The MirrorMe app was born out of a Crossover lab that Jeremiah attended earlier in the year. I now had the privilege of attending a similar Lab along with experts from science, film/ TV production and games.

The crossover science lab was a week of daily brain storming and idea generations exercises to come up with creative ideas based on our skills; designing platforms that can bring science closer to people using games or traditional media.

It was a fascinating experience for me to get a glimpse into how the film industry and the science industry work. All the attendees were experts in their field and chatting to them over dinner and during workshops was very exciting; I think there is a great opportunity for us to combine our skills to produce some truly unique ideas.

The first three  days of the lab we were led by Frank Boyd and the team of mentors to try and establish what we were aiming to achieve as well as understanding each other’s perspectives. The main categories were film, TV, Digital media, Games,  science and psychology; because we were all from very different disciplines, it was important for us to establish a common ground and understanding of each other’s language.

We were constantly put into different groups and doing varied actives to come up with some unique (and some truly mad) ideas. Everyone was in good spirits and no ideas were seen as bad ideas. It was a very fun experience for me and I really enjoyed the creativity and energy that was flowing around the room.  We were given challenges over Dinner and Lunch to work on in teams of 3 to 4, and were always doing pitches for the ideas. Frank and the mentors were brilliant and supportive of the group, constantly giving us great feedback on each of the ideas.

On the fourth and fifth days of the lab, we had to narrow down 50 ideas to just 6 which we all wanted to work on. We then split into 6 teams and with just over one day to work on the idea and prepare a full presentation on Friday afternoon.

I was fortunate to be on a team with Peter Dale from RareDay, Peter Bently from UCL, Pete from Tunatech (yes there were a lot of Pete(r)s in our group) and Rob Davis from Playniac. Our idea involved using augmented reality and geographic data from the UK. It was an incredible, exciting idea, and being the only artist in the group, I was responsible for producing the powerpoint presentation.

On Friday afternoon, the 6 teams had to do presentations in front of a panel from Channel 4, BBC, National Geographic, NHS, Screen Yorkshire and the Wellcome trust (as well as the mentors and the other groups)

Our presentation went really well and the panel gave us some great feedback on how we could improve it and it seemed like a very solid idea that got everyone excited. Hopefully the idea will move forward so I get to work on another exciting project emerging from a Crossover Lab!

The Crossover lab was a truly unique and amazing experience for me, the enthusiasm and energy from everyone was unbelievable. The Ideas coming out of the sessions were extremely creative; it just goes to show that when working with a group of creative people, you can come up with ideas  beyond what an individual could. We were constantly buzzing with excitement due to the creativity and discussions throughout the week.

A huge thank you to all the mentors: Mark Atkin, Heather Croall, John Kent, Margaret Robertson, Patrick Uden ,Emma Cheshire and last but not least, Frank Boyd the lab director.

It was a privilege and honour for me to spend a week with industry experts and share their unique insights; I couldn’t have gained this experience anywhere else.  It was a sad moment when I had to leave the Lab and say goodbye to everyone, but we are all keeping in contact and there seems to be a couple of ideas that are being pursued by the teams. I will keep my fingers crossed for all of them and update you when there is any exciting news!

See more photos from the event.

There was also a talk by mylifestories with two young students. My life stories provides young people a place where they can write about themselves and any stories they would like to share with people. They can add their own short stop frame  animations , photos etc online. It was great to see young people being creative and intuitive using this technology.

The most exciting part of the conference for me was when the audience had a sneak preview of our latest facebook application. The audience’s reaction was great; there was a lot of giggling and laughter when they saw what the application can do. This is a great indicator that we are on the right path and at Ideonic , we are making something unique and different which everybody can enjoy.

It was quite interesting for me to look back from the path I’ve taken all the way from A-level to being involved in the serious games industry. Children have a much wider range of subject material that’s more related to computer games then when I was in school and the college even have software such as 3Ds Max and Adobe After Effects installed for the student to use. It is very impressive to think that when they coming out of the college and into university, they will be more than ready for the steep learning curve ahead. I wish I had 3Ds Max when I was in school. 

We recently finished a project called MyVoice which involved running workshops with the students in one of the local school, St Michael’s in Billingham. The concept behind the game is to allow pupils to voice their ideas/opinions on the school, freely and easily on a shared website. It was great working with the students when we were brain storming and throwing ideas around – it amazed me how much they knew about digital technologies! They had no problem coming up with feasible (and also ambitious) features to add to the project. We took the finished product to the school and I got to see what the students thought of it, it was great to see our product being used in the classroom, and the students were definitely good game testers! I’ve never seen anyone clicking the same icon so many times in one go.

I really enjoyed working on this product and by the looks of things it won’t be long till I’m in another class room working with more enthusiastic young people. So that’s it for my first blog post! I’m sure it won’t be too long till my next post since I’m involved in many exciting projects at Ideonic!