1.
Festivals Edinburgh
Innovation
10 June 2010

2.
Excitement
Panic
Confusion
Empowerment
Excitement

3.
Technology Group
• Disbanded itself after three meetings
• Tried to cover everything
• Thought it was about trying
to invent the next MySpace
• I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue

4.
Technology Group
the need for the Festivals to more effectively engage
with partners (especially the technology and higher
education sector) in order to be successfully exploited,
explore new business models, and stay at the front of
the curve in terms of horizon-scanning
the need to service all of the business functions of FE
(and not just the marketing working group)
the opportunity to create an innovation function which
mentored or perhaps indeed delivered individual or
cross-festival technology projects

5.
Twitter sentiment
detection
Ticketing Portal
Pilots
Itinerary Builder
iPhone App Festivals on-Demand

6.
Twitter sentiment
detection
Ticketing Portal
edinburghfestivals.tv
Itinerary Builder
iPhone App

7.
Twitter sentiment
detection
Ticketing Portal
iPhone App
Itinerary Builder
iPhone App Festivals on-Demand

8.
Twitter sentiment
detection
Ticketing Portal
Twitter
Itinerary Builder
iPhone App Festivals on-Demand

9.
Twitter sentiment
detection
Ticketing Portal
Itinerary Builder
Itinerary Builder
iPhone App Festivals on-Demand

10.
Twitter sentiment
detection
Ticketing Portal
Ticketing Portal
Itinerary Builder
iPhone App Festivals on-Demand

11.
From projects to purpose
Festivals Audit
(aka Group Therapy)
Map and prioritise
the common issues
Agree the ambition and
worry about the how later

12.
Projects. Cultural, commercial & public
value through new products & services
Processes. New processes are
available to festivals to identify and
respond to digital opportunities
Networks. New partnerships
with all stakeholder groups
People. Innovative thinking and
practice developed as core competency
among festival staff
Learning. Learning & knowledge
sharing across festivals, partners & sector

13.
Vision: Edinburgh’s Festivals
are a world-leading centre of
digital innovation in a
cultural context
Mission: Identifying &
developing digital
innovation opportunities
for cross-festival value

14.
Exploration
Recognising that the best solutions are not
always initially known
Lightweight
Ensuring processes can easily respond to need Discipline
Using traditional management tools to
Prototyping support delivery against plans
Using digi tools to test ideas quickly & cheaply
Measurement
Open Innovation Capturing as much as possible to provide
Providing pathways for third parties to be evidence bases for success
active co-innovators
Genuine Learning
Scalability Ability to extract value out of projects be
Included in the design of all projects if possible they failures or successes
Open-ness Cross-level
Sharing learning, challenges, data and Festival staff of all levels and functions will
resources when appropriate be encouraged to be involved

15.
It’s not really new
• create an open market place
• blend top-down and bottom-up
• listen – and accept failure
as part of wider success

16.
Thank you
Have a great summer
Faith Liddell
faith@festivalsedinburgh.com
Martin Reynolds
martin@festivalsedinburgh.com