OPEN

Fellow Brightonian Matt Locke has written a post about his BBC Innovation Labs project, "a kind of sister project to BBC Backstage" on his blog, the enigmatically monikered Test.

BBC Backstage is the project that  has thrown open BBC content for people to experiment with  and write up their own new hybrid or "mash up" services and has already thrown up such wondrous things as a talking TV guide, a map that shows you what locations near you will be on TV and when, and the brilliant Mightyv easy to personalise TV listings.

Whereas Backstage is a kind of online invite to get involved in the BBC’s developer network, BBC Innovation Labs is taking the show out to communities of new media producers and developers in the regions of the UK, starting with setting up creative workshop "labs" in Yorkshire, London and the North-West

Matt describes BBC Innovation Labs like this:

Its
a simple process, but effective. It helps the BBC hold a conversation about its
strategies and priorities with hundreds of indies in an open and discursive
way, and encourages rapid development and decision making so that ideas can be
turned into things that actually happen.
Hopefully, I’ll be able to talk about 30-odd fantastic prototypes that have
come out of the Labs around the end of March next year….)

Roll on, spring, I say.