A programme called ‘App School’ is offering the chance for young creative thinkers to take their ideas from concept to market, or at least give them a good grounding in how to do it!

Based around everyone’s favourite phenomenon — ‘apps’ — the free programme that will take 10 young people from Manchester on a journey to turn their bright idea for an iPhone app into reality.

By teaming up with industry experts and top digital companies, App School will put participants through a ‘boot camp’ style crash course of Creative Innovation Labs — business and innovation workshops that will teach the basics behind turning a great idea into a real working app.

Its not about tech know-how or even marketing savvy, but about people with great creative ideas and a bit of drive and ambition. At the culmination of the programme, the best app ideas will be pitched to a panel of development companies, and the winner could find its way on to the App Store, and on to an iPhone near you.

Budding app-rentices (sorry) can visit www.appschool.co.uk for more info and to apply

i.studio+ is a new intensive training programme, developed in consultation with some of the North West’s leading digital businesses, which will provide a ‘stepping stone’ for talented new staff looking to further their core business and management skills.

The 5-day course will run from January to March 2010 and will include modules on team-working, client communications, project delivery, business operations and market / audience awareness. 

The course will be delivered through some of the sectors most respected trainers, including Andrew Thomas (McCann-i founder), Alec McPhedran (Skills Channel TV), and Philip Hempsted (Psycuity, Yuuguu), and Mark Stringer (Agile Lab) alongside guest speakers and case studies.

‘Given the downturn many companies are finding it difficult to justify spend on training, especially for newer recruits,’ said Northwest Vision and Media’s Head of Skills, Lynn Kelly, ‘i.studio+ will be essential in sowing the seeds for the next generation of digital leaders in the region.’

‘I’m what you’d call an accidental leader and I really could’ve done with a something like i.studio+ when I started out,’ said David Eccles (MD of Fudge), ‘No doubt about it, I’m getting our new front-line staff signed-up for the programme.’

To sign-up for i.studio+ please contact Phil Birchenall on 0161 446 2991 or apply online here.

Three great talks from Dan, Seb and Pat last week at Transmission #2, and some lively debate afterwards too. Given the combination of subject matter (innovations in web), speakers and audience, I think its safe to say that we could have gone on all night. The discussion did continue for a few of us over drinks afterwards, getting ever more animated until the threat of an early start on Thursday kept things in check.

You can view the presentations from Transmissions on Slideshare here.

So that brings the Transmissions events to a close for 2009. Never fear, though, we’re back with more explorations in innovation in 2010, kicking off on 28th January with #tx3 — ‘Device & Conquer: Tales from the front-line of mobile innovation’, for which you can now register your free place.

We’re also gearing up for Technique and i.studio+ — two high quality training initiatives launching early in 2010; both innovative in their own right. Places are limited for both, and they’re moving fairly quickly, so if you are interested then we’d advise staking your claim for a place as soon as you can.

As we roll steadily into party season, it’s good to have our European friends back in town once more. Here at Sparks we hold the philosophy that Sausage + Gluhwein = Great Ideas. With that in mind we’ll be getting stuck in to the annual festivities nice and early, so expect some good things coming from Digital Sparks in the new year. Now we just need to suss out the formula for remembering them all.