Plenty of tea and porridge set me up for the day, which started with some discussions and extended introductions. We shared our problems and these varied from global to individual.
The problem-solving theme was taken up by Chris Parker from the Ordnance Survey, who runs the Geovation challenge.
Mission:Explore has won two GeoVation challenges: the first enabled the funding of our app, and the second led to some work which took me along the cycle paths of Leeds...
Helen Steer from the Geography Collective has also gained several GeoVation awards.
Chris gave a short presentation which outlined the GeoVation philosophy of problem solving, and discussions followed. It was about this time that
John Sayers arrived for the weekend.
John and I are working, along with Helen and our illustrator Tom, on a booklet of mission activities for Discover the World - these will be available in 2013. We had a meeting to discuss the latest designs that Helen had put together.
An hour or so of the morning was also spent on an innovation challenge. Missions were created, and people were split into two teams and challenged to complete as many as possible and bring back evidence. I took the opportunity to head out. I was hoping to get to Lud's Church which I'd been to before in the past, but didn't quite have enough time. Will try to get over there when I go back to Staffordshire in the New Year. Wandered down along the river and found some soft walls, evidence of animals, miniature mushroom landscapes and a massive puddle with thick ice which I filmed as I cracked it open...
There was then a discussion led by Jana Wendler on the way that games can influence the way that people connect with cities. We had a chance to create and test our own games.
Check out Jana's GREEN PLAY LAB website for more on her work, and connections with cities.
So much variety in just the first few hours of the day....
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