The BBC is, famously, a creative organisation, and there has been no shortage of imaginative ways to help people feel connected to each other while many of us have been largely working from home. Online team meetings, social events including quizzes, pet shows, yoga and even cookalong sessions have all helped to bring us together, even if it's been via Zoom, Teams or Slack, and working practices for teams have adapted and continue to adapt to ensure that we can be effective. 216518

One challenge has been to provide spaces to meet and collaborate with new people outside our usual teams when we're not in the same buildings. The recent BBC100 Hackathon was a great example of what can be achieved, pulling dozens of people from across the BBC's Technology and Product groups into small teams and getting them to work together on shared challenges.

Running across June and July, the hackathon was tly organised by the BBC and Google Cloud and took place entirely online. It began with a series of online sessions to help people get familiar with Google Cloud services, as not everyone was using them. The main hack took place over two weeks, culminating in a judging day when every team got to present their ideas and get .

As next year is the BBC's centenary, the teams were asked to consider how we could make the best use of our rich history and the material in the BBC's extensive archive to engage future generations, with a view to shaping the next hundred years. The world in 2022 is very different from 1922 when radio was in its infancy, so it felt like a good challenge and allowed participants to explore how modern tools like the BigQuery cloud data warehouse or the image classification capabilities of Vision AI could be used to deliver new BBC services.

Teams were asked to focus on one of four areas:

• Education: How can the BBC schools with educating future generations through the innovative use of technology?
• Diversity & Inclusion: How can the BBC provide content and services that are more representative of the entire UK population?
• Next-generation: How can the BBC blend broadcasting & digital in a way that enables different interactions with the future generation of the BBC?
• Content: How can the BBC continue to provide unique, high impact content that's universal?

After the training sessions, each team spent at least two days working on their challenge in the two weeks of the hackathon, with full access to a range of Google Cloud services. However, the intention, as with any hack, was not to produce a fully-featured solution but to do just enough to demonstrate the feasibility of an interesting idea.

And they certainly did that. As one of the judges, along with BBC Chief Design Officer Ellie Runcie and Rich Radley from Google, I got to watch the presentations from the finalists, and it was impressive to see just how much the teams had embraced the challenge, thought through the problem areas, refined their thinking and then delivered a convincing walkthrough.

The winning team, made up of Matt Corbett, Chelsea Ballantyne, Michael O'Malley, Thomas Preece, Michael Maclean and Ben Fields, came from across the division and brought their complementary skills to bear on the pressing issue of encouraging younger audiences to explore more of the BBC's rich collection of programmes.

Their tool lets a viewer take an image from a programme, perhaps the thumbnail used in its programme page, and use the Cloud Vision API to extract as much data as possible about who is in the image, where it was taken, as well as any text. This is then used as the basis for a search across the BBC's collections. This is then used to drive a number of different navigation systems, for example, presenting the material on a timeline to encourage exploration of older material.

So, for example, someone could select a photograph of Stacey Dooley and be offered a range of programmes she has featured in. One possible extension the team discussed was also looking up future programmes and where it includes audience questions – for example, Question Time - letting the submit questions directly. This connection between archive search, programmes, and audience interaction was especially imaginative.

As judges, this project impressed us in two ways. First, their idea was simple to describe – though complex to develop, as simple ideas so often are – and second, they had actually built a working end to end solution on top of the cloud services they had available so that we could see it in operation.

The team is now looking at how their idea might work with existing tagging and metadata systems, but the point of a hackathon like this is not to build a working tool but to explore ideas in a creative, stimulating and collaborative way. This certainly seems to have happened with all the teams involved here.

Philip 21 is a brand new narrative object-based media (OBM) experience from halucid_ theatre company that takes the premise of a date with a young black man and turns it into an introspective examination of race, love and modern Britain. In this blog post, we look at the techniques and mechanics that underpin this and other branching narrative experiences, examining how they keep audiences engaged compared to traditional media.

In this regard, two specific areas of the project need to be examined; the fabula and syzhuet of the authored experience; and the dual narrative created by having the outcome of the story that each audience member sees be dependent on the choices they make.

• BBC Taster - Try Philip 21 6x3x4e

The 'fabula' is a literary term used to refer to the raw material of a story, what takes place and the chronology of events. It describes the skeleton of the experience, story beats and the audience journey. The 'syzhuet' describes how the story is organised and presented to audiences. It covers everything from the perspective the story is told from to the arrangement of actors and the cinematography of a scene.

In traditional media, the audience is ive and cannot interact with what is being shown. Storytellers may play with the audience journey and how the story is presented, but they never surrender control of the constituent elements, and they do not offer alternative and equally valid branches. halucid_ have had to wrestle with the challenge of making the fabula and syzhuet work together while also giving up a degree of creative control.

The fabula and syzhuet of the authored experience 3s1b6j

In the case of Philip 21, the fabula could be described as being broadly linear. The audience arrives for a date with Philip; they engage in conversation with him and are ultimately asked if they would like a second date or not. However, this simple sequence is not what is received by the audience. What does take place is a fragmented series of scenes where progress can only be made through choices and engagement. halucid_ plays with the fabula and utilises the narrative setting, the conversational structure and the first-person perspective to drive the experience forward. Philip 21 takes the narrative setting, that of a date, and uses it to establish the boundaries of the world and to inform us on how we should behave. Since many of us will be familiar with this experience from our own lives, halucid_ leans on the understanding of social norms to get audiences to participate in the way that they desire. Building on this, halucid_ uses the codes and conventions of conversations to create an internal metre that demands our engagement. It is only through responding to Philip’s questions and internalising his responses that the narrative can advance. In so doing, it bids the viewer to suspend their disbelief and enter into the story world. Finally, the first-person perspective means that the audience is always focused on the subject, unable to look away, and the fixed camera position creates a sense of intensity, intimacy and immediacy, which is further heightened by the one-to-one interaction enjoyed with Philip.

