Innovation Competition at IWMW 2007

I’ve mentioned previously that bookings are open for the Institutional Web Management Workshop 2007 (IWMW 2007), the annual event organised for members of institutional Web management teams (and note that this year the capacity is limited to 180 participants, so early booking is recommended).

This is the eleventh in the series. As regular attendees will know, every year we seek to introduce something new to the event, in order to provide an opportunity to demonstrate examples of Web and related IT developments which may be new to participants. Last year, for example, we hosted Brian the Brain Chatbot, a speaking avatar which provided information about the event. And at IWMW 2005 we exploited the WiFi network which was available for workshop participants by providing access to a range of networked technologies, including chat facilities and a wiki.

We will be continuing to innovate this year. However, more importantly we are encouraging workshop participants to take part in the Innovation Competition. IWMW 2007 participants are invited to submit lightweight examples of innovative uses of Web technologies which may be of interest to fellow participants.

This could include:

• ‘Mashups’ which integrate content from multiple sources.
• Informative, educational or entertaining use of multimedia (e.g. podcasts, YouTube videos, etc.)
• Informative, educational or entertaining use of 3-D virtual environments such as Second Life.
• Seamless access to content using technologies such as OpenID.

The criteria for the competition are:

User Benefits

The benefits to users i.e. what users will gain from using this innovation.

Simplicity

How easy it was to develop and deploy the innovation.

Coolness!

Innovation which is cooler than other submissions. For example, submissions which get people talking over coffee or which they will seek to deploy once they return to work. Alternatively examples which make other participants laugh might be rated as cool.

At the time of writing we haven’t finalised on any prizes for the competition – we would prefer participants to compete primarily for fun and to share their work with others, rather than for mercenary reasons.  However we  will be providing a prize  (or prizes) as an appreciation of the work done.

We will also be providing data which participants may like to make use of in the competition. A page containing access to a variety RSS feeds and structured geo-location data for previous IWMW events is available – together with a link to a mashup of the location of all eleven of the IWMW events, to illustrate how easy it can be to create a Google Maps mashup.

We look forward to receiving your submissions