We very much look forward to meeting all the participants and those helping out with the GeoVation Camp process. 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 20 June; 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:

The Judging Panel Chair is:

Roland Harwood who is co-founder of 100%Open, the open innovation agency that works with the likes of LEGO, Orange and Oxfam to co-innovate with their partners. 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

He will be joined by:

Alison Prendiville - Deputy Director of C4D; a multidisciplinary position which facilitates the convergence of the STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering, Medicine ) with design. C4D was listed by the Design Council and NESTA’s Multidisciplinary Design Network in 2010, as one of eight best practice case studies of multidisciplinary  design collaboration. On completing her Masters in Design Management from the Royal College of Art,  Alison worked commercially with a number of design led companies before entering academia. Her doctoral research, awarded in 2001 linked engineering specification to design, service management theory and practice. In parallel with her PhD she was a researcher on the EU Framework IV Programme MIMIC (Modality, Inter-modality and Interchange).  Alison has extensive teaching experience at undergraduate and postgraduate level encompassing Service, Product and Strategic Design and supervises and examines PhDs in: Design for Services, Design Management, Public Sector Innovation, Design Process, Design and Sustainability, Design Theory and Practice and Social Software Agents.

Daniel Raven-Ellison - lead member of The Geography Collective, creative director of  Mission:Explore and two time winner of GeoVation. In addition to teaching in and leading school geography departments for over 7 years, Daniel has been a writer and consultant for the BBC, Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, Geographical Association and many more. He was an education manager at both Action Aid UK and Relief International before leaving to work full-time on projects for The Geography Collective. This has included launching a national campaign to increase the number of children playing outdoors, an international project to (re)present cities through alternative explorations and organising a range of creative geography-based workshops at major festivals. He considers himself to be a guerrilla geographer and now spends most of his time on Mission:Explore, a GeoVation supported project to increase the number of children playing outdoors, exploring new places, travelling in new ways and thinking in new ways about their world.

John Kimmance - who  is Head of Business Sales and Support at Ordnance Survey, Britain’s National Mapping Agency.  John’s team is responsible for all of Ordnance Survey’s commercial business including the Public Sector, Utilities and all commercial markets.  His team deal directly with end customers an also with and through a strong suite of channel partners.    John has a Geology degree from UCL and practiced as an exploration geologist in southern Africa before returning to the UK to obtain his MBA from Exeter.  Ordnance Survey provides a full range of Geographic Information covering different scales.  This information covers topography (mapping), addresses, roads, points of interest and Imagery

Marianne Guldbransen is an innovation consultant covering strategy, user insights and product-service development. She is often involved from the early stages of project scoping, leading the ethnographic research and taking these profound insights into product and service development. Organisations she has worked with includes: Ford, Volvo, Walt Disney, LEGO, LiveWork, Orange, Nokia, Nissan, Toyota, Samsung and Novo Nordisk. Prior to this she was Head of Design Strategy at Design Council, where she led the strategic and creative direction across a wide variety of Open Innovation Challenges and projects in health and wellbeing, crime prevention and environmental sustainability. She holds a PhD in design innovation, focussing on how organisations handle product qualities that cannot easily be measured.

Richard Bridge who is Head of Consultancy, Training and Quality at Community Matters.  He managed the Community Alliance Regional Programme, working to lead and support their network of Regional Coordinators and their work with members, and as their regional voice for the sector. He oversees the Visible Communities ™ programme, the national accredited standard for community organisations, endorsed by the Charities Commission.  He recently helped design and oversaw the development on the new online tools: The ^PreVISIBLE Review (legal compliance) and Your Value! (demonstrating social value). He represents Community Matters on Steering Groups reviewing the National Occupational Standards for Community Development Workers, and drafting the first ever national Qualification Framework for Community Development Practice and Learning. He is also very involved in the community empowerment agenda as a local resident where he lives. He sat on the board of the local community led SRB6 programme and now chairs the newly created Waterloo Community Coalition, which brings together all local community sector groups to work in partnership. He was also one of Commissioners on the London Borough of Lambeth’s Citizen’s Commission on the Cooperative Council.

In this guest post our 2011 GeoVation Challenge winner, Louise Campbell explains about the latest addition to the Foodnation product range.

The VegBox Raydar service is the latest addition to our range of products for Foodnation website customers, and provides results of their nearest veg box suppliers, and allows customers to compare information before they buy, wherever they are. Available from the Foodnation homepage.