These creative decisions help move the narrative forward and straddle the line between the fabula and how the authored experienced is presented. This is particularly important to the narrative OBM experience because both content creators and audiences are tly responsible.

Philip 21 can be navigated in several different ways, with each choice offering a different route through the experience. These routes have been created by halucid_, but audiences have the freedom to select which paths to follow. They can choose a path from the outset or change course at any point, meaning that the syzhuet presented is unique to each viewer. Philip 21 has no primary path, and as a result, all routes through the experience and all outcomes received are equally valid.

The dual narrative 1r62m

The second interesting element worthy of discussion about Philip 21 is how it goes about creating a dual narrative. On the one hand, Philip 21 is an authored experience, a story that halucid_ is seeking to tell, and on the other, there is the audience experience and what the audience bring and take away from the experience. The audience is integral to delivering Philip 21, and by taking part, they are positioned not as ive watchers but are co-protagonist alongside Philip. The viewer becomes a character in the story and must decide how to approach the situations in the story.

The viewer must decide if they will approach the work sincerely as their authentic self or assume a persona/play a role that goes against type. This choice, whether conscious or unconscious, determines where the story goes. This way, what is presented back to the audience is a reflection of choices made. Philip 21 could be considered as having two narratives. The authored story and one reflected to the audience based on how they interact with the experience.

What comes next 4o243z

Narrative OBM experiences are still in their infancy, and we are only beginning to understand the impact of content creators giving over control to audiences. Altering the syzhuet of a story presents a wide array of creative opportunities for creators and audiences, but these choices will need to work in tandem with the fabula and not distract from the story. We are unsure of what works best and are eager to see further experiments in this area.

Likewise, the interplay between the authored experience and the one reflected back at audiences is something we are keen to explore in more detail. What would happen if additional choices were offered to audiences? What would occur if a story was told episodically and not in one session? How would audiences experience this? The only way to find out is to build and test these kinds of experiences.

• BBC Makerbox - StoryFormer
• BBC R&D - StoryFormer: Building the Next Generation of Storytelling
• YouTube - BBC R&D Explains: How to make a personalised story

It’s well known that the UK loves talking about the weather. According to some anthropological studies, it is thought that over 90% of Brits have talked about the weather in the past six hours, with about 38% having talked about the weather in the last hour alone!

At the BBC, we have been delivering the weather for over 65 years. In that time, audiences have gone from radio and TV weather forecasts, to accessing weather forecasts online and via mobile apps, and most recently have even started receiving personalised weather forecasts by speaking to their smart speakers.

Part of what we do at the BBC is looking at how we can innovate by using new and emerging technologies and working with digital and technology companies to experiment with new types of audience experience. As new technologies continue to emerge, we wanted to see how they might enable our audiences to receive their weather forecasts in a completely new way.

For our most recent project, we have used haptic (touch) technologies and created an experimental device that lets you use your sense of touch to ‘feel’ the weather forecast. Imagine a situation where when you wake up in the morning and before you leave the house, instead of reaching for your phone to check the weather for the day, you place your hand in an alarm clock type device, ‘feel’ the weather forecast, and then know whether or not you need to take an umbrella with you for the day ahead.

The device that we created uses ultrasound waves to simulate - by touch - different weather conditions, ranging from the feeling of rain falling on your hand to the glow of sunshine on your skin and the sensation of snow falling on a winter’s day. We designed an internal prototype to give us an idea of how haptic technology like this might be used in the future to enable audiences to use their sense of touch to experience BBC content, such as a weather forecast, in a completely new way.

Working with my colleague Spencer in R&D, who helped design and build the device, we put it to the test by showing it to a few people around our offices. Here is some footage of some of my colleagues (including some of our BBC weather presenters) trying it out for the first time and an explanation of how it works:

What is haptic technology? 2m543x

Haptic technology is anything that uses the sense of touch to communicate. Haptics, in it its simplest form, has been with us for a while: almost all of us are now used to feeling our phone vibrate in our pockets to let us know that someone is trying to call or send us a message. Vibrating games controllers have also been used for many years to enhance the experience of computer games – for example, the controller vibrating against your hands as something explodes around you or to give you the sensation of being hit in a battle.

Ultrasound waves 4y1n63

As haptics technology advances, so does the range of possible ways that it could be used in our daily lives.

The haptic touch technology that we experimented with was developed by the company Ultraleap and uses ultrasound, sound frequencies that the human ear can’t detect, to project sensations directly onto someone’s hands.

The feeling that these ultrasound waves deliver is similar to what you might imagine your hand would feel like if you had very focused and precise tiny jets of air being blown onto your skin. The result is that you can create a range of very accurate touch sensations.

Hand tracking technology in our device also enabled us to detect when a person had their hand under the device and the exact position of their hand as they moved it around, all of which enabled us to create a precise sensation of touch.

