I'm Kimmingles, this is IFTV and welcome to the NWG Innovation Festival 2018. It's busy already, it's not sunny yet, but we have got so much stuff to do. It's bigger and better than last year. We have 13 teams facing 13 challenging questions in our 13 sprints. We'll be taking you through it throughout the week. But right now, let's get this festival started. Good morning everybody. What a delight it is to be here. Thank you so much. A very warm welcome to all of you to this fabulous Northumberan Water Group Innovation Festival 2018. There it is, it's finally underway. Well, what I think is really exciting about this festival is that it's all about challenges. It's not just a sort of general innovative coming together. It's actually been given very specific. There are 13, what have been called sprint tents. And each of these tents has been given a very specific challenge. And I think it's just, it's a really proactive way of sort of shaking the tree and making sure things come down. You know, there will be some great ideas that will come out of this week. Back for 2018, it's great, it's fantastic to be back. A sprint has a certain structure, it's a process that we use that sort of helps us to generate innovative ideas. So this is a place where people can go in and take their ideas and work out how to bring it to life. And that might just be an app or it might be a film or a story or something. So there's a bunch of really creative people who can help bring the ideas to life. Well, I just couldn't believe how successful it was last year given in a way. It was a giant experiment and we had no idea what was going to happen after day one, but we've got some great ideas. So this year to double everything pretty much or even triple it, then I think, you know, we're going to just see some incredible things. I think festival atmosphere is absolutely crucial. People are at their most creative when they're away from the office environment, when they're away from doing things conventionally, when they're with people that they never met before who spark them. So our sprints have begun. Our teams face huge challenges. It's time to go and see just exactly what they'll be getting up to this week. So we've got seven minutes left of spaghetti and marshmallow challenge. The tallest structure with a marshmallow on the top. So what's your actual challenge? Our challenge this week is, well, it's a future for transport, please, so we don't know what that looks like. And today I still don't know what that looks like. So we're hoping this week brings some great collaboration and some great ideas. Some really good people in the room here and when everybody did their introductions, how people got here today. So we've got planes, we've got trains, we've got diesel cars, we've got petrol cars, outside we've got some hydrogen cars. So let's see where we travel over the week. Not going back to horses then. Well, horse power moving. Martin, your challenge title is, fans for life. What's that all about? It's about converting our customers into fans of what we do. We're looking at this idea of customer journey versus a fan journey. So obviously a fan typically, whether it's football, whether it's music, whatever it might be. They're quite locked into that and they live and breathe. That particular organisation. We're looking at how that differs to a customer and then what other things that are very similar in those relationships as well. So we can look at moments across the two and use those as opportunities to interact with those guys differently. Ben's leading the teenage sprint. We're all waiting for our ice creams at the moment. Ben, tell me first of all, what's your challenge? Our challenge is looking at plastics in the ocean. So it's the blue planet teenager sprint. We're trying to gather some teenage minds, young people minds to try and look at the problem of plastics in the ocean and brainstorm some ideas to try and resolve some of those problems of a brainstorm. What's your plan for the week ahead? So we're looking at three-day sprint and we're looking at plastics today and some of the issues around the use of plastics as individuals. Everyone's been really great to be honest. We're just getting everyone mixed in and everyone's dealing with everyone so it's fighting to be in a fantastic one so far. So Clive's leading the sprint that's going deeper underground. What is your challenge? So the mapathon which is sponsored by Aldon Survey is all about sharing data. So we all know that the gas electricity water telecoms companies dig holes and we all have information about where our assets are. But do we share it in the best possible way with each other? So how are you going to go about doing that? Well, we've got a whole load of exercises. We're going to dig a hole in the ground where we know that there is a sewer and an electric cable and we're going to try and dig exactly on the intersection and see whether it's the map accurate. It's brilliant. There's so many like-minded people. Sorry, it's absolutely very positive. I taught the speeches on the introduction this morning were really really good. Everyone's interested in sharing other technologies and seeing other people's insights. The innovation festival is a really great event where there are loads of people from all different walks of life coming together all getting involved and trying to come up with new ideas and new ways for normal brainwaves to interact with customers. Interesting, informative and I like the different ideas about how we can improve our environment. It's absolutely magnificent. Brilliant. I was here last year really enjoyed it. But this year is even better and it's been worth coming. Well, as you can see, I've been really busy but not half as busy as our sprints. We're reaching the end of day one and it's time to go and see just exactly what they've got up to. Have they hit gold yet? The head gold yet. They have. So tell me what have you discovered today then? We discovered quite a lot actually. The first thing that while I learned was when they're digging where they think there's electric cable, they don't dig directly on top of it. They dig slightly to one side and then when they get to the depth, they dig gently sideways because there's less chance of injuring yourself. For the learnings from today, where does that take you to tomorrow? Well, tomorrow we're looking at solutions actually so we're starting to look at solutions for how this is done in other areas of the world and other areas of the country to see if we can draw best practices and decide what's best for us. But remember, it's about data sharing as well. It's not just about the safety of the team. So day one, you're running a little bit behind but I don't think that's a bad thing. How have things gone and where's it taking you for day two? I think the reason why we're running behind with that is so many fantastic speakers. I think day one's about loading as much inspiration as possible into the sprint. Well, tomorrow we're really dissecting the the for process about what is a fan versus what is a customer to do. Tomorrow we'll start to map those journeys out through a typical life of a fan or a customer and then we'll start to innovate around those moments to see well how can we possibly do this through technology or whatever it might be. And we've got some speakers for the rest of the week so we're not really sure how it's going to pan out. It's down to the people in the room really. And problem solving and they're going to be able to do that. What are you expecting? We've got some really clever people in the room so let's see what they come up with. We don't really know what it looks like so it's a whole new world. So Hannah I've just been hearing about you and your passion for all things plastic and not putting it in as they what started that for you? Well, my mum did a lot of work on plastic pollution and plastics so when I had to pick a topic for my school project I decided to use plastic pollution as I wanted the people to help our environment. I want to teach other people to recycle and put the plastic and say by environment. I'm thinking maybe Prime Minister. We've met all of our sprint teams. We've seen the mountains that they have to climb. We'll have more for you tomorrow here on IFTV. Join us.