startups

Organised by UK Trade & Investment's Japan experts, the mission to the Tokyo Games Show (TGS)  will include expert briefings, company visits, British Embassy reception, networking events as well as the stand space, meeting room access and delegate access to the Tokyo Games Show.

The Tokyo Games Show is Japan’s main annual computer games convention, which last year saw 185,000 visitors and over 180 exhibitors (including 92 from overseas). TGS 2010 is expected to have more visitors this year with an even more international focus.

The Partnering for Innovation (Metadata) events drew the cream of the UK's Metadatarists, which if not a proper word, should be.

The competition itself opens on 13th September so there's still plenty of time to put find a partner and put in an application. During the events in Birmingham and London, delegates took place in an Ideas Marketplace, outlining their concepts, companies, partners wanted and provide a handy way to find potential collaborators.

The new government certainly has its work cut out for it. Save heaps of money whilst trying not to damage the economy is quite a tightrope. Increasing exports is a crucial way to help pay down the debt and the digital sector is a critical part of this.

Whilst the new administration finds its feet, any insight for business is always useful.

Mark Prisk, the newly-appointed Minister of State for Business and Enterprise joined alumni from Webmission 08, one of the first trade missions to focus on the digital sector, earlier this week.

Fortunately, Manoj Ranaweera from Techcelerate was there with his trusty camera...

Judging by the number of people coming along to the Partnering for Innovation events, there's lots of interest in collaboration to get a slice of the £18m Collaboration Across Digital Industries competition.

There are a number of challenges in entering a winning bid: meeting the scope of the competition, finding the time (you'll need ~100 hours for a mainstream application) and finding partners to collaborate with.

Are you working with Metadata? Want to get a share of £5m for research and development? Then get yourself along to one of three events covering the Technology Strategy Board's (TSB) new £5m competition, Metadata: Increasing Value in Digital Content Collaborative R&D Competition.

The competition, launched on the 1st June, provides match-funding for projects which address three opportunities to build revenue streams with more efficient and innovative use of metadata.

It's been a particularly hectic month for zipping up and and down the country hosting the Partnering for Innovation events, promoting the £18m Collaboration Across Digital Industries competition.

If you've missed out, the good news is that there's another chance to find out about this competition, the Digital Communications KTN are running a briefing in London on 5th July (info here).

Over the course of the events, there's been dozens of presentations, heaps of official-looking information, hundreds of conversations and, for me, a lot of learning in the way that groups can collaborate.