Things are hotting up and we’ve got about an hour and a half to go. 

We’ve camped out in our very sexy office overlooking the Thames to make the finishing touches to our SitRep prototype.

At the moment Ed and Hamza are working on the phone functionality, and James is cracking on with the front-end development of a prototype dashboard.

Meanwhile, Doug, Ben and Krystina are working on the all-important pitch and presentation, ironing out the finer details of how we’re actually going to present this project.

Ben made a nice CartoDB map as well showing how the journalist tracking might look too.

Nice, isn’t it? Click through to see the full map.

We haven’t got long left but it’s looking promising.

Finger crossed that we’ll get on well in the judging round later.

So we’re nearing the end of our first day of work at Build the News.

So far today we’ve:

• Come up with LOADS of ideas for new digital journalism products.
• Settled on one – the wonderfully named SitRep
• Brainstormed the idea for a couple of hours as a team.
• Come up with the service we should offer – and more importantly, decided what parts of that we’re going to tackle (simpler is better here, we’ve only got a day)
• Spoken to foreign desk editors and correspondents about the sort of protocols that exist for emergency situations already – including people like George Brock, who has been both foreign editor and international editor in a storied career at The Times, and information activist Smári McCarthy.
• Got building! Our developers Ed Ive and Ross McKay are working hard on a prototype, getting to grips with the API that will allow us to demonstrate the SMS element of SitRep.
• Started designing! Ben Jackson, Krystina Shveda and James Smith are busy thinking about how the SitRep dashboard will look – ready to be mocked up tomorrow.
• Started mapping! Hamza Ali’s been creating a CartoDB map to make a model of how our journalist map will look.
• Been blogging! Doug’s set up the site and has been lending his hand wherever it’s needed.

We’ve got a good few hours tomorrow to get cracking on really building this idea further, but first, it’s off to the pub for a well deserved drink. Stay tuned for more updates on tomorrow’s progress, and how we do in the final competition!

Hello, world.

SitRep is a service that allows journalists in dangerous environments to quickly and inconspicuously send SOS messages back to their newsrooms, via basic existing technology.

SitRep also allows newsrooms to keep track of their journalists abroad, providing location information and activity logs. You can find out more on our about page.

We’re Team Formula, a mix of MA Interactive Journalism students from City University and London Student developers.

Working on the team are Krystina Shveda, Ben Jackson, Hamza Ali, Doug Bolton, Ed Ive, James Smith and Ross McKay.

We think we’ve got a great idea and we’re spending this weekend trying to build a prototype. We’ll be updating this blog with our work as it happens.