4ip Yorkshire Region Launch

Launched across the nation, 4ip planted itself in Sheffield Digital Campus, opening doors to the Yorkshire and Humberside Region. Sarah Joynson (CEO, Screen Yorkshire), introduced the event saying œThis is a fantastic opportunity to put Yorkshire™s talent on the global map.

The strong partnership between Yorkshire Forward, Channel 4 and Screen Yorkshire that has been developing over the last couple of years, gave evidence of the campaign™s relevance to new concepts that would potentially innovate today™s culture for tomorrow.

Lucy Wurstlin will be overseeing the campaign in the role of 4ip Commissioner. With 18 years of utilising technology above and below the radar including Sheffields creative and digital agency Melt, the project is in good hands. The core essence of what is important for start up businesses to remember was stated as the need for changing people™s lives. Based at the Electric Works in Sheffield, 4ip will work closely to change economy with worldclass digital media in the region. People are wanted to grab the agenda for innovating public services, ready for the upturn in the economy. Tom Loosemore as the newly appointed Head of 4ip said the three core values of Channel 4 that are important for the project are œdo it first, inspire change, make trouble in the public interest. As the previous BBC Head of Broadband and Mobile emphasis was placed on 4ip as a key campaign to bring new technology into everyday normal living. Tom gave the example of SMS that had once been innovating and is now accepted as a way of thinking that is no longer seen as an isolated technology. He finished his talk with stating that to bring innovation to the public sector the people™s attitude to œhave no poverty of ambitions was as important as ever.

The evening ended with pitches from chosen companies to give spectators an idea of where 4ip interests lay. Pitch competition winners on the night included Tuna Technologies who were first up to talk about their project G Angel. To enable a safer way of travelling from A to B the mobile application would bring together Google Maps and CCTV. Information via camera™s could potentially lower crime rates in the city and with future plans to introduce game play, it would engage the audience for long periods of time. Second winner of the night was Blink founder Andrew Wilson who was selling his new idea about the Thumbprint Toolkit. The aim is to introduce companies, organisations and institute structure to using text messages in a new and effective method of informing.

Unsuccessful candidates included YouPigs with Clamour, an online political protest online interactive rally. Undeterred by this blow, they will look to collaborate with active projects in politics including 10 Downing Street!

It was a successful launch for the 4ip campaign which left freelance, start up businesses and grassroot projects with the hope of developing interesting and new concepts for the public service sector into the UK. For more information about the project and to get involved go to www.4ip.org.uk 

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