The OurOpenSpace project is very new; we’re just at the beginning of our journey. And as we embark on research, creation, innovation and dissemination in the world of Emerging Technologies and Youth Engagement, we’d like to introduce ourselves; the project team.

I’m Katie Lips, a Social Media Evangelist and Creative Technologist and I’ve been working with Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service to explore emerging technologies and how they can be used to enhance, and to innovate in youth engagement and non-formal education. So far, we have embarked on a series of micro projects which we will discuss here on this blog.

My interest is as a technology user, blogger and as someone who uses Social Media tools and communities on a daily basis. I work on a range of projects exploring leading edge technologies for my company Kisky Netmedia. In previous roles, I have also devised and lead national technology projects in the education sector, having worked with online diaries and with video projects by young people, way before blogs and YouTube were household names.

I have been researching a range of related projects which I will blog about here, and my aim for this blog is to create a collaborative ideas space where anyone working in the field of Youth Engagement can learn about related projects, and share their ideas and experiences. I am particularly excited about this project and working with the forward-thinking team at MF&RS.