We combined this feeling of touch with some visuals (3D holographic type animated images of BBC weather forecast symbols, such as the sun shining or rain falling) to make the experience more immersive.

Using the sense of touch to enhance TV, films and radio 2u2y6v

Whether it is the ultra-high definition footage of nature documentaries on a big screen TV, cinema style surround sound speakers at home or the rich digital worlds that virtual reality (VR) headsets can now deliver, new technologies are making our media experiences far more immersive and realistic than ever before.

To date, much of this increased immersion and realism has relied on two of our five senses: sight and hearing. However, with the advances in haptics touch technology, we might start to see completely new ways for us to interact with and experience media content on our digital devices.

Touch sensations could be delivered by using existing devices (whether that is a vibrating remote control in the living room or the mobile phones that we carry everywhere); new devices using the type of ultrasound technology that we experimented with or vibrating Minority Report style gloves could become common place. Haptics technology could also become crucial in an augmented reality world, allowing us to feel and control virtual holographic objects that appear floating in front of us - you might interact with a news article that floats in front of you as you walk to work, or press the virtual play button and get a feeling of haptic on a holographic version of BBC iPlayer.

Who knows, perhaps in the future, haptic touch technology might be a way to make your favourite drama, sporting event, nature programme or documentary an even more immersive experience than it is today. For sporting events, imagine being able to feel the power behind a tennis serve at Wimbledon, the sensation of a football being kicked in the FA Cup final, or the impact that a competitor feels when being hit in an Olympics Taekwondo fight. Imagine being drawn into the tension of a drama such as Bodyguard by feeling David Budd’s car skid round a corner during a car chase. The technology could also be used in nature documentaries, perhaps to help give you a feeling of what it might be like to brush up against the leaves in a rainforest or feel an exotic animal whilst you see it on screen in high definition.

Another potential benefit of haptic touch technology is the ability to improve the accessibility of media content for people with visual or hearing impairments. Being able to feel the weather forecast or other content and experiences via touch could potentially open up a useful and powerful way for them to access important information.

The applications for haptics technology and media content are wide ranging – with our experiment, we have only just touched the surface of what might be possible in the future.

Four hundred guests, a score of top-notch speakers, two rooms of cutting edge technology demonstrations, two programme recordings, and an orchestra playing music composed by a machine. All in a day’s work for this week’s BBC Media, Tech & Society Conference + Fair in the Radio Theatre at Broadcasting House, organised by the BBC Blue Room.

In this, the third year of our AI themed event, the focus was on responsibility, and how we can tackle the many issues raised by the increased use of AI and ML. Emphasising the BBC’s commitment to lead by doing, Chief Operating Officer Grace Boswood began the event by announcing:

• The BBC’s first ethics guidelines for in-house machine learning

• The publication of the outcomes of significant research examining global attitudes to technology and society

• New data apprenticeships the BBC is collaborating on with a range of other organisations.

In the first , host Tina Daheley discussed the twin challenges of responsible data handling and ensuring machine learning is fair to those affected. With lists Sana Khareghani from the Office for AI, Sandra Wachter from the Oxford Internet Institute and Indra Joshi from NHSX, the discussions ranged from minimising bias to enlisting public through demonstrating tangible benefits.

The next session – a live recording of Radio 4’s ‘The Media Show’ - focused on machines making decisions for our children, and considered whether it was enough to educate young people to be ‘algorithm-literate’ or if more regulation was needed.

Spencer Kelly, from the technology programme Click, was brave enough to provide on-stage demonstrations of the BBC’s new ‘Own It’ app, which helps children negotiate the online world from the time they get their first smart phone. The second demonstration was a synthetic video weather forecast. The weather forecast can generate hundreds of flawlessly realistic versions personalised by locality or other variables. It prompted a serious debate about whether the BBC should ‘fake’ its reports in this way. The view in the theatre and in the ‘Digital Human’ themed Fair outside seemed to be as long as it’s made clear that the content is synthetic then it could be a powerful tool in our push to provide more personalised services.

At the Fair, automated journalism rubbed shoulders with avatars, we made eye with mini-robot holograms, competed with machines to spot news stories and watched an ‘ML’ cocktail-dispensing robot scan our faces and decide which drink we ‘deserved’. The conference hashtag - #bbctechconf - was used enthusiastically throughout the day with one delegate observing, “my face broke the #gin machine. It looks at you and predicts your poison. It poured me a triple sloe gin before the human leapt in to reset saying something about how it’s not supposed to do that...! #BBCtechconf”

The BBC’s New Experiences UX team were on hand with some clever future-facing journalism on a news stand that threw us forward to 2040 with the help of an unashamedly retro flat-capped paper-seller, ensuring we didn’t leave without news that the BBC had created the digital media currency the ReithPiece, while the self-care industry had dangerously depleted the world’s Sandalwood forests.

One of the most important things the conference did was to emphasise the notion that machine learning is about more than just a dense concoction of data and maths but also involves creativity, as the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra performed a three-part work tly composed by Robert Laidlaw and an AI ‘composer’, and forced us to ask ‘who gets the credit here?’

