Glasgow Women's Library. It's work that certainly hones one's own abilities in customer relationship databases and the efficiencies that can be had from getting great designers and talented solo coders together on open source software websites and backend.
The keynote was for about 80 people in the room and a further 50 or so online in the live webcast. Thanks to everyone for the great feedback. It'll appear on a revamped NoTosh site this summer, as part of an overhaul to better explain what we're up to. You can listen to it yourself, about 19 minutes in to the archive below:
Thinking Digital and Tom Wujec on visual innovation
As well as delivering a couple of talks, I was delighted to be invited along to Thinking Digital 2010, the Gateshead-based event that my pal Herb Kim has been expanding every year for the past three years into what is easily the "TED of the North".
The concepts in terms of business are very similar to stuff that I and others work through with startups, but the difference that comes from making those analyses through pictures, rather than getting lost in words, is huge. And, in his workshops, I even learned how to draw again. If you hire NoTosh in the near future for some startup or organisation development, be warned! You might end up having to draw on post-its more than ever before!
TeachMeet & #tmfuture
I was also inspired to hear Joi Ito on how open innovative communities can function better than organisations, something that rings true as we develop the notion of unconferenced professional development for teachers through the TeachMeet model. We opened up the debate to TeachMeet's future development (Twitter hashtag: #tmfuture), as the unconference model I kicked off the back of BarCamp Scotland four years ago moves into new territory and simultaneously seeks to establish its basic roots in more schools and local authorities, and all this without becoming the victim of commercialisation or cash-grabbing opportunists.
After a week of people's considerable effort of thought, blog posts and tweets, as well as a few who let their knees jerk before reading the initial blog post text in full (I know - a couple have told me that's exactly what they did :-), we've had a webchat thanks to the monthly GETinsight slot I hold online and there are some emerging consensus. Time will come within the next week to start pulling some of that together, but so far it feels something like this:
We do need a central online location to host info on forthcoming and past events, that's better curated than the current free-for-all wiki;
We don't want a central "condoning" organisation to let people know if they can/can't call their proposed event a TeachMeet (not something that was ever suggested cf. one-must-read-blog-posts-in-full above ;-)
We do want local organisations to host TeachMeets and organise sponsorship where necessary. For some of these, an easy route to channeling their funds would be welcome i.e. a central bank account.
We're undecided on whether we want such a central bank account to withhold 5% or 10% of sponsorship to invest in creating TeachMeet movements elsewhere around the world where the chances of hearing about it are fewer.
The process has been an exciting one, and equally frustrating. People don't like change. People don't like others rocking a boat, even if the boat from some angles looks like it's got some holes that need plugging. People don't like it when they don't feel involved in what they want to be a collaborative process.
It's been tough to work out if we could have done things any better - ideas start with one person, and get shared with larger groups over time. That's what I did - had an idea or two, but wanted to share the initial thoughts to make sure they weren't completely off the wall, sharing them with 20 or so folk I felt I could trust to be honest with me. Publishing straightaway on my own blog would have felt presumptive, and my thoughts wouldn't have had the benefit of being socialised with plenty of others in a 'safer' environment.
That said, the thought of having this discussion has led to some folk being completely quiet after an initial moan. That's a shame in some ways - we're missing voices, ideas, expertise. Others have become even more engaged in helping shape an event format into something more robust, easier to share, easier to organise. I'm grateful for those who have joined that discussion, and hope those who've been a little more behind-the-scenes come forward in the next few weeks with their own views and suggestions.
Scottish Poetry Library business planning
Work continues apace with the Library in developing a business plan - the deadline is ticking away, and the customer relationship management system is the stopping block in our current plans. Once we know how that might operate we can start to get some quick quotes from web development and design outfits. I'm curious to explore not only what the big agencies can propose, but also what some of those talented freelancers working in consortia can pull off. There's a real opportunity here for a new type of agency work to take hold.
#BeCuriousTour 2010
The tour develops daily, with tweets and emails from those who'd like to engage DK, Christian and I on some exciting projects. Others just want to share what they're up to and leave it up to us to see if we're able to tag along. Keep your ideas and proposals coming. In the meantime, I've taken on the role of Chief Visa Investigator, seeing how we can make this happen within the necessary confines of the US Consular system. It ain't easy. All advice welcome.
