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By chris, 14 June, 2013 8:00 am

With the GeoVation Environment Challenge camp starting one week today, we are delighted to announce that Jason Davies, winner of last year’s Transforming Neighbourhood Challenge, has agreed to join the judging panel for GeoVation Camp which runs from 21 – 23 June.

Jason and colleagues won £41 000 (including the GeoVation Community prize) for their innovation venture Community Payback Visibility. This looks to use Ordnance Survey map data in a mobile phone app for the public to use, to nominate projects for Community Payback.

Jason graduated in modern languages (French and Russian) following which he spent several years travelling and teaching English as a foreign language. On returning to London, he worked as a BBC subtitler at TV Centre, before moving back to his home town of Birmingham to set up the live subtitling unit at Pebble Mill.

Jason had an opportunity to use his love of statistics as a data and GIS analyst with the Probation Service and National Offender Management Service, a role which has expanded to include leading commercial and digital projects in the world of criminal justice.

Since Jason has agreed to join us for the whole of the camp, from the Friday evening kick-off through to judging on Sunday, participants will have an opportunity to quiz him on what it is like to go through the whole of the GeoVation camp experience and what to focus on.

Jason joins the rest of our judging panel of Alison Prendiville (London College of Communication), Ant Parsons (Environment Agency), John Carpenter (Ordnance Survey), Quentin Johns (Hub Westminster) and our panel chair Roland Harwood (100%Open).

Добро пожаловать в жюри Джейсон! (Welcome to the judging panel, Jason!)

We can hardly wait until next Friday’s kick-off!

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By viv, 22 May, 2013 8:00 am

Since we announced the GeoVation finalists who have been invited to GeoVation Camp, many of you  have been are asking for more information on camp and what you can do to prepare.

GeoVation Camp runs from Friday evening until Sunday evening and it is where the hard work and fun really begins.  It is important that you bring a team with you as there will be lots to work through. The camp is based around framework that Innovation = Problem x Solution x Execution and we’ve made a great video which explains more about this. It shows you what will happen at camp and you can hear about other people’s experience.

During the weekend you  will have the opportunity to think about questions such as what problem are you trying to solve? What would happen if you did nothing? What is the value of your solution?  How do you demonstrate success?

The weekend is a fun and collaborative process and their will be service designers, GeoVation team members and other people there to help you answer these questions and build your pitches for funding.

Find our more by watching the video. Information about camp starts about 2 minutes in.

Continue reading 'Watch our video to prepare for GeoVation Camp'»

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By viv, 24 April, 2013 8:00 am

There’s only a week left to enter our current GeoVation Challenge in which we’re offering a share of £100,000 in funding for the best ideas to help business to improve environmental performance and so we’ve been busy spreading the word amongst the developer and entrepreneurial community.

On Monday night Chris and Viv were at the Google Campus for a Dreamstake Founders event to promote the latest challenge to the entrepreneur community there.  The Dreamstake Academy consists of a series of workshops focussing on the fundamentals of launching and building a startup and Monday night was part of their series of ‘Learn from Founders’ Startup Stories evenings in which presents an opportunity for new start-ups to learn how to create a successful startup and avoid the obvious mistakes.

The evening kicked off at 6.30pm as Chris delivered a keynote presentation on GeoVation and the role of geography in innovation to an audience nearly 100 people.   Chris explained how our innovation challenges are focussed on finding innovative and useful ways of using geographic information, including open data and tools, to build new ventures that will generate social, economic and environmental benefit.   He introduced the community to our latest GeoVation Challenge, ‘How can we help British Business improve environmental performance?’ which is calling for innovative ideas that address the identified problems using geography, technology and design. The challenge is supported by the Environment Agency and runs to 1 May 2013.

Continue reading 'One week left to enter our Innovation Challenge'»

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By viv, 22 April, 2013 8:00 am

Time is running out to submit your ideas to our latest GeoVation Challenge. We’re offering a slice of £100,000 in funding for the best ideas which use geographic data to help business improve their environmental performance and I’ve been finding examples to help to get you thinking.

When Ordnance Survey moved offices in January 2011, we down-sized from a building designed to accommodate more than 3,500 people to our new location which was built for around 1,000. This meant we had a lot of excess furniture which we wanted to ensure was disposed of in an environmentally friendly way.  The excess furniture included racking and shelves, desk screens, filing cabinets, cupboards, desks, desk chairs, meeting chairs, plan chests, pedestals, soft seating, plants and much more.

We used a company called GoGreen  to help us manage disposal of the furniture.  GoGreen provides an end-to-end sustainable proposition with a zero-to-landfill guarantee which, for unwanted surplus items, includes donation to UK charitable and other third sector beneficiaries. They processed some 17 895 items amounting to 484.6 tonnes – and nothing went to landfill.

Continue reading 'Go Green – and reduce our environmental impact'»

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By viv, 9 April, 2013 8:00 am

We are currently running the ‘ How can we help British Business improve environmental performance?’ GeoVation Challenge calling for your innovative ideas to help create a better place.   The best ideas can win a slice of £100,000 in innovation funding to get their ideas off the ground.

If you’re thinking of entering you may like to know more about the GeoVation Challenge process.  What is the basis of the challenge and what happened before we launched it?  What happens after you submit your ideas and how are the best ideas chosen?

In our video below, we explain the GeoVation process and the steps to becoming a winner of innovation funding from GeoVation.

Find out about what happens at a Powwow and how we launch the GeoVation Challenge.

Hear from our shortlisted ideas about collaboration and what they gain from attending a GeoVation Camp.

Find out about the ‘Innovation = Problem x Solution x Execution’ formula.

Continue reading 'Find out how you could win innovation funding'»

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By viv, 18 March, 2013 8:00 am

We’ve just announced our GeoVation Challenge calling for ideas that on ‘How can we help British  improve environmental performance?’.  As with previous GeoVation Challenge’s we’ve used our established Pow Wow thinking to uncover the problems associated with the challenge  and help you get your thinking caps on for ideas to help make business greener.

A group of 10 people with expertise in environmental problems engaged in a workshop where we asked:

“What are the barriers to businesses easily improving their environmental performance?”
“What are the barriers to environmental performance easily improving businesses bank balances?”

They came up with 51 problems which were grouped into themes ranging from business priorities and how to turn duty to opportunity, awareness, knowledge and communication and organisational behaviour and culture.

Continue reading 'You can help to make business greener'»

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By viv, 7 March, 2013 8:00 am

Yesterday we announced our new GeoVation Challenge ‘ How can we help British Business improve environmental performance?’ calling for your innovative ideas to help create a better place.   Today we have a guest post from Anthony Parsons, Business Innovation Manager at Environment Agency which will help explain some of the problems and why we are running this challenge:

The Environment Agency works with businesses and others to protect the environment and create a better place. This is why I, and most people, work for the Environment Agency, have a passion for protecting people and the environment and doing the right thing.

Achieving both economic growth and protection of the natural environment is not always easy. And it will not happen without both effective regulation of the impact business has on the environment, and a commitment from businesses themselves to act as responsible neighbours and good corporate citizens.

Reassuringly, the performance record of businesses in England and Wales shows they increasingly recognise there is a value and opportunity in this broader sense of responsibility. Our Sustainable Business report 2011 shows that the vast majority of regulated businesses have a good record on environmental performance and take their environmental responsibilities seriously.

Continue reading 'Innovative ideas to create a better place?'»