partnering for innovation

The Partnering for Innovation (Metadata) events drew the cream of the UK's Metadatarists, which if not a proper word, should be.

The competition itself opens on 13th September so there's still plenty of time to put find a partner and put in an application. During the events in Birmingham and London, delegates took place in an Ideas Marketplace, outlining their concepts, companies, partners wanted and provide a handy way to find potential collaborators.

Judging by the number of people coming along to the Partnering for Innovation events, there's lots of interest in collaboration to get a slice of the £18m Collaboration Across Digital Industries competition.

There are a number of challenges in entering a winning bid: meeting the scope of the competition, finding the time (you'll need ~100 hours for a mainstream application) and finding partners to collaborate with.

Are you working with Metadata? Want to get a share of £5m for research and development? Then get yourself along to one of three events covering the Technology Strategy Board's (TSB) new £5m competition, Metadata: Increasing Value in Digital Content Collaborative R&D Competition.

The competition, launched on the 1st June, provides match-funding for projects which address three opportunities to build revenue streams with more efficient and innovative use of metadata.

If you've been following my sudden increase in Tweetage (apologies for the deluge), you'll have noticed I've been zipping around the country hosting a series of events, Partnering for Innovation.

They're designed to support two collaborative R&D competitions run by the Technology Strategy Board (TSB), and I'm rather chuffed to have been asked to help out by the event organisers, the Creative Industries Knowledge Transfer Network.

UPDATE: If you're not able to make it along, follow on Twitter #tsbcollab. Presentations will be available as videos in next couple of days.

This week we're off to The Watershed in Bristol on Wednesday (2nd June) and the Internet Advertising Bureau in London on Thursday (3rd June).

These events are part of the Partnering for Innovation tour Chinwag is helping to organise, to support the launch of the £18m Collaboration Across Digital Industries competition.

There's still a few spaces left for the Bristol event, don't forget to RSVP to secure one.

If you're after more background about this competition, don't forget to check out the videos we blogged last week with Alex Stanhope from the Technology Strategy Board (TSB).

As anyone whose tried knows, getting grant funding from the government can be an arduous task with forms that sap your will to live.

Fortunately, the process for securing a slice of the £18m Collaboration Across Digital Industries fund recently announced by the Technology Strategy Board is much less painful.

I caught up with Alex Stanhope, who is leading this project to get the background on the TSB's work and the Digital Testbeds that led to this £18m competition.