Earlier in the year, I blogged about my first visit to The Fantastic Tavern (TFT)  – a meeting of people to discuss ideas, over beer, with the common theme being that we all do something in “digital”.

Last night’s meeting was an opportunity to crowdsource ideas for the enablement of the digital future on London’s Greenwich Peninsular. When people think of Greenwich, they tend to think of a Royal Borough, Victorian architecture, Greenwich Park and the prime meridian but Greenwich Peninsular is an area of reclaimed industrial land on which stands the O2 Arena and the Ravensbourne Hub Digital Innovation Centre with plans for 3.5 million square feet of business space, 10000 new homes, schools, healthcare and other community facilities, the Thames cable-car link to the Siemens Pavilion at eXcel, a cruise liner terminal, beaches – and the opportunity to make Greenwich an exemplar for future living.

I won’t talk about the ideas that we brainstormed – that’s between the taverners and the Digital Greenwich Advisory Board – but the whole process seemed, to me, to be a model of how crowdsourcing can work to drive innovation.

Around 50 taverners were there, broken out into four groups in an open spaces brainstorm to look at education, governance, business/commerce, and community. People could move between conversations and the ideas were written/drawn on huge boards. At the end of the evening, each group presented their topic and, inevitably, that generated even more discussion.

Hopefully, what we came up with provides inspiration for Greenwich Council. At the very least it was an opportunity to experience a real-world crowdsourcing event – one which seemed to me to be very successful indeed.

If you’re interested in future TFT events, find out more at The Fantastic Tavern site (or @TFTLondonNYC).