Less than a day to go before we kick things off for our next and latest adventure into the world of creative collaboration – Open Labs.
Here’s the brief and 3 specific challenges we’ll be tackling…
This little film hopefully gives a flavour of what we’ll be doing….
If you’re coming, we can’t wait to meet you and get cracking. If you can’t make it, follow what’s happening on Twitter – hashtag #openlabs.
On wednesday, we ‘re excited to be co-hosting a 24hr Good for Nothing with Fallon during their excellent week long Fallon Festival – the theme of which is SHIFT – ‘Be it cultural, social, technological, environmental – Shift changes our world’
up to 50 Fallon crew will be working rapidly across three live challenges for 3 amazing organisations..
Check out the awesome work of these organisations in the films below and the briefs that Fallon are going to crack. It’s going to be good week!
CHALLENGE 1: Abundance Network
CHALLENGE 2: SPECIAL EFFECT
CHALLENGE 3: OPEN CINEMA
Here’s our latest exciting and super-innovative challenge -> Open Labs.
May 18, 19, 20 -> 48 hrs of creative collaboration with Cancer Research UK, supported by the Citizen Science Alliance.
We’re looking to gather a crew of amazing developers, designers, all-rounders and citizen scientists to come and give your awesome skills for a weekend to help beat cancer…
More details are below and register your application to attend here…
Open Labs - Come and help Cancer Research UK to beat cancer
Imagine a world where 100,000s of people playing a simple game-based app on their smartphones or social networks or computers were at the same time analysing data and helping to beat cancer.
Think Citizens Science meets Angry Birds.
Together with Cancer Research UK and the Citizens Science Alliance, we’re delighted to be embarking on an ambitious collaborative Good for Nothing experiment – Open Labs – taking place at The Science Museum over the weekend of 18, 19, 20 May.
Our challenge is to develop a simple, but addictive app with game elements that would enable hundreds of thousands of supporters in the UK to help beat cancer…
We want to create something that when playing, will analyse real data, from real cancer patients, leading to real results and real breakthroughs in the development of personalised medicine. By analysing data faster, we can get knowledge to doctors faster, and they in turn can treat people more successfully.
Put simply, playing this game really could save lives.
Sir Paul Nurse, president of The Royal Society and the Nobel prize-winning British geneticist and cell biologist, is endorsing the project…
“This is a great opportunity to engage the wider public in the challenge to beat cancer. We have an excellent track record of inventiveness and scientific expertise in this country, and I am very excited to see how the citizen community can take this forward”
So what’s happened so far?
To kick things off, Cancer Research UK put out a call to their community of 4000+ research scientists for ideas with the potential to unlock genuine research bottlenecks and tackle meaningful research challenges
2 different ideas have emerged as briefs for our challenge. Chris Lintott and his team who founded The Citizens Science Alliance are building working prototypes/APIs that will become the focus for a rapid 48 hour blast of collaborative developing, making and doing,
He will be with us for the weekend to help bring the massive expertise and insight they’ve gained from the groundbreaking Galaxy Zoo, Planet Hunters and rapidly expanding family of Zooniverse projects.
What next?
We’re now seeking applications for up to 50 people to come and build something awesome over the weekend- a crew of thinkers, makers and doers.
We need all sorts of diverse experts from different disciplines – web developers, citizen scientists, Facebook developers, mobile developers, cancer scientists, anthropologists, game developers, digital UI/UE designers, animators, producers, strategists, communicators, gaming & social web experts….
There will be prizes, goodie bags, wanderings into The Science Museum, food, drinks, music, a live science demo and a chance to meet the pioneering team from the Citizens Science Alliance. For the teams who develop the most awesome creations, there will be also be an opportunity to stay involved in making them turn to reality and to visit one of the Cancer Research UK labs.
How will it work?
Friday 18th May 6.30pm – 8.30pm
Kick-off briefing, setting the challenges, API demos and drinks
Saturday 19th May 9.00am – 6.00pm
Making and doing
Sunday 20th May 9.30am – 6.00pm
Making and doing leading to a 5pm Show and Tell
More details to follow in the weeks leading up to the event…
We have limited spaces for this gig so register here and we’ll be in touch with the first batch of successful applicants to confirm your place by the 31st of April and the second batch by the 12th of May.
Are you up for being part of the Open Labs?
So this week we’ve had some amazing news that we’ve been awarded funding through NESTA’s Innovation in Giving program.
We applied to the fund last autumn and after being short listed, went to pitch to the panel at NESTA last week.
The focus of our application was the spread of Good for Nothing.
Firstly through the development of a web platform that will allow more people to do more Good for Nothing, more of the time. Connecting up the growing community of do-ers and makers with the social enterprises, causes, grassroots innovators and charities we support. Creating better connections between our gigs and t’internet.
And the other focus is on kicking off Good for Nothing in Bristol, Brighton and Manchester area in the next 3 months. We’ve been forming crews with some amazing folk in these cities who’ve experienced Good for Nothing and have the energy and desire to bring it to their cities.
More on them soon, but June is looking like Good for Nothing on tour….
To say we’re massively chuffed and excited about this next phase is an understatement and as ever it’s all down to the amazing community of Good for Nothinger’s who make what we do possible.
The Rebel force is growing, we salute you!
And here’s the final brief – the freerange, do something massively awesome if you’re up for having a go… hold tight