You can see my ear, and the back of my head, in this week's Difference Engine video podcast. I've been in helping the teams prepare their final pitches and business plans for their Demo Day, Tuesday 25th May. What I realised in this chats was that so much of creating a great pitch has to do with simply having a great product, with a clear audience in mind and a logical route from the place you are now to getting that product or idea into the hands or minds of that audience. So many of the duff pitches I see have nothing to do with the vim (or lack of it) of the presenter - it's always the questions they leave in my mind about how viable their idea is. Worth remembering that: invest in a product marketer early on, not a pitch instructor.
TechCrunch Europe, held in Edinburgh on Wednesday and the first time in the UK it's happened outside London, brought this lesson home with a punch. So many of the pitches I saw lacked the basic information. When one or two had it they created a huge wave of excitement, even if the presentation skills of the individual were not something to write home about.
Towards the end of the week a group of NoTosh associates started to round off plans that get to the core of this challenge: creating great startups that have the pace, pounds and powerful story to succeed. More on that operation as and when we get the finance in place.
Scottish Poetry Library
In other news, we continued to work with The Scottish Poetry Library to develop its business plan in moves to reinforce its position as the authority on Scottish Poetry in the world. A lot of this is down to communicating consistently, and the excellent staff there make this easy - they've all got digital footprints to be proud of. This week I got particularly excited around the potential of a couple of education-focused projects we might try to weave into that plan, making them potentially the core of the library's proposition.
NoTosh going ever-more global
About 2% of NoTosh's work is based in Scotland. Frankly, if you want a successful, varied set of customers and clients you have to think internationally. Thus, we've been spending far too much time investigating Visa requirements to get NoTosh working properly in the USA, New Zealand, Australia and Bahrain, all places we're going to be in the next six months. Keep your eyes open for where we might appear. A good place to start would be the wonderful Be Curious Tour I'm going to undertake with buddies DK and Christian Long. If you can offer any help with understanding the complexities of Visa-ing in these places, do get in touch!
The Partnering for Innovation £18m
fund presents an enormous opportunity for digital media startups and
creative companies to use their networks, share their ideas and partner
up on projects that have the potential to change the digital media
scene.
Traditionally, in Scotland and the North East of England, we’ve seen
a tendency not to share one’s ideas for fear of having them pinched.
It’s only when we share our ideas, talk about their potential with
people outside our normal industries, that we start to see their
potential in a new light. Add to that some timely funding and you have a
potent mix for innovation.
Alongside myself will be Sian Brereton from the TSB who will be delving into
details the £18m Collaboration Across Digital Industries fund and Mel
Norman from Media Sauce, who
will be leading a session on networking and collaboration.
Work continues with The Difference Engine, the incubator that I mentioned earlier in the week, and my work with this first crop is hurtling towards its conclusion of pitches for investment and, potentially, a reason to stay in the North East of England for longer, resisting the temptation to move development to the parties and social scene of London (leave that to the CEOs ;-)
One of a few companies in which I'm seriously interested is being headed up by Bastian Lehmann (@basti) who socialises and does his deals on the London tech scene at the weekend, and codes in the calm and concentration afforded by The Difference Engine in Middlesbrough. I can't tell you anything about it, other than the fact that I reckon Scoble's playing with his device, but you can get a flavour of what he's up to by listening in on this video (above) and freezing the frame at the right points ;-)
With Northern Film & Media we've been helping prepare a couple of pitches for investment, one in the food arena the other an absolute dream of a project that we've effectively gifted to a lovely startup beginning its life in Newcastle this summer. Lovely shakes of excitement with the latter in particular, where you see a simple idea, expressed in a short sentence that the two or three people we've told 'get' before we've even finished the sentence describing it. Now that's a pitch!
How you deliver a pitch is still a mystery to some, as our participation in the audience of TechCrunch Europe in Edinburgh showed us. Who is this for? What does it solve for them? How do you make some money out of it? How much do you need to get this off the ground? Vitally - what value do you offer people to make them want to use your idea? These are core questions of any undertaking, whether it's building your next startup or planning a curriculum (swap 'money' for 'assessment'), yet so few people go through the lengthy, painful experience of working it out.
Further back in the week I had an equally stimulating time facilitating a day with the CCE Creative Agents (pdf description of what they do) who, coming from the creative industries (think filmmakers, artists, musicians, designers), take their backgrounds, attitudes and ideas into schools around the country to stimulate new ways of thinking about learning.
My input was to help them work out what was required in the school environment in terms of time, space and energy at different points in the week to achieve the projects they were attempting, and to introduce the social technologies that would make them a) better informed, b) more efficient and c) more connected as a cohort, sharing expertise and advocacy through into the next school session. Feedback through the informal channels has been great, and I hope that with a new NoTosh website over the summer I can share more of where they've got to with the various challenges I threw at them.
