Participate

Cross Platform Mass Participatory Events

The 'Participate' project looks to develop grounded strategies and business models to support long-term engagement of learning communities, within Schools, Special Interest Groups, Local Communities and the General Public. Utilising multiple telecommunication channels including Broadband, Broadcast and Mobile to create new forms of mass event, in which a broad cross-section of the public actively participates, by contributing and consuming information and media.

Pervasive computing and ubiquitous communication offers tremendous opportunities for mass participatory events, where the public can author and share media across multiple network infrastructures and devices facilitated by a common underlying platform.

Current business models in pervasive services and applications focus on the delivery of context sensitive information to single users, mass voting via messaging systems or mass consumption of downloaded content. Future mobile, online and broadcast services will encourage mass participation in national campaigns, with 'light-touch' communications services provide new opportunities to participate in tasks, experiences and debates - from service provider to consumer, consumer to consumer, and consumer to provider.

Enabling ordinary people to engage on multiple levels in national events requires new developments in managing distributed storage and processing of data, at an unprecedented scale. For communications and entertainment industries, exploring long-term engagement with communities nationwide, creates new challenges for value-add enhanced communication services and online and broadcast programming formats

Participate is a part-funded collaborative DTI project that includes; Microsoft Research, the BBC, ScienceScope, Nottingham University, Bath University and Blast Theory.

Public website: http://www.participateonline.co.uk/