Great news!! The award fund for our new GeoVation challenge “How can we transform neighbourhoods in Britain together?” has now been increased to £115 000, for the best use of Ordnance Survey products or services in addressing the challenge problems.

We will be looking to make up to 5 awards to the successful finalists at the GeoVation Showcase on 20 June at Ordnance Survey in Southampton. Finalists will be competing for a £40 000 first prize, and 3 runners-up prizes of £25 000each. Finally there will be a community awarded prize of £1 000.

So, post up your ideas, help develop others’ ideas through your helpful comments and, if you and your idea is invited to the GeoVation Camp on 18 – 20  May we look forward to welcoming and working with you then.

Good luck!

We are delighted to be hosting the Mapping the Future workshop at the Oxford Real Farming Conference on Friday. We’ll explore the challenges mapping can be used to address, with innovative examples and contributions from local food and farming pioneers including contributions from City Farmers, Food Nation, Sustaination, GeoFutures and Ordnance Survey.

We worked with the Campaign for Real Farming and Agrarian Renaissance when we launched Geovation’s “How can Britain Feed Itself?” challenge in June 2010. As a result we were delighted to be able to seed fund two innovative ventures, Food Nation and City Farmers that are using geography to help address sustainable, local food and farming. You can read about their ventures here on the blog.

Building on interest in the role geography can play, we held a Local Food and Farming Mapping Workshop, together with Tasting the Future at Ordnance Survey in July and produced this report from the day.

GeoVation has recently supported Kent Connect’s challenge and we are excited by the winning team behind Sunshine Bank, and their prototype “Sunshining in Kent”.

One-planet living in the current economic climate means “doing more with less, and doing it sustainably” at work, home, at play and in our neighbourhoods. With that in mind we are currently working with a number of other organisations to develop and launch our next two GeoVation challenges, which we are really excited about. We shall be launching these early in the new year so watch this space and @Geovation for further news.

We recently held a GeoVation PowWow event for one of the new challenges at the Royal Geographical Society, London. GeoVation PowWow’s are workshops that unpack meaty problems / unmet needs around a particular challenge by bringing together a unique mix of participants. These problems are then synthesised into themes and supported with insights providing great opportunities to innovate. GeoVators responding to a particular challenge will have access to the PowWow output to help ensure that the ideas they are posting address a real, identified problems / unmet needs.

PowWow participants kindly joined us from Barking and Dagenham Council, Business in the Community, Cabinet Office, Design Council,  Kent County Council, NESTA, Nonon, Ordnance Survey, Social Reporter, University of the Arts, and UnLtd.

MJR Solutions who participated in a seminar on OS OpenData and our GeoVation showcase, are pursuing the “How can we improve transport in Britain?” challenge objective. In particular, they are keen to find out about ease of use and ease of access issues for tourists and others using public transport in Wales.

This is an activity close to GeoVation’s heart. In attending an event in Rhayader back in March, we were determined to travel there, through some beautiful countryside, by public transport. However a delayed connection at Newport when travelling from Bristol meant the journey couldn’t be completed by public transport until the next day…..so we really appreciate the issue they are trying to address.

MJR are running a GreenerWales survey with the objective of finding out what will encourage you to explore all that Wales has to offer without the need to use your car. So whether you have visited Wales, would like to visit Wales or live in Wales the survey is targeted at you, your experiences and ideas. It’s an online survey designed to draw out participants’ experiences and views of Wales, public transport and mobile phones and takes less than 10 minutes to complete. And you get the chance of winning an iPad too!

http://www.greenerwales.mobi/survey-english.html

Don’t forget; complete the survey by 11:59 on 13 November for a chance to win an iPad.

Kent Connects are running two challenges which have called for radically simple and useful ideas to “Report local issues” and to “Help people help each other in their neighbourhoods”. Supported by the Cabinet Office, these have been the first ever local government challenges launched on the DotGovLabs Innovation Hub platform.

GeoVation is supporting the second of these challenges, and as members of the judging panel, it has been a very hard task to select a winning idea amongst a number of fascinating entries. However, after careful consideration the GeoVation team selected Sunshine Bank as the challenge winners – congratulations!. This exciting idea not only delivers a valuable service to local communities but actively encourages volunteer participation through a fun and engaging recognition scheme. We are looking forward to working with Sunshine Bank to build on their concept and to explore how the idea can benefit from using mapping data from OS OpenData.