After the performance we entered a disinformation dystopia in which BBC News’ Editorial Director Kamal Ahmed dished out questions to a range of guests. Disinformation is an area the BBC is spending a lot of time on – not least through its ‘Beyond Fake News’ work, and it was valuable to hear from World Service Group Director Jamie Angus. The proffered suggestions on tackling disinformation such as adding ‘friction’ to the sharing of suspect content and getting into schools early with effective education about the dangers of disinformation; but the danger remains ever present and it was clear that none of the lists believe our current defences are strong enough. Are broadcasters operating a Tetris model in a Minecraft world? mused writer Rachel Botsman.

Thanks to Cassian Harrison from BBC Four we were also treated to a sneak preview of Ian Hislop’s programme about the history of ‘fake news’ due to air on the channel that night (spoiler: it was brilliant). And while we were in the mood for some comedy, NewsRevue perfectly punctured any danger of a mid-afternoon conference slump with a tech themed set. Who amongst us hasn’t chuckled at a social media pal with a chronic case of ‘Boomerangitis’?

We closed the conference with a session recorded for the ‘Beyond Today’ podcast, and Jamie Bartlett, Natalie Cargill and Stephanie Hare offered thought-provoking views on everything from how facial recognition should be regulated to how authorities might be more generally held to about the more invasive uses of AI.

Regulation had been a recurring theme of the conference, with Facebook’s Simon Cross and Children’s Commissioner for England Anne Longfield amongst those suggesting we needed more rules to follow. There was also a clarion call for all of us to speak out when we see these powerful technologies used in ways we’re uncomfortable with or that we feel might discriminate or damage, because if we don’t, it’ll be too late. We need to educate ourselves and those using AI need to work strenuously to communicate their decision-making. As Jamie Bartlett commented, AI is starting to put ethical distance between those of us building it and those of us affected by it.

In her opening speech, Grace Boswood had confided her childhood dream of being an air hostess. We were honoured that our 400 guests decided to fly with us on a damp Monday morning, touching down eight hours later having listened, watched, learned, questioned and networked. And wanting to fly is evidently something women in technology hold in common. Ada Lovelace, who we were preparing to celebrate the following day, studied bird anatomy and mechanics as she tried to build a machine to shake off the surly bonds of earth. AI will offer us new ways to get airborne – it might even help us finally get our hands on those Jetson flying cars. To stretch the metaphor to breaking point, the conference helped us think about how we police those skies, how we make flight available to all and how we avoid flying too close to the sun. As Nejra van Zalk from Imperial College observed “All of us are part of a massive social experiment and we don't know what the outcome will be.” We have to work together to make sure we fly safely.

The BBC Blue Room allows staff and guests from local communities the opportunity to see and try out the best new technology for audiences to consume, create and interact with content. Colin Warhurst and James Hand from the Blue Room recently attended a major technology trade event and reports back on the new innovations on display.

IFA is Europe's largest consumer technology trade show, and it happens each year in Berlin, . The BBC Blue Room attended in order to report back on the latest technology trends and innovations. Our job is to see through the hype and the marketing, and try to spot the technologies or themes that may come to matter to the BBC or its audiences.

This event was well attended by the world's technology press, and many of the headlines were devoted to gigantic 8K television screens and a plethora of new mobile phone announcements.

However, we knew that the real trends of interest were not necessarily the loudest ones, and so we dug deep to uncover more significant changes happening in the areas of Voice-control, and computer-vision - the ability for cameras built into gadgets that are able to recognise individual people.

James and I have detailed our findings and have taken many photographs during our five day trek through the twenty-something halls that make up the IFA trade fair. The sum total of which hopefully provides you with a few key insights into the tech themes that matter in 2019.

We invite you all to have a read of our report at the link below, and if you find it interesting, of course please feel free to share!

http://www.blrm.io/ifa2019report

As global technology companies start to invest in smartglasses technology as a possible replacement for smartphones, the BBC has experimented with how audiences might watch TV, access the news and learn about new topics using new augmented reality technology, holograms and smartglasses. Cyrus Saihan is Head of Digital Partnerships, Distribution & Business Development and explains more on this exciting project.

Whether it is in films such as The Avengers, The Terminator or Kingsman, augmented reality headsets – devices that overlay holographic digital images onto the real-world – have been portrayed in science fiction as a type of cutting edge technology for many years. However, with recent advances and heavy investment in smartglasses from well-funded companies, there is now a chance that these types of heads-up digital display experiences could go mainstream.

New augmented reality smartglasses could end up being a replacement for our smartphones and becoming an integral part of our daily lives. The immersive nature of augmented reality, effectively projecting holograms into your eyes and enabling you to physically interact with those holograms, could offer exciting new ways to watch TV, access the news and learn about subjects in a far more effective way than has ever been possible before. We therefore wanted to see how smartglasses, holograms and augmented reality technology could be used now and in the future for TV and news. The BBC also has a long history of producing content for learning, so we wanted to experiment to see how these types of holograms and devices might help pupils and teachers in the classrooms of the future.

For our experiment, we worked with the UK digital agency Inition and some of our R&D team. We created holographic examples for learning content, such as animations of the solar system, a strand of DNA and a brain neuron; we also experimented with a version of BBC News that floats in mid-air and a holographic big TV screen experience that lets you choose what to watch from a range of different performers at Glastonbury, or select which tennis match you want to watch at Wimbledon.

What is augmented reality and what are smartglasses?  354f47

Augmented reality is a technology that enables your digital world and your real-world to merge. Digital objects can appear as if they physically exist. So a digital video, news article or object can appear as if it is floating right in front of you, like a hologram. You can even interact with these digital floating objects like you do with objects in the real-world. For example, you can press a “virtual” digital button in thin air in the same way that you might press a button on a touch screen or TV remote control.

