Connected Studio is an established programme to support innovation at scale across BBC Future Media and the audience facing divisions.
We look to work with digital agencies, technology start-ups, academia and individual designers and developers (including BBC staff) who want to submit and develop ideas for a range of new functions, features or formats across our online services, streamlining audience experience and optimising BBC digital media products for the future.
Delegates at today's Connected Studio Future of Content event
A year ago, I set the team the challenge to support BBC on some of its significant but challenging strategic objectives and innovate at scale. This has meant we have worked with nearly every corner of BBC to push forward on new forms of digital storytelling:
• Radio and Music - with the fantastic teams in Radio1, Classical Music and Radio3
• News – working with our partner team BBC NewsLabs looking at Archive, Newsrooms and World Service.
• Television – working with super creative in Comedy, Natural History and a range of other genre teams.
• Nations – working with BBC Scotland on the Scottish Referendum, and our Welsh team has been working with the Research Education Space (RES).
• North –we have been working with the Make it Digital and iWonder teams and we have seen a number of pilots with Children’s go live.
Behind the scenes, we work extensively with colleagues in Research & Development, Marketing and Audiences, User Experience and Design, Platform Engineering and Editorial Teams to ensure the work can deliver real impact for BBC.
And on each of these initiatives we have been reaching out to work with some of best UK digital media companies – established and emerging. This type of creative collaboration has its challenges in context of rapidly evolving connected audiences but I am proud of how BBC is moving progressively forward.
In the last six months…
At last week’s BBC Online Briefing our project manager Robin Cramp was able to give the audience an update so I thought it would be good to summarise here.
In flight we have some very exciting work developing from Radio 1 – working with Kite, Kent Lyons, Codegent and ApeGroup – these four pilots really pushing at role of putting user at heart of proposition.
With Natural History Unit’s ‘One Planet’ and partners we have two exciting developments with Realise and AKQA looking at immersion and interactivity.
Over in Research and Education Space – there are three distinctive and diverse educational projects with Touchpress, Gooii and Amplify.
We had a great early summer working with the Make It Digital team and have two super pilots in development for 2015 – one from an internal team of young Future Media developers and the second with BBC Children’s Scotland and CoderDojo Glasgow.
Finally in background, CBBC have launched the latest projects from Peekaboo and WeAreYoung. Go and have a try!
All of these companies have been selected through an open approach designed to give both BBC and the companies maximum chance to develop best ideas for the relevant audiences.
And what is really pleasing is that all of the projects have been developed with audience members taking part in review, co-design and testing sessions – this always gets great feedback from teams even if the users don’t necessarily say what the developers want to hear!
The other thing we have recognised is the value of having bases across the whole UK – London, Salford, Glasgow and Cardiff – these are increasingly becoming important in engaging with new emerging opportunities inside and outside BBC. But we still need to do more and reach out to regions such as Northern Ireland, the Midlands, North East and South West.
So what’s coming up? We have two major streams of work:
Firstly, we are going to be working with BBC World Service and NewsLabs partnering with the global team on building reach in Africa, using various digital tools.
This will kick-off with a a #newsHACK focussed on Language Technology in December and we are inviting teams from academic institutions and tech providers to take part. To find out more have a look here
The second key announcement is around a new rolling programme which will focus on Future of Content.
Future of Content has been set up to help production teams create amazing digital stories and experiences. It will begin with an initial focus with video (interactive and short form) and looking at developing strong and original concepts for connected audiences.
As part of the programme we will be evaluating existing and emerging technologies suitable for short form and interactive video.
If you want to find out more about these new programmes and any of the other information above please email connectedstudio@bbc.co.uk to join our mailing list and be first to know about next open calls.
Finally, we are always keen for constructive feedback on how we improve our programmes so please leave a comment, drop us a line or follow us on Twitter.
Adrian Woolard is Head of BBC Connected Studio
