For the past 15 years I have been obliged to attend the BETT show at Olympia in London in the first week of January each year. It is billed at the largest educational technology show in the world and I have grown to hate it with a passion.
In the early 90s when the show was held at the Barbican and all the educational technology companies were small, there was a spirit of community and it was a chance to meet the people who had the ideas and were striving to make something happen. We used the tables and chairs from the office and saw it as a chance to connect. A far cry from the recent shows, where the event has become an obscene marketing-fest. I really do think someone needs to do something about it. I estimate that this year the show must have cost several hundred million pounds to put on as all the companies try to outdo each other with glitzy stands and give-aways. The really evil thing is that all the money spent on BETT is syphoned out of the education system and given to e-map, stand builders , PR companies and printers. Think what it should have bought, you can employ an aweful lot of teaching assistants for £200 million!
Which is a long pre-amble to BETTmobbing. I was complaining about the cost and reason for the show last year when Tristram said, lets do somthing to make it enjoyable and purposeful, and try to use mobile technology to rebuild the lost spirit of community. We had had a subversive play with smart mobbing at the show the year before with the Creating Spaces group which was fun but as most of the members of the group feel similarly dissatisfied with the show not many attend. So we went to Futurelab to see if we could build something to get a wider audience involved.
Simon Shepard was working at Keymedia at the time and he reckoned he could create a website that would manage people signing up, take deatils oftheir mobile phones and provide a tool for Tristram or I to call smart-mobs during the show. We put a proposal together and FutureLab agreed to pay for the development and would market the mobbing from their site. The site went live just after Christmas, which was a bit late, but we still had lots of people sign up. They indicated when they were free to mob and what they were interested in. We then sent messages to their mobiles during the show calling them to stands to see interesting stuff with other people who had indicated a similar interest.
Everyone who participated thought it was a great idea. They saw stuff and met up with people they would not have met without the mobs. The technology worked very well and we learnt lots about how to help people network and explore an unfamiliar space, and we planned to offer the service to everyone attending BETT 2007.
You can read our report on BETT mobbing here and there is more information about the project is available on the Futurelab website.
In the early 90s when the show was held at the Barbican and all the educational technology companies were small, there was a spirit of community and it was a chance to meet the people who had the ideas and were striving to make something happen. We used the tables and chairs from the office and saw it as a chance to connect. A far cry from the recent shows, where the event has become an obscene marketing-fest. I really do think someone needs to do something about it. I estimate that this year the show must have cost several hundred million pounds to put on as all the companies try to outdo each other with glitzy stands and give-aways. The really evil thing is that all the money spent on BETT is syphoned out of the education system and given to e-map, stand builders , PR companies and printers. Think what it should have bought, you can employ an aweful lot of teaching assistants for £200 million!
Which is a long pre-amble to BETTmobbing. I was complaining about the cost and reason for the show last year when Tristram said, lets do somthing to make it enjoyable and purposeful, and try to use mobile technology to rebuild the lost spirit of community. We had had a subversive play with smart mobbing at the show the year before with the Creating Spaces group which was fun but as most of the members of the group feel similarly dissatisfied with the show not many attend. So we went to Futurelab to see if we could build something to get a wider audience involved.
Simon Shepard was working at Keymedia at the time and he reckoned he could create a website that would manage people signing up, take deatils oftheir mobile phones and provide a tool for Tristram or I to call smart-mobs during the show. We put a proposal together and FutureLab agreed to pay for the development and would market the mobbing from their site. The site went live just after Christmas, which was a bit late, but we still had lots of people sign up. They indicated when they were free to mob and what they were interested in. We then sent messages to their mobiles during the show calling them to stands to see interesting stuff with other people who had indicated a similar interest.
Everyone who participated thought it was a great idea. They saw stuff and met up with people they would not have met without the mobs. The technology worked very well and we learnt lots about how to help people network and explore an unfamiliar space, and we planned to offer the service to everyone attending BETT 2007.
You can read our report on BETT mobbing here and there is more information about the project is available on the Futurelab website.
BETT mobbing
BETT2006 from the gallery
me calling a BETTmob
BETTmobbing the...
BETTmobbing the Handheld...
BETTmobbing web site...
BETTmobbing web site...
BETmobbing web site send...