The latest augmented reality technologies, such as the Magic Leap device that we used, are also capable of 3D scanning and mapping the real-world around you. Once a space, such as a living room, has been scanned and mapped, the technology is able to understand in detail the layout of the immediate environment (for example, how big the room is, where the walls are, what furniture is in the room and where the furniture is positioned).

The technology can then apply the rules of physics to enable that digital object to interact with your real-world environment. So you can bounce a virtual digital ball off the real coffee table in your living room, or as in our experience, hang several huge virtual TV screens on your living room wall or have them floating in mid-air in your garden.

Augmented reality has existed on phones and tablets for some time now, but the introduction of augmented reality smartglasses introduces a completely new form factor to the market that lends itself to a different and potentially far more natural interaction with virtual digital objects. Instead of staring head down at your phone, with a pair of smartglasses, you might be able to walk around and see the digital objects float like holograms right in front of you as move around.

Did it work? 2v353s

Quite simply, yes. When you put on the smartglasses and walked around, the digital objects felt so realistic that you wanted to reach out and touch them, believing that they are actually in the room with you. What made the experience even more realistic is that, as in the real-world, the closer that you get to a digital object, the more detail you could see on it. We are generally used to digital objects pixilating as you zoom in or get closer to them, so seeing this extra detail as you got closer to the object adds to the realism.

Smartglasses are not widely available at the moment and our experiment was just an internal prototype, but we tested out our experiences with a few pupils, teachers and colleagues to see what they thought. Reactions to the experience were generally very positive, with people saying that it was “really beautiful…I’m quite awe-inspired” and that they felt that “it could really help different types of learners”.

What does the future hold for smartglasses? 47686c

Whilst our experiment with augmented reality and smartglasses worked very well, it was far from perfect.

The glasses are still quite bulky (closer in size to a pair of ski goggles than to a standard pair of glasses) and the complicated computing power means that, for the device that we experimented with, you have to carry with you a small palm sized computer. Another key limitation of the current smart glasses technology is the limited field of view – the device that we used gave you a field of view of the digital objects of around 40 degrees (which is considerably less than an average human field of view), meaning that if you looked too far to the left or right, you started to lose some of the ability to view the holograms, which in turn made the experience less realistic and less practically useful.

However, it is very early days for smartglasses and it is likely that the technology will improve and progress – if you were to compare the mobile phones of the late 1990s to the smartphones of today, the jump in of their capabilities is huge, and that is very likely to be the case with the smartglasses of today compared to those that we will see in the coming years.

The smartglasses that we experimented with let us see into a possible future, one in which we might be watching TV, accessing the news and learning about new subjects in a far more immersive way than has ever been possible before. If smartglasses do take off, our digital world and our real-world could combine in a way that has never been possible before, potentially transforming the future of media.

Want to message your Facebook friends on Twitter? Move your purchased music from iTunes to Amazon? Get Netflix recommendations based on your iPlayer history? Well, currently you can’t.

Many organisations are built on data, but the vast majority of the leading players in this market are structured as vertically integrated walled gardens, with few (if any) meaningful interfaces to any outside services. There are a great number of reasons for this, but regardless of whether they are intentional or technological happenstance (or a mixture of both), there is a rapidly growing movement of GDPR supercharged technologists who are putting forward decentralised and open alternatives to the data-moated household names of today. For the BBC in particular, these new ways of approaching data are well aligned with our public service ethos and commitment to treating data in the most ethical way possible.

Refining how the BBC uses data, both personal and public, is critical if we are to create a truly personalised BBC in the near term and essential if we want to remain relevant in the coming decades. Our Chief Technology and Product Officer Matthew Postgate recently spoke about the BBC’s role within data-led services, in which he outlined some of the work we have been doing in this respect to ensure the BBC and other public service organisations are not absent from new and emerging data economies.

Alongside focused technical research projects like the BBC Box, we have been mapping the emerging players, technologies and data ecosystems to further inform the BBC’s potential role in this emerging landscape. Our view is that such an ecosystem is made up of the following core capabilities: Identity, data management (storage, access, and processing), data semantics and the developer experience, which are currently handled wholesale in traditional vertical services. A first step for us is hence to ascertain which of these core capabilities can realistically be deployed in a federated, decentralised future, and which implementations currently exist to practically facilitate this.

Identity, a crucial component of the data ecosystem, proves who s say they are providing a true digital identity. Furthermore we expect standard features such as authentication and sharing options via unique access token that could enable s to get insights or to share data to be part of any offering. We found that identity, in the context of proving a ’s identity, was not provided by any of the solutions we investigated. Standard features were present, ranging from platform specific implementations, to decentralised identifier approaches via WebID, and blockchain based distributed ledger approaches. As we strongly believe it is important to prove a is who they say they are, at this point we would look to integrate solutions that specialise in this domain.

