Examination Schools (CC BY-SA © YBP)

This week, IT Innovation Challenges appeared on the programme for the UAS Conference. Despite an early start, some 20 people found their way to Room 11 at the Examination Schools to hear Stuart Lee talk about the scheme.

Stuart started by running a simple audience participation activity and within a couple of minutes he had managed to explain the concept of crowdsourcing, show the difficulty of getting people to collaborate, and illustrate the benefits of using an open process for funding applications. He then went on to talk about the background to IT Innovations Challenges and explain how it is run, before introducing some of the projects that have been funded. He also provided some overall statistics of use, showing that there is a steady increase in the number of people who access the Oxford Ideas platform and that users engage with the ideas that are shared by posting comments and suggestions, offering their support through comments or votes.

Before opening up for questions and discussion, Stuart invited anyone who is interested in using the ideas platform for their own challenges to contact the IT Innovation team for support.