Open Innovation Exchange is award finalist

The Open Innovation Exchange is through to the finals of the New Statesman New Media Awards, which is great news for Simon Berry and the rest of us who collaborated on an "open source bid"  to run a Third Sector innovation exchange for the UK Government. We got shortlisted there too, but didn't win. Announcement expected soon on who did.
Although I was on the judging panel yesterday, my fellow judges quite rightly asked me to leave the room when they came to consider the OIE ... so I didn't know the result until I got an email from organiser Charlotte Eisenhart today.
Nor did I know that my fellow judges, otherwise very ably chaired by Kathryn Corrick, pulled a bit of fast one and switched OIE from the Modernising Government sector where it had been nominated by Nick Booth, to Contribution to Civic Society.
We can happily sit in either - although the notion of slightly subversively modernising government from the outside by challenging the way that bids and programmes are developed appealed to us strongly.
The rather less welcome news is that the shift puts us in contention with three other very strong candidates: the "politics for adults" Internet TV station 18 Doughty Street; the really useful FixMyStreet  site from MySociety; and No. 10 Downing Street Petitions also from MySociety.
The two MySociety projects are also in Modernising Government ... so if one of them wins there, it improves the odds. Maybe we'll just have to content ourselves with being in good company. I honestly don't know the result.
Meanwhile, the least I can do is say thanks to the New Statesman for a very well run affair, look forward to the awards ceremony later this month, and support Charlotte in her fundraising Hike to the Himalayas, demonstrating how new media actually does help you do something useful.

Technorati Tags: innovation, newmediaawards, openinex

Comments

[Simon Berry]

The outcome of this will be really interesting. I hope we haven't reached our second final just to participate!

Our chances, I guess, are all down to what the New Statesman wants to achieve through these awards. What we have going for us is that we have demonstrated a completely new way of bidding for Government tenders which is open and involves those who will be ultimately affected when the contract is awarded. Just as important, the process we used is within the reach of anybody. Sure, you need the technical skills but you don't need thousands and thousands of pounds.

I gave my first presentation on the OI process last week and the response was incredibly enthusiastic. A women from an agency that delivers services (under contract) to a muslim community said that this process would remove the suspicion that "always surrounds the awarding of a contract". Another participant (an open source programming expert) said that this approach was not limited to the voluntary sector bidding for Government contract but had a wider application.

I've got my fingers crossed!