Data management can be further broken down into 3 areas:

1. Data usage and access, involves providing integration of data sources with an associated permission and authorisation model. s should have complete governance of their data and usage by data services. Strong data security controls and progressive disclosure of data are key here. Given our investigation is based around personal data stores (PDS) and time series sensor/IoT device data platforms to capture personal, public and open data, providing access and controls around sharing of data was a fundamental capability of all offerings. All of them provided significant granularity and transparency to the s about what data is being stored, its source and usage by external services.
2. Data storage must provide high protection guarantees of s’ data, encrypted in transit and at rest, giving s complete control and transparency of data lifecycle management. Again, this is a fundamental requirement, such that storage is either a core offering of any platform or outsourced to external services that store data in strongly encrypted formats.
3. Data processing mechanisms to allow s to bring “algorithms” to their data, combined with a strong contract based exchange of data. s are in control and understand what insights algorithms and services derive from their data. These might include aspects such as the creation of reports, creation and execution of machine learning models, other capabilities that reinforce the ’s control over how their personal data is used for generated insights. Through contract and authorisation based approaches s have complete audit trails of any processing performed which provides transparency of how data is utilised by services, whilst continuously being able to detect suspicious or unauthorised data access. Our investigations found that processing of data is either through providing SDKs that heavily specify the workflow for data processing, or no provisioning at all, leaving it to developers to create their own solution.

Data model and semantics refers to mechanisms that describe (schemas, ontologies) and maintain the data domains inside of the ecosystem, which is essential to provide extensibility and interoperability. Our investigations found this being approached in a wide spectrum from:

1. no provision requiring developers to come to conclusions about the best way to proceed
2. using open standards such as schema.org and modeling data around linked data and RDF
3. completely proprietary definitions around schemas within the system.

Finally the developer experience is key. It requires a set of software development tools to enable engineers to develop features and experiences as well as being able to implement unique value propositions required by services. This is the strongest and most consistent area across all our findings.

In summary our investigations have shown that there is no one solution that provides all of our identified and required capabilities. Crucially the majority of the explored end solutions are still commercially orientated, such that they either make money from subscribers or through associated services.

So with the number of start-ups, software projects and standards that meet these capabilities snowballing, where might the BBC fit into this increasingly crowded new world?

We believe that the BBC has a role to play in all of these capabilities and that it would enhance our existing public service offering: to inform, educate and entertain. A healthy ecosystem requires multiple tenants and solutions providers, all adhering to core values such as transparency, interoperability and extensibility. Only then will s be able to freely and independently move or share their data between providers which would enable purposeful collaboration and fair competition toward delivering value to audiences, society and industry.

The BBC was incorporated at the dawn of the radio era to counteract the unbridled free-for-all that often comes with any disruptive technology, and its remit to shape standards and practices for the good of the UK and its population stands today as it did in 1927. With a scale, reach and purpose that is unique to the BBC, it is strongly congruent with our public service duty to help drive policy, standards and access rights to ensure that the riches on offer in these new ecosystems are not coopted solely for the downward pursuit of profit, and remain accessible for the benefit of all.

In 2015, we launched Mixital to help young people become digital makers. Brands from Doctor Who to EastEnders to Strictly got involved to inspire fans to make games, videos, animations, scripts and even dancing robots.

In all, more than one million new creations have been submitted to the BBC using Mixital’s maker tools. And it has won or been nominated for six national awards – including a Children’s Bafta.

Its key success was in simplifying digital making to enable everyone – including those with only basic digital skills - to get creative with the BBC. It meant audiences could engage in new ways with their favourite brands. And the brands themselves could showcase the creativity of their fans.

“Doctor Who is always looking for new ways to engage with its fans. We had nearly 100,000 original games submitted using the game maker kit that featured all the Doctor Who characters. And we’ve had thousands of scripts sent in too. It shows how creative our community is and how much they like to engage with us even when the show’s not on air,” said Matt Rogers, Digital Producer, Doctor Who.

The BBC is now building on these learnings and exploring how we might best incorporate creative participation into what we do online. That means we’ll be closing down Mixital over the next year and helping our creative communities grow further on bbc.co.uk.

We’ll also be sharing the insights and learnings from Mixital with partners like Nesta and Freeformers who collaborated with us in setting up Mixital.

Mixital was launched as part of the BBC’s Make It Digital campaign. It built on the insights from Nesta’s Next Gen. Report (2011)  and Young Digital Makers Report (2015) that highlighted the growing skills gap in making with technology.

Digital technologies are rapidly changing how we learn, the skills we need and the future of work. It’s becoming increasingly important for young people to get creative with these technologies.

“Our research shows how vital digital skills and creativity are to the future of employment. And also the huge appetite young people have to make digitally. Mixital built on the work we did with the Digital Makers Fund and, in turn, we look forward to building further on its insights and learnings,” said Joysy John, Director of Education, Nesta.

The programme commissioned original research and worked directly with young people. The findings highlighted the need for easy-to-use maker kits and a safe, fun space to experiment, learn new skills, build confidence and showcase submissions - all essential ingredients of creativity.

BBC Executive Product Manager Jon Howard said: “Children were taking part in creative activities as entertainment. This wasn’t just casual engagement; the quality of the creations demonstrated a high level of skill. Most surprising and exciting were the emergent behaviours, young people using the digital tools in ways that weren’t originally conceived – devising games that we hadn’t thought possible. We knew we’d uncovered a rich seam of creativity among young people.”

One of the innovations underpinning Mixital was the Youth : a group of 18-21 year olds who met the BBC production team regularly to help shape the product. They even built and launched their own maker kit with BBC Radio 1Xtra.

“It’s been great working with Mixital. The Youth – many of whom were Freeformers – really enjoyed working alongside BBC engineers and designers to create and launch their own product. I know how much they learned from these experiences,” said Adam Freeman, CEO of Freeformers.