The VegBox Raydar service allows customers to compare multiple suppliers so they can choose ones nearest to them, information is available at your fingertips 24 hours a day.

Since launching the new VegBox Raydar service, Foodnation have inundated with requests for information. The Foodnation mobile application provides VegBox Raydar users with the suppliers data, the results are then emailed to the customers.

Louise Campbell, Website Designer at Foodnation said: “It has been hugely enjoyable to see where customers are searching from, we have collected postcode input data and noticed that at least 20% of the request come from locations in the UK where the nearest vegbox supplier is over 20 miles away, especially in places like the county of Gwynedd on North West Wales coast, we hope to publish these results very soon and hope the data will encourage local producers and entrepreneurs in these areas to start their own delivery services using local producers produce. In addition it has also given us a chance to speak to community supported agriculture groups, most of whom cannot meet demand for places. There is a real demand for fresh homegrown produce, which is not being met in black-spots across the UK”

Rowan Wookey, App Deveoper, said: “We are delighted to announce the launch of the new VegBox Raydar service. It is free to use and gives customers easy access to vegbox supplier results.”

Key features of the new VegBox Raydar service include:

• Free to use
• Results based on your location
• At a glance vegbox supplier results sent straight to your inbox
• Top three suppliers near you, including contact details and website where applicable
• 1,000 vegbox supplier locations to choose from

Foodnation are hugely  excited to announce the launch of our FREE Android app. The app can be used on all Android phones and tablets, and producer locations and can be accessed directly via our postcode field, using GPS from the homescreen, without having to login, making the app super easy to use and launch from anywhere.

It has been hugely enjoyable and a great privilege to design the Foodnation Android application. The opportunity to invest the funds which GeoVation awarded us inspired us to produce an accessible and elegant application that we hope will be well received by new and existing and future app users.

Thanks to our GeoVation winner, MaxiMap pupils are being given the chance to brush up on their geographical skills with their enormous floor-sized maps which can be used as a teaching tool to expand pupils’ knowledge of the world.

Ann Jones of MaxiMap said “I was head of history at Cefn Hengoed and there was a lack of knowledge among the pupils, they didn’t know where the countries were. I spoke to teachers in other disciplines, in things like geography and English and they found the same. People would say to pupils ‘somewhere to the north of Scotland’ and they wouldn’t know where it was.”
So Ann commissioned a giant floor map of the British Isles and took it into the classroom to highlight cities where civil disturbances took place in the 19th century for her Year 10 GCSE pupils. Ann then joined forces with Llanelli printing company Heritage Screen Print and set up MaxiMap, a partnership which has seen the business go from strength to strength. In 2010, MaxiMap won the GeoVation Challenge .

Current new teaching aids include a periodic table and a political map of the world too. Around 200 of the giant floor maps have been sold to schools and companies, including 50 to CAA Publishing in Aberystwyth, who purchased them with a grant from the Welsh Government and provided them to schools across Wales. The Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust recently ordered nine of the maps to be used in their educational programmes, and Ramblers Wales have purchased a map for events relating to the opening of the Wales Coastal Path.

The next stage is for the judges to start reading all of your ideas and select a shortlist of the best of these which will be announced on 29 May. The shortlisted ideas teams will be invited  to a GeoVation Camp in Cardiff  over the weekend of 22-24 June.

You can find out who the judging panel are below:

The Judging Panel Chair is:

Andy Middleton – a social entrepreneur,designer and facilitator who helps leaders and teams in business,  government and community build resilience for sustainability.He uses ecology, psychology and action learning to help people connect what they see, know and feel to ways of doing things that are lighter on, and inspired by nature. He is Founder Director of the TYF Group, a well established and innovative adventure, education and leadership business based in St Davids, Pembrokeshire. His imagination is caught by working on city and country-scale sustainability projects and by the creative retreat centre he’s building that overlooks islands and ocean on the western edge of Wales.

Andy will be joined by:

Angela Charlton -  Director of Wales Ramblers Cymru and responsible for leading the charity in Wales.  Angela has over 20 years experience in the voluntary sector, working across Wales, Shropshire and Gloucestershire. She joined Ramblers Cymru in 2008, coming from her previous role as Chief Officer with a Council for Voluntary Services where she secured a large amount of funding to support a very rural social enterprise initiative. Angela has experience in community engagement in both the rural & urban environment context.  Her previous roles cover, Environmental Education, Fundraising, Project development and management, Countryside management and of course walk leading. She is from South Wales and has a real passion to see the people of Wales have every opportunity to flourish in a sustainable way whilst meeting the needs of the people and the environment.

