Geovations Camp 2015
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| Manage a lego house, better |
Friday.
We arrived at the Ordnance Survey building in Southampton
in time for the evening session for the 2015 Geovations Challenge. This was an informal meet
and greet by the hosts and the organisers, nonon, where we, the volunteers from
LR and OS, aka the ‘campers’, would get to meet the teams we’d be working with,
aka the ‘Geovators’. I was paired with Red Ninja Studios, a young company from Liverpool focused on making a difference to people’s lives using
technology. Very driven, very enthusiastic and very smart. I had no idea what
I’d be doing or how I’d fit in but knew it would be unlike anything else I’d
ever done.
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| Geovators and Campers |
I was right!
Saturday
Having been warned by the organisers that there was
punishment for being late to any session, late arrivals would have to dance on
stage for the amusement of everyone there, we started bang on time. Nearly. One
team arrived late but were granted a pardon as they’d not made it to the
session on Friday and were blissfully unaware of the dancefactor punishment.
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| No Nonsense |
nonon ran the entire event with precision, not quite
military as there was a lot of fun with their style of event management, no one
wanted to be first on stage but everyone was enjoying the official start to the
event. Particularly for those that hadn’t seen the Ikea BookBook viral video
from last year. Genius. Well worth it if you didn't see it first time around. Battery life is eternal.
The weekend focused on one simple design framework:
Innovation = Problem x Solution x Execution
It was soon apparent that the 10 teams that had made the
finals all had strengths in one or two of these but not all three. There was work
to be done to refine ideas, identify weaknesses and clarify the message the
teams needed to put across. The aim for each team was to be awarded a share of
a £101,000 prize pot after judging on Sunday, 4 teams would share the main fund
with an extra £1,000 for the presentation that got most votes from the
audience, the community award. That sort of prize pot focuses the mind of
Geovators and campers!
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| Team Red Ninja working hard |
Saturday passed incredibly quickly. The Red Ninjas, Lee, Ben
and Lewis fielding questions and accepting suggestions from their campers to
refine the problem they wanted to address. In brief they had spotted an area in
the management of Housing Association stock where they could streamline the
process of stock rationalisation and reduce the need to have expensive agents
managing deals. Describing their idea as a match.com or LinkedIn for Housing
Associations gives a lightweight view of something that could make a huge
difference to associations and to their tenants, with reduced operating costs
being passed on and return on investment increasing.
Somewhat different to my day job with data in a much more
traditional environment.
But data was the focus of the challenge, using Ordnance
Survey and Land Registry data to answer this question:
How can we enable
people in Britain to live in better places?
Along with Jonathan Field from OS and two graphic design
students, Caroline and Chandni we quickly got into the swing of things. Lego
models were created, flip charts flipped, post it notes posted, coffee, coffee
and more coffee, and cake. And not to forget the reading, reading, reading.
Research to prove that there was a need for a professional social networking
tool for housing stock. For me this highlighted how fragmented the world of
social housing is.
I had to leave the team to give a quick overview of Land Registry linked data
and the triple store we use to hold over 400 million data items on the housing
market in England and Wales. Weirdly doing that felt like I’d abandoned the
team, I got back to them as quickly as I could.
Never before has my iPad done so much! It needed a break as
much as I did at the end of the day and while it was hooked up to the power in
the hotel I went to the pub to refuel and for an evening of networking with LR campers
from other areas and offices and with other Geovators.
Sunday
After an interesting evening with the Democratising
Development team and the organisers nonon, Sunday morning saw an early start
with the team from Red Ninja Studio working through their presentation. They
had the problem, the solution and the execution tied down from an incredibly
productive Saturday, the business plan was sound and they’d covered revenue
generation so we could completely focus on the pitch to the judges. Through the
morning sessions we refined the presentation, everyone chipping in to make
Ben’s job on stage as easy as possible, using the presentation style
‘PechaKucha’.
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| Practise, practise, practise |
For this event Red
Ninja had 6 slides to describe the entire venture, each slide would be
displayed for 30 seconds before automatically moving to the next, a fast,
pressurised format that allowed no room for waffle. We quickly found that there
was a weird time distortion effect between individual slides, 30 seconds was
either a very long time (introduction) or really not enough at all (Problem). Slide
content was incredibly important, no death by PowerPoint at Geovations,
everything had to be relevant, focused and above all, clear. It’s hard to distil
an idea into 6 slides, that’s the point of the exercise
First half an hour for the Ninja team with two judges. I
thought the Geovators were driven but the judges took that up a level with
Roland Harwood and Jane Davidson going over every detail with the team who did
a brilliant job with fielding questions and supplying facts to them both. It
went well.
Then Ben’s moment on stage, time to introduce SAM to the
Camp.
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| Lee and Lewis watching Ben with SAM |
SAM is the Red Ninja Smart Asset Management product, “… a mutual value
proposition for both housing associations and tenants.” He nailed it, describing
the Problem for social housing associations, the solution from red Ninja and
how they would execute it exactly in the time allocated. Then there was a 3
minute Q&A session from the other 4 judges which they handled well, albeit
with some nervousness on stage in front of the entire camp. I was glad I wasn’t
up there with them!
After watching all the teams present we had to wait, OS
continued to ply us all with excellent food (this was brilliant all weekend and
is an area where I can comment with some experience) and a selection of drink,
Jonathan finding me a coke from somewhere. Sadly I missed the paper aeroplane
competition as I was whisked off for photos and to generate a video sound-bite,
hopefully the OS won’t have a need for the nervous video contribution from me.
And then the results.
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| Certificate, no award. |
It’s fair to say that I was, am still gutted for Lee, Ben
and Lewis. They didn’t get funding despite having a pitch that I felt was
definitely in the top 4. Their vision was clearer than most and their passion
for what they do came across in everything they did. With any luck I’ll be able
to help them utilise data from Land Registry in the future, I certainly hope
so.
A confession
I didn’t really want to go.
I think that I’m not very good at ‘stuff’ like Geovations
and as a result I’ve never tried to attend anything like the weekend’s camp,
that’s despite knowing that events like Geovations could be really interesting.
On arrival at the OS I felt intimidated by a group of people that were
obviously enthusiastic, talented and driven.
Things I can struggle with. I wondered, out loud, if I could be of any
use or provide any worth to a group.
But this last 9 months I’ve learned, been forced sometimes,
to keep my eyes open. Even when I want to shut them. That initial trepidation
soon passed as I realised that, without exception, the people in the room were
genuinely friendly and only interested in getting the best from everyone who
was there to work.
Both days flew past.
As well as being a very interesting insight to a use of data and a set
of problems completely new to me it was also an experience of working in
environment that was utterly alien to me. The whole event was a very positive
experience for me.
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| Post-it, circa 2000? |
As for the development, well I rarely use post-it notes
anywhere. I have some very old ones from IBM Enterprise Services to prove it.
And Lego??? But the atmosphere created by the Geovaters, OS staff and other
Campers, and by Nonon was infectious and slipping into a different way of working
was painless, and productive.
Without hesitation the weekend was the best experience I’ve
had ‘at work’ in as long as I can remember. I can only hope that my contribution was
valuable.
The Team: me, Lee, Chandni, Jonathan, Lewis and Ben.