With the best ideas now selected Kent Connects, is keen to stimulate collaboration between civil society and the digital sector, and are now launching a call to all designers and software developers to put forward prototypes on both of the challenges. Participating designers and developers will be able to design and develop at Kent Connects all day event on 25^th November in Gravesend.

Sign up for this event here and find out more by visiting the competition website

As well as coming up with prototypes on the two challenges Kent Connects are looking to stimulate the use of open data and visualisation.

Kent Connects state: “There are amazing opportunities for open data to be used. We know that open data is a very new area for the public. Most people will never have heard of open data, let alone used it to create visualisations. Others however may have used tools to turn data into new web applications. Similarly, visualisations are very powerful at capturing people’s imagination and getting them to reflect on what particular issues mean to them. Developers and designers will be encouraged to put forward prototypes using these techniques in a bid to win the prize for the best two prototypes at our Developing Solutions event sponsored by Kent Connects, GeoVation, Kent Connects and Lagan”.

GeoVation is looking forward to the event and has put up a £1000 fund to award to the prototype that makes best use of OS OpenData and/or OS OpenSpace in “Helping people help each other in their neighbourhoods”.

 

 

 

The second series of free OpenData Master Classes kicked off at Swansea University on 1 June, generously hosted by the university’s Department of Computer Science. A good mix of participants, hailing from community and grass roots organisations to local government, government and academia shared their motivations, skills and expertise in participating; contributing to a lively discussion on open data and how it could best be used to support their various functions and activities.

In the morning the Master Class heard about: the philosophies, motivations and drivers for open source and open data; sources of open data; examples of its use and potential for its use, particularly within the third sector; GeoVation’s open innovation challenge methodology for addressing communities’ needs; and tools and techniques for using open data, from data collection and processing to data analysis and map visualization. In the afternoon theory was put into practice with several practical sessions on using open data drawn from Higher Education, Health Care, Transport and Environment.

The OpenData Master Classes are run by Horizon Digital Economy Research Institute and Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) in partnership with Ordnance Survey, GeoVation and Esri UK. The second stop on this OpenData Master Class tour is at Manchester University on 16 June and is sold out. However the OpenData Master Classes will be published on line shortly. We’ll let you know when.

After an exciting, intense and fun GeoVation Camp we in the GeoVation Team are catching our breath and planning the GeoVation Showcase on 4 May at Ordnance Survey. We are also eagerly awaiting the announcement of the GeoVation Challenge finalists who will be invited to pitch for a slice of £150 000 at the showcase.

The team was hugely impressed by what was achieved by all the teams at the camp, working through the Innovation = Problem x Solution x Execution process and culminating in 19 excellent 2 minute pitches.

We would like to thank all of those who contributed to the camp: the GeoVation judging panel, GeoVation helpers and design students – what a creative team they were, the GeoVation Camp facilitators, GeoVation Challenge supporters and our Ordnance Survey colleagues for hosting the event.

Most of all though we would like to thank the GeoVation campers for developing such inspiring ideas and we look forward to seeing all of you again at the GeoVation Showcase on 4 May.

The GeoVation Team

With less than a week to go until the “How can we improve transport in Britain?” GeoVation Camp kicks-off with a meet and greet session on Friday evening 25 March at Ordnance Survey’s new headquarters in Southampton, the tension is building. Twenty one ideas will be represented and developed at the camp over the weekend, which is a great response – and final preparations are being put in place.

We very much look forward to meeting all the participants, those helping out with the GeoVation Camp process, and our judging panel. Our judging panel will be joining the camp on Sunday afternoon with the unenviable task of selecting the “best of the best” from the weekend camp to be invited to submit venture plans, to be pitched at the GeoVation showcase being held here at Ordnance Survey on 4 May; at which time the GeoVation Challenge innovation award winners will be chosen.

