BBC Innovation Labs 2008: The Outcome

March 17, 2008

Categories: BBC Labs 2008 Events News News

What goes around, comes around: A decade or so ago, I was consulting to various organisations on interactive and convergent television. The problem was that, for manufacturers and broadcasters at the time, "interactivity" meant bringing up a graphic or two when a button was pressed, whilst "convergence" meant that I could (occasionally) look up a TV schedule on a Web site. That's a bit of a slow start when you see the possibility of casually delivering content across multiple devices and using intelligent bringing people together around their shared interests and intent. That was also when most of those who were online were so via 33.6Kbps dial-up connections. So I put that one into the "Magrathea" class of idea, to wait for the world to catch up.

Which, I'm pleased to say, it has: After gaining a place on this year's BBC Innovation Labs, we developed the idea of Social Semantic TV (it definitely needs a snappier title for expository purposes) to the point were we've won a commission from BBC R&D to develop the idea into a working prototype: putting their money where our mouth is…

You also might just have noticed that the personal pronoun used has shifted from "I" to "We". One of the other projects at the Lab turned out to be completely complementary to mine, so I'm very pleased to say that I've joined forces with Jonathan Marshall, pioneer of digital interactive television and all-round person of multiple talents and interests. The third member of our team is Jon Jardine, computer scientist, graphic and UI designer extraordinaire and erstwhile owner of the finest pub in the Highlands.