Join the Innovation Nation

Michelle Lyons, who oversaw Digital Dialogues for the MoJ, is now Community Manager at DIUS. She has asked some bloggers and other champions of online engagement to help her promote a new pilot being run by the department. Very happy to oblige :)

The DIUS pilot has taken the Innovation Nation White Paper and made it interactive – in that it allows interested parties to comment on the Paper paragraph by paragraph. Neat.

So even if you responded to the original consultation, this is worth getting into – partly because policy officials want your views on the subject matter, but also because a good turnout and some constructive contributions will encourage them to do this again.

Finding the silver-lining between the lines

A ‘news analysis’ article on NMA gathers quotes from industry senior managers on what ‘the economic crisis’ means to digital.

A lot of doom-mongering, until it laments that ‘clients are taking a more conservative route… Optimisation, usability and customer insight will what [they] concentrate on’.

That’s a good thing!

Was pleased to read (albeit between the lines) that innovation is seen as a means of weathering the storm. I gave a presentation at an Apple seminar in 2005 and what struck me there was that it was Apple’s steady spend on R&D that saw them through the lean years. A good example to keep in mind.

Show Them A Better Way

Alex Stobart emailed me about Show Us A Better Way – a competition set up by the UK Government to encourage ideas for data mash-ups.

There’s a £20k fund to allocated across one or a series of winning ideas. In a presentation to Tom Watson, I recommended five pots of up to £15k each, which I still stand by as a more appealing and sustainable prospect for entrants.

But this is a good start and will no doubt evolve over time. I’d recommend the POI Task Force pay keen attention to the likes the BBC Innovation Labs if they are going to pursue this year on year.