So let’s meet the judging panel for the GeoVation Camp. They are:

Roland Harwood (Panel Chair) is Co-founder of 100%Open, Roland was formerly Director of Open Innovation at NESTA, the UK’s National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts. Graduating with a PhD in Physics from Edinburgh University, he has held senior innovation roles in the Utilities and Media industries and in addition has worked with 100’s of start-ups to raise venture capital and commercialise technology. In addition he has worked as a TV and film music producer for SonyBMG.

Richard Kemp-Harper has responsibility at the Technology Strategy Board for managing a portfolio of innovative projects in the transport and energy generation and supply, and for planning potential future funding in these areas. Prior to joining the Technology Strategy Board, Richard worked for the Intelligent Transport Systems Knowledge Transfer Network, focusing on the themes of technologies for logistics and transport incident management. Richard has a background in academic research in chemistry, biochemistry and medical imaging and 6 years in web development and information management for Oxfam.

Andrew Goodwin is a senior policy analyst in the Strategy Unit at the Department for Transport. His work focuses on issues that cut across all modes of transport including, most recently, the use of traveller information. Andrew holds undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in economics and has worked as a civil servant for the last four years. Prior to that, he worked as an economist for a private sector research and consultancy firm, providing pan-European economic forecasts and location advice to real estate investors.

Glenn Lyons is Associate Dean and Professor of Transport and Society at the Centre for Transport and Society, University of the West of England. Glenn leads the Ideas in Transit project which is funding the £150,000 innovation awards pot for the challenge. Ideas in Transit is a five-year project that applies User Innovation to the transport challenges faced by individuals and society. It aims to promote the understanding, awareness and development of user innovations relevant to transport. Glenn’s own research expertise concerns the links between lifestyles and personal travel in the face of continuing social and technological change.

James Cutler is CEO and founder (with Justin Saunders) of emapsite, leading provider of digital geographic content and geospatial services for professional users. James has been at the forefront of the digital mapping industry for more than 20 years having previously co-founded international GIS consultancy GISL Limited and up until 2000 worked in or managed projects across Europe, Africa and Asia. James’ industry knowledge and leadership skills are allied to a deep understanding of the role of location-centric services in the enterprise and it is James’ vision that underpins the continuing growth and direction of emapsite. As a leading exponent of geospatial web services emapsite is increasingly embedding GI within mainstream business processes. James is increasingly to be found, seen and heard across the GI and related industries as emapsite provides ever wider and deeper access to the world of location content.

Peter ter Haar is Ordnance Survey’s Director of Products. Peter is responsible for all aspects of product management including product marketing, engineering, cartography and supply. He joined Ordnance Survey in November 2006, with more than 18 years’ experience in product management and business development in both the public and private sectors in GIS, location-based services and mobile technology. His previous roles include the head of GIS at the City of Amsterdam, and senior product and technical management roles in Geodan, Autodesk Europe and Intergraph Europe.”

The most remote pub in Scotland, Knoydart’s The Old Forge across the water from Malaig, does not feel too remote when you’re sat with what appears to be the yachting population of England along with a fair few middle-aged men finding themselves. Beyond there, though, things do get rather remote.

I spent three days without any phone signal and very little signs of civilisation, but the mountains were spectacular and the scenery exceptional. The loneliness, though, can be quite debilitating and you can find yourself locked into your mind for long periods.

The maps have obviously been a constant saviour – they don’t do paths up here much so I am navigating by landmarks and OS maps most of the time. I never did orienteering in school so it has been a learning curve!

I crossed onto Skye with high hopes but it hasn’t really hit the heights I was expecting. The Cuillin Ridge is obviously stunning but, half way around as I write, it has been a bit of a slog in all honesty and not very walker-friendly. There is a real lack of places to buy food also, but this is something I have found to be universal.

Where has the village shop gone?! Or, even, the village pub! So often I have arrived in villages to discover no shop or pub, and therefore no real heart to these small communities. Aside from the fact that it makes long distance walking along the coast problematic, as there is no where to restock, it is also a real shame for these small bundles of people not to have a focus to their village.

 

Obviously, I am aware that there is a recession on, but I think traditions like the village pub and shop are essential parts of the British coastline and efforts should be made to keep them open – not just for my benefit!

Nathaniel Severs