Bill Oates who leads the Geography and Technology team in Welsh Government’s Knowledge and Analytical Services. His team of 20 is responsible for the acquisition, management, exploitation and dissemination of geographic data and some of their recent work includes Wales’ response to INSPIRE and the implementation of Wales’ relationship with Ordnance Survey for map supply.  Bill has  had a 15 year career in geographic information but before getting his first real job he spent a year trying to get a start-up “dot.com” company off the ground. He is  looking forward to working with GeoVation participants and hopefully making a contribution to their success.

Bryan Forbes – Technology Strategy Board SBRI Account Manager.  As an SBRI Account Manager, Bryan is responsible for promoting the use of the SBRI process to find innovative solutions to significant public sector challenges. This includes developing and managing technology innovation competitions with Government departments and other public sector agencies. Bryan joined the Technology Strategy Board in 2009 and has a background in the IT Industry where he has had extensive experience in Sales, Business Development and Account Management.

John Carpenter is Head of Product Management at Ordnance Survey. John’s team is responsible for the life-cycle management of the whole Ordnance Survey product range, working with Product Propositions and Product Development to ensure that the portfolio is evolving to meet the changing market. John joined Ordnance Survey from the financial services industry in 2006, where he managed a number of business-to-business product groups.

Peter Francombe who is currently the Strategy Manager on Visit Wales’, Digital Tourism Business Programme. He is responsible for managing a team to champion within the tourism industry in Wales, enthusiasm for, knowledge of and engagement with ICT business innovations. Prior to this Peter had clocked up over 18 years experience in the Welsh Government’s Technology & Innovation Department. With various roles supporting technology businesses throughout “new product development life cycle” he was most recently responsible for developing an innovative and proactive approach to commercialising their ideas in line with the open innovation model. Slotted between his years in new product development Peter also spent 2 years as the Ryder Cup IT project Manager.

This summer I’ve decided to walk all 870 miles of the new Wales Coast Path from Chepstow in the south to Chester in the north. The decision was made after I walked a big chunk of the 365-mile South West Coast Path last year and in the knowledge that the coast path was due to open in 2012. It seemed like a logical objective.

While I’m walking the path I will  raise money for my School’s Parent Teachers Association (PTA) to help build a new Eco classroom for the Outdoor Education department which would be energy efficient and ecologically sound, and to provide a more simulating classroom to help teach our pupils.

The coastal path isn’t just about walking 870 miles, is about everything that the Welsh Coast has to offer, this was highlighted in one of the GeoVation problem statements: Not just a path. How does the path enable other activities for different demographics such as photography, writing, water sports and bird watching? Walking will not always be the main interest of potential users, so leading with other activities to particular demographic groups could increase visitors.

Our Outdoor Education department provides huge range of activities to all the pupils in the school from Year 6 to upper 6th form, and many of our pupils that don’t do well in the classroom excel in outdoor education. It is encouraging to see my pupils getting enthused about being outdoors and seeing their personal and team working skills while helping them discover new and challenging adventures outdoors that will give them lasting memories – , which in itself is motivation to do this walk.

Planning the walk has been hard sometimes because of the lack of information, which is highlighted in the GeoVation problem statements, one  of which was Coastal Path Newbies How can new walkers be confident they have all the geographical information to complete their chosen route? Making the Wales Coast Path a preferred choice for those going on a walking holiday or day trip for the first time will tap a new market and ‘repeat business’.

I’ve done some training walks on the Coast Path on Anglesey and along the North Wales Coastline, and have spent a lot of time looking at kit to make my rucksack as light as possible, but still maintaining some level of comfort. Interested people will be able to follow my progress on the Social Hiking website, via the Buddy Beacon feature on the Viewranger App, and see photos and video clips from twitter.

I guess that I know North Wales well as our school is based in Llandudno and we use the coast for venues for Sea kayaking, walking etc. I’ve already walked the Anglesey coastal path for a bit of fun, but I think it’s time to see the rest of Wales.

