Connected Studio: 12 months on

It has been some time since my last blog post on BBC Connected Studio and with so much happening I wanted to give an update on some of the recent activities and also reflect on the first 12 months of Connected Studio.

Recent News

So far in 2013 we have run three Connected Studio programmes for News, BBC iPlayer and Knowledge & Learning across the UK.

 

Teams brainstorm at the iPlayer Creative Studio in London

In these studios we have heard 83 compelling ideas developed and pitched to the BBC Online product teams in the creative studios with 25 of these developed into proofs of concept in the two day build studios. Eight of these proofs of concept have been taken through to pilot stage.

We now have a total of 27 pilots in various stages of kick-off, development, testing and review for potential integration into BBC Online in the future.

Late last year I blogged about the first 10 pilots. For updates on these and details about the next 17 I have asked our project manager Robin Cramp to write a series of blog posts over the coming weeks about these exciting new projects.

Those of you who have attended a Connected Studio event will know Robin as our own ‘unique’ master of ceremonies but he also does a sterling job overseeing all of our pilots from kick off to delivery. If these posts are anything like his compering skills I expect them to be rather entertaining as well as informative.

A year in numbers: 18, 1015, 75, 250, 251, 76, 27

Just over a year ago we published the first brief and introduced the concept of Connected Studio to the industry and staff and it feels right to take a moment to reflect on the first year.

The Connected Studio team has worked in partnership with nine of the BBC Online Product teams running creative and build studios for:

Homepage, Search and Navigation Weather and Travel CBeebies CBBC User Experience and DesignSport News iPlayer Knowledge and Learning

This has resulted in a total of 18 events in eight different venues playing host to over 1000 attendees including 491 BBC staff members and 524 attendees from 193 independent companies, freelancers or start-ups.

During the studios we provided over 75 insight sessions on BBC audiences, market, technical background, UX and strategy from a wide range of BBC experts.

We offered over 250 audience feedback sessions for teams to test their ideas as they were developed. We have heard a total of 251 concepts pitched and we have supported 76 of these to be developed into proof of concepts in the build studios.

We now have 27 pilots in development across the whole of the UK and we are working to bring a number of these into BBC Online in the near future.

This has been a new way of working for the BBC and we have learnt a lot of lessons in the last 12 months in all aspects of the programme which I will share in a separate post but for now I feel we have done pretty well.

What Next?

I am very pleased to announce the BBC will be continuing the Connected Studio programme to take on new challenges for a wide range of the BBC’s audience facing services and we shall share further details on this soon.

In doing this I hope we will continue to work collaboratively with the wider UK creative industries, in particular those with a slant towards original storytelling, a strong sense of user experience and a passion for emerging technologies.

In the meantime keep an eye out for blog posts about our next set of pilots.

Adrian Woolard is head of BBC Connected Studio.