From April 2019, it will no longer be possible to with Mixital or submit any new content using the tools. And from April 2020, Mixital itself will be removed from public view.

For more information please see Mixital FAQs.

The BBC’s Technology Strategy & Architecture Community is a mixture of strategic, technical and product thinkers, who inform and lead the wider BBC Design + Engineering division, and the BBC as a whole, on technology direction.

On 7th February 2019, the BBC’s Technology Strategy & Architecture (TS&A) Community gathered in London to listen, discuss and propose solutions to the challenges we face as an organisation and how we, in BBC Design + Engineering (D+E) help to position the BBC for the future.

Before the event, we asked a few people about their expectations. New starts to the organisation simply said, “I see this as a good chance to put names to faces and get to know people”. Others, who have been part of TS&A and the BBC for a longer period of time expected to hear more about the current strategy (“the now”) and what are the plans over the next 2 years (“the next”). Some attendees did honestly state that they had low expectations but turned up for the social, as it is good to stay in touch with the wider architecture community.

The range of opinions, expectations and skills within the TS&A Community is exciting. It is this diversity of experience and perspective that fuels the way we engage and influence the rest of the organisation. The Community event was kicked off with a tour of our broadcast playout media services provider, RedBee Media, including a look at the broadcast studios and post-production suites. The proceedings of the main event then featured demonstrations from the BBC’s Blue Room and Research & Development teams, an invited speaker to talk about Architecture Innovation, a session with the BBC’s Senior Leadership Team and an ideation session based on innovation frameworks and audience needs.

In this article we report on the highlights of the event and use this as an opportunity to challenge if indeed we are doing things differently, given the changing cultural, political and socio-economic environment within which we operate.

Architectural Innovation 471m6f

The first speaker for the day was Mike Bracken, co-author of the book “Digital Transformation at Scale” and a Founding Partner of the renowned public service consultancy Public Digital. In Mike’s talk he challenged the hesitancy and slow rate of change that seems to be characteristic of large media organisations, in particular those in public service. He motivated his arguments by referencing quotes from Tom Coates’ 2006 blog post: http://plasticbag.org/archives/2006/04/is_the_pace_of_change_really_such_a_shock, where Coates’ states the following about established media organisations in the ‘digital age’:

“My sense of these media organizations that use the argument of incredibly rapid technology change is that they’re screaming that they’re being pursued by a snail and yet they cannot get away! ‘The snail! The snail!’, they cry. ‘How can we possibly escape!?. The problem being that the snail’s been moving closer for the last twenty years one way or another and they just weren’t paying attention.”

Mike also referenced Henderson and Clark’s seminal paper on Architectural Innovation, defined as the reconfiguration of links between existing product technologies to deliver new value, as opposed to radical or incremental transformation. In his opinion, and ed by Henderson and Clark, the challenges for established firms to innovate in response to change are due to the inherent complexity of their organisational and technological architectures that emerge over time. In comparison, small start-ups have little or no inherent complexity, enabling them to innovate at a rapid, truly responsive pace.

Mike proceeded to give examples of radical, large-scale innovation, such as GOV.UK and the DVLA, where their transformation timelines were planned for 400 days, versus the Peruvian government’s digital platform (http://gob.pe) delivered in just 6 weeks. Incremental innovation reinforces the capabilities of an organisation, while radical innovation causes them to ask different questions. Radical innovation is about opening up new markets and audiences, while iterative innovation often seeks to maintain prominence in existing markets.

This understanding of innovation approaches dismisses the notion that digital transformation requires or equals radical technological change and inventive marketing. Effective transformation is about cultural change and service delivery, where small teams are empowered to work in radically different ways. It is allowing these small teams to deliver smaller, incremental business value more frequently as opposed to big, one-off disruptions. Transformation relies on teamwork and not just leadership. Its success requires teams that are allowed to work in agile ways with people at the heart.

An Agile BBC? Discussion 3s3w33

From L to R: Andy Conroy, Controller, BBC Research & Development (Chair), Matthew Postgate, BBC Chief Technology & Product Officer, Fran Unsworth, Director, BBC News & Current Affairs, Chris Condron, Director, BBC Product & Systems - Digital Products, Robin Pembrooke, Director, BBC Product & Systems - Content Production Workflows

The second part of the day took us to a discussion chaired by Andy Conroy, Controller, BBC Research & Development on the topic of making the BBC more agile. The key questions here were ‘what do we mean by agile">Agile Manifesto, and the publication of countless books on the subject, we are still asking these questions. Helpfully, Chris Condron gave us three working definitions… ‘the ability to move quickly’, ‘empowered autonomous teams’ and ‘working with testable hypotheses’. This fitted well with the presentation from Mike Bracken in the previous session but led to more debate. How do we define autonomous? What is moving quickly? What is the right speed for the BBC?

Addressing this point, Matthew Postgate, Chief Technology & Product Officer, asked if US west coast hubris is the right yardstick to judge the BBC? In the light of Cambridge Analytica and the criticism of the attention economy, does the commonly accepted Silicon Valley mantra of ‘move fast and break things’ make sense? Especially if what you break is society.

Fran Unsworth discussed the role of journalism in a digital BBC and addressed the need for further education and empowerment of journalists to ‘think digital’. It was clear that cross functional working and giving space to autonomous teams to make brave decisions is a key part of making the BBC more agile.

