BIF Receives Champlin Grant to Expand Innovation Story Studio

Posted by Melissa Withers on November 28, 2007

Storytelling has emerged as one of the most compelling ways to inform, inspire and engage. BIF has put a high priority on capturing and sharing the stories happening in and around the innovation community through its Innovation Story Studio. We are thrilled to report that we expand this activity in 2008 thanks to a grant from the Champlin Foundation. The $102k grant will be used to purchase equipment and create a physical studio to complement BIF’s current capabilities.

When we launched the studio in 2006 we knew there was an appetite for digital content. What we didn’t know is that the stories we shared—video from the BIF summits, feature stories, event coverage, and interviews—would be viewed tens of thousands of times by people across the globe.

Containing more than a hundred high-quality videos and volumes of interviews, narrative stories, and other materials, the innovation story studio is a treasure trove of innovation ideas, inspiration and first-hand insights from some of the country’s best and brightest.

And it is our pleasure to make this material available for free. We think it fits squarely with our commitment to promote open innovation.

In 2008, BIF plans to build a more scalable platform for production of innovation content and create a digital media production studio to:

• Produce and distribute more professional-grade content;
• Bring BIF’s innovation stories to a wider group of innovators by syndication through the internet and traditional radio and television;
• Open the platform to community members to produce and distribute their stories of innovation to local, national, and global audiences;
• Attract and support new media entrepreneurs in the BIF community; and
• Better tell your innovation story!

Thanks to the Champlin Foundation we are one step closer to bringing this vision to life!

We’ll spare you the technical details, but think multi-use audio/video studio large enough for 4 participants, usable for broadcast radio production, internet webcasts, podcasts and video recording. Add field recording equipment and editing booths for podcasts or video work and voila—welcome to BIF’s new Innovation Story Studio!

And now that we’ve uploaded all the content from the BIF-3 Summit (check it out if you haven’t already), the fun really begins…finding the best stories to capture and tell in 2008! We would love to hear your feedback on the studio, stories we can tell, and new directions we might explore with our new physical studio capability.

Thanks again to the Champlin Foundation for their support. We are all excited to move this part of BIF forward. Feel free to email me if you want to learn more or have a story to tell.