4iP Blog

This is the second part of our announcement on Wednesday.

4iP were at City Hall with Boris and others yesterday for the GLA’s announcement about the London Datastore, and he promised to release two hundred public data sets into the wild. With the expected release of Central Government’s own open data initiative, data.gov.uk, also at the end of the month, Government and its agencies are at the start of their journey to open up their data.

With significant political and developer momentum now behind this 4iP would like to offer its own unique support.

4iP teaming up with Facebook to offer £s, expertise and scale

4iP is teaming up with Facebook to offer two individuals or companies up to £100,000 each to create Facebook apps, websites, tools, services or mobile products which people can use to understand how Britain really works - or doesn’t.

As Tom Loosemore said yesterday, while not trivial the development of applications and services is but the first part of the challenge. To be successful the products need to attract and retain a large audience. We feel that with the added support of the world’s biggest social network and a national broadcaster we should be able add significant value and expertise to ensure the public gets the most from this new opportunity.

While 4iP will provide the funding, Facebook will help us mentor companies and individuals as they build their products and, where appropriate, advise on how they can use Facebook to help develop and promote them.

For the first time, we would be happy for you to come and work here at Channel 4, alongside the 4iP team to get you started and help shape the model for sustainability and help scale.

Funding criteria

• Ideas must be ‘4’ in flavour. They must cause trouble and inspire change.
• Ideas must be high impact. We’re looking for ideas that appeal to the mainstream not to special interest groups.
• Ideas must be financially sustainable.  At 4iP we think the best vessel for your product is a business. We can help with some of the thinking, but you must have the ambition.
• Ideas must use at least one of the data sources or content from data.gov.uk or the London Datastore
• This funding is only available to companies / individuals based in the UK (or willing to move to the UK)
• Ideas must come in through 4iP’s submissions system

Timeline

• Submit your idea to 4iP by 15th 28th February and the successful candidates will be notified by 26th March.

If you have any questions or have submitted an idea then let me know: jamie at 4ip dot org do uk.  I look forward to talking about your ideas.