Robin Pembrooke discussed the need to streamline and make more efficient the purchasing process for new platforms and systems. Embracing the agile philosophy throughout the RFI/RFP process, through contract and supply is a key area of digital enablement for organisations that is often forgotten about during transformation.

The discussion circled in on why being agile and having a strong digital presence are important for the BBC. What is the size of the prize? Matthew Postgate answered to spontaneous applause. In essence, his answer was… In a software defined world polarised by hyper capitalist America vs hyper statist China, we need to find an alternative path. The prize is to give the world an alternative; an inclusive, impartial, public service oriented digital media organisation.

In our opinion, if we are agile enough to achieve this, then no matter what speed we go at, we are doing the right thing.

New Frameworks for Innovation 6u3d45

After participating in an insightful discussion focused on agility, it was time to think about the frameworks we could use to effect change. Jon Page, Head of the BBC Architecture Transformation Group, reminded us that innovation is not a new experience for the BBC. We have a legacy of over 100 years of innovation in television, radio, broadcast and online. The BBC has been at the forefront of delivering value to the public in various forms of products and experiences, as well as in the creation of partnerships.

However, the world around us continues to change and we have to find new ways of responding to that change. BBC R&D and BBC Blue Room help to inform our organisation about changes in technology trends, direction and thinking. We were treated to a range of demonstrators and showcases of current technologies and experiences that could be utilised (in some cases these are being actively developed) to bring value to our audiences. Jon reiterated that innovation does not have one brand and there are different mechanisms relevant for different purposes:

• Incremental Innovation: modest changes to existing products and services (e.g. adding autoplay to iPlayer)
• Sustaining Innovation: larger advances that provide s with distinctive new experiences likely using existing products and services.
• Discontinuous Innovation: a very different product, service or way of working than previously been available (e.g. the introduction of iPlayer).

To continue our legacy of innovation, we need to create a blend of the above and not believe that one is more “innovative” than the other. Furthermore, profitable and relevant innovation brings together multiple disciplines to contemplate alignment with business strategy, unmet /audience needs and emerging technology opportunities in a changing market of capabilities.

Future Experiences or Unmet Needs 1g5s37

After lunch, the focus shifted to looking at future experiences and unmet needs of BBC audiences. This started with presentations from the BBC’s Blue Room which showcased current and emerging platforms that are heavily used by 16-34 year olds, such as TikTok, Twitch and Playsight. This is a key demographic for the BBC as it’s under-represented in audience engagement. A key part of the BBC’s charter is universality and it’s recognised that the BBC needs to do more to provide content and experiences that engage this group.

Following this, Tammy Gur, Head of UX for Immersive Experiences led groups through a design exercise. Broadly, the challenge was to engage 16-34 year olds using emerging technologies. The session used the now well established Design Sprint framework developed by Jake Knapp at Google. Albeit, as is so often the case, the five day sprint was compressed into less than five hours!

The Design Sprint framework puts structure and process around the ideas central to design thinking and particularly encourages divergent and convergent thinking in a group scenario. It’s a powerful tool and is commonly used both at the BBC, across the technology industry, and beyond.

The session started by looking at unmet audience needs through the eyes of some key personas created, based on research from BBC Marketing & Audiences (M&A) - the BBC’s in-house market research group. We then got stuck into the routine of brainstorming, crazy 8s, dot voting and presenting ideas until each group had an outcome they were happy with. The final ideas were judged by Jatin Aythora (BBC Chief Architect) and Andy Conroy (Controller BBC R&D). The winning team - an idea for a sports fan engagement platform focused on the BBC’s coverage of live events - were all awarded a prize.

This final session was met with mixed enthusiasm. To many, it was a great way to explore the Design Sprint framework, something they were unfamiliar with, and to engage with colleagues across the BBC they didn’t normally work with. To others, it felt too far from their core role and perhaps they would have preferred a more targeted session dealing with some of the challenges they face in their day to day.

Many would agree that this was an engaging session and it was great to meet new people. However, as with more technical hackathons, unless the output of an innovation session is used in a productive way, it can often feel like the energy in the room has been somehow wasted. How truly engaging would it be if there was more concerted buy-in to the problem and the solution was taken on to be developed for real?

Outlook 5z1w2h

Following the event, we had a chance to chat with a few attendees about their experience and thoughts. Most were challenged by the perspectives on innovation and felt inspired to re-think some of the limitations we accept when faced with shaping the future. It was the ideation session in the afternoon that divided the camp. While some felt it provided them with fresh insight regarding audience needs and ways of deriving solutions, others found it difficult to significantly engage and benefit. This is a reminder that innovation is meant to be a continuous process and not a point in time. Innovation allows diverse skills, ions and mindsets to lead, contribute and follow at different stages, based on expectations and the nature of work.

So, are we doing things differently? The answer to that question is “we must and we shall.” The reminders that innovation comes in different forms and frames removes “risk analysis paralysis” that often keeps organisations from exploring new ideas, technologies and opportunities. Innovation does not always have to be a radical upheaval and unplugging of wires; it can be more subtle, incremental steps that continuously and regularly deliver value. Although the term “agile software development” has been around for almost two decades now, there is still much discussion about adopting these practices. This suggests that an agile way of working is based on relativism and not an immutable set of principles. Agile is about adjusting behaviours, styles and processes that fit