I’m starting on the 10th July and hoping to take around 55 days so finishing around the 3rd September, so ill able walking on average around 15 to 16 miles a day, I know this might sound a lot of distance to cover, but once you are into the swing of things you get used to the distances. . It’s hard to know if there is anything that I’ll be dreading but the most depressing is the sections where you have a huge inland detour to get around a river mouth when you can see its only 20 metres across and you have to walk 20 miles to get to the 1st crossing point!!!! I have arranged to meet Mike Parker author of Map Addict and presenter of Radio 4’s ‘On the Map’, when I get up towards mid Wales.

I’ve submitted ideas to the GeoVation Challenge myself to help walkers plan their trips using OS Opendata, and also an idea to get schools more involved with the coastal path. There are many other great ideas that people can comment or vote on to see that will get through to GeoVation Camp in June. The GeoVation Challenge has brought together all sorts of great ideas from people for all walks of life and backgrounds, not just professional website and app designers; I can see that many of them would work well in collaboration with each other to produce some amazing websites and apps that would enhance peoples leisure time and enjoyment of the new Wales Coast Path.

If you are interested finding out more please visit my website

Steve Webb

Dylan Thomas’ most famous poem, ‘Under Milk Wood’, starts, ‘To begin at the beginning’. Somehow, it’s a lot easier to say than do.  I have been asked many times about when I first had the idea for a Welsh coast path. It would be great to be able to trace it back to one moment, but life isn’t like that; like many ideas, it took years in gestation, although it was helped by two critical events on the way – first, at the age of 16, walking the Pembrokeshire Coast Path with school friends and seeing my first dolphins; the second was the brilliant decision of two Cardiff youth clubs to walk around Wales for International Youth Year in 1985.

Ideas, brilliant or otherwise, get nowhere without a plan, and the plan did leap forward quite suddenly in 2006. I was in the kitchen of Rhodri Morgan, the then First Minister of Wales, a keen walker and dolphin watcher. We were debating what to put in the manifesto for the next elections. Ramblers Cymru were calling for greater access to the coast so my suggestion of an ‘all Wales Coast Path’ was a logical extension of that. What I didn’t know on that day was that Rhodri would then ask me to deliver on it.

The benefits of our new coast path will be enormous; indeed we can be confident about its economic and health contribution from the coast paths we have already. Research has identified a £57 return for every £1 spent on maintaining a coast path – and that’s money into our local economies. Health wise, new research out in the last fortnight has identified the positive health benefits of being by the sea. Environmentally, the coastline of Wales would be hard to beat anywhere in the world – which is why there is global interest from the National Geographic and Lonely Planet.

The Ramblers and others continue to campaign, negotiate and undertake practical work in advance of the opening. On May 5^th itself, our Big Welsh Coastal Walk will see 1000’s of people out on the coast and in the three launch locations of Flint Castle, Aberystwyth Prom and Cardiff Bay. The full potential of the Wales Coast Path to have an enormously positive impact on coastal communities and visitors has yet to be realised and we hope that the innovative GeoVation Challenge will demonstrate real benefits to coastal communities on the way.

Walking costs nothing, so is open to all. You can walk the path north or walk it south for completely different experiences; you can take the 1027 mile challenge if you include Offa’s Dyke or the 870 mile challenge of the Welsh coast. You can go on horseback for some parts, on a bike for others or just amble to the nearest viewpoint. The path is there for all people of all ages, so it is there for you. Welcome to Wales, the only country I know where you can ‘discover the shape of our nation’ under your own steam.

]]> http://www.geovation.org.uk/beginning/feed/ 1 http://www.geovation.org.uk/chance-enter-wales-coast-path-geovation-challenge/ http://www.geovation.org.uk/chance-enter-wales-coast-path-geovation-challenge/#comments Wed, 02 May 2012 07:00:36 +0000 viv http://www.geovation.org.uk/?p=4765 We’ve had some really great ideas entered on our GeoVation Challenge ‘How can we connect communities and visitors along the Wales Coast Path?’ which was launched on 14 March with a share of £125,000 for best ideas.

The exciting challenge has seen a steady flow of ideas being submitted all aiming to better connect communities, businesses and visitors through the application of geography, mapping, innovation and expertise.

For instance, one popular idea is for a Walkers alert companion – a smart phone App and website to provide information on the nearest located medical support centre or offering  first aid support from a volunteer network of first aiders.

Or what about a new ultra race the Wales Coastal Path Ultra-Endurance Race – like Trans-Alpine, Tour de Geants, Marathon de Sables (MDS)?   This idea would capture the opening of the Wales Coast Path by launching a new endurance challenge onto the calendar. The race could be split into sections and can have ‘spin-off’ shorter distances to make it accessible to a wider audience. It could engage coastal communities and bring in external revenue (supporters, support crews, event staff and their requirements etc).

Other popular ideas include GeoGuide -  a film + HTML5/GIS application which would point to the faulting & folding of rock sequences to be found along Wales’ mainland outcrop with interpretations on volcanic activity and mineral deposits.

Or a  Mobile Treasure Hunt Game with Augmented Reality to attract new visitors to Wales by making a mobile application with a central web interface to allow Treasure hunt/orienteering games to be developed by strategic partners.

And Caban – portable off grid accommodation system which would provide comfortable accommodation at appropriate locations along the Coastal Path without permanent development and operate on uneven ground with difficult access such as woodland or rocky terrain and be completely removed when required.

There are lots of great ideas to comment or vote on, but what about your ideas? It’s not too late for some last minute ideas and a chance for creative thinkers, developers and entrepreneurs to win a share of a £125,000 funding prize, but hurry and  enter now– the closing date is today (2 May) at 12 noon.

Micro-destination marketing on the worldwide web is a solution to key problems associated with accessible information, market communications and branding. It enables a level of market penetration unheard of before the Internet and we’re still only scratching the surface of possibilities that the semantic web will deliver.

It enables even the smallest Welsh community to shine in the tourism cosmos; deliver its unique selling proposition to world markets; gain sales in a matter of mouse clicks at truly affordable costs; take enormous community pride in the ability to do so, and be part of the national Wales brand.

Since publication of the Location Wales report I’ve become an advisor to Location Wales Online, developer of the Wales.info domain to market Wales as a world class tourism destination. My role as acting project co-ordinator for the Wales Settlements Project & WikiWales, and the iCoast Location-Based Mobile Network Project has enabled me to practice what I preach in that both projects needed a commercial business plan to attract seed funding from the public sector, then private sector funding to procure long-term commercial sustainability.

The Wales Settlements Project & WikiWales is a micro-destination marketing initiative exploring the semantic web and featuring each settlement and placename in the OS 1:50,000 Gazetteer. It advocates open data sharing; interoperable platform distribution; cultural, environmental and commercial product mashups of content from multiple sources, and creation of websites on the fly supplying just-in-time information salient to users’ locations and cloud profiles.

The iCoast Cymru Location-Based Mobile Network Project is similar save that it addresses the crucial issues of mobile Broadband coverage for delivering micro-destination marketing services in Wales coastal regions and along the Wales Coast Path, and the relatively poor uptake of digital technology by rural tourism businesses. The business model too is similar but with the added provision of services to help businesses improve their overall online presence.

The image below illustrates the tourism and heritage connections between cultural and environmental bodies including public transport provision, and how they link to commercial businesses to achieve economic outcomes.

It’s vital that these processes occur swiftly, seamlessly and with the utmost accuracy to capture sales in the little time searchers are prepared to spend looking for what they want.

This can best be achieved through a thorough mashing of accurate and up-to-date commercial datasets with highly granular contextual datasets, which has major implications for search. Connecting up these disparate datasets provides an exceptionally long keyphrase search tail, which represents the new marketplace illustrated in the diagram below.

The head of the tail represents web searches made by large numbers of visitors for the most popular ‘mass market’ things to see and do in Wales.

The long tail on the other hand represents searches made by an equally large, if not greater number of visitors for products and services that satisfy their individual ‘niche market’ interests.

Thanks to the web, these niche markets are as easy to reach as traditional mass markets, given the content is available to match search queries. Open data sharing combined with ‘clever’ search facilitated by the semantic web will help ensure this.

Some of the excellent ideas already registered with the GeoVation Wales Coast Path Challenge may benefit from this model, while a retail sales model could suit many others.

The GeoVation Challenge process is an exciting one with plenty of peer support and good opportunities for collaboration in getting new products and services to market, and which could result in entirely new business models.

So if you haven’t already entered and have a great idea how to connect communities and visitors along  the new Wales Coast Path then hurry, enter now and don’t miss out on your chance to win a share of £125,000 in  funding to get your idea off the ground.  Closing date 2 May at 12 noon.