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Connected Studio: Winter 2014 update

Adrian Woolard

Head of Connected Studio

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is an established programme to support innovation at scale across 主播大秀 Future Media and the audience facing divisions.

We look to work with digital agencies, technology start-ups, academia and individual designers and developers (including 主播大秀 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 主播大秀 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 主播大秀 on some of its significant but challenging strategic objectives and innovate at scale. This has meant we have worked with nearly every corner of 主播大秀 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 主播大秀 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 主播大秀 Scotland on the , and our Welsh team has been working with the (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 主播大秀.

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 主播大秀 is moving progressively forward.

In the last six months…

At last week’s 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 – 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’sand partners we have two exciting developments with Realise and AKQA looking at immersion and interactivity.

Over in – 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 主播大秀 Children’s Scotland and CoderDojo Glasgow.

Finally in background, C主播大秀 have launched the latest projects from and . !

All of these companies have been selected through an open approach designed to give both 主播大秀 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 主播大秀. 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 主播大秀 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

The second key announcement is around a new rolling programme which will focus on

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 .

Adrian Woolard is Head of 主播大秀 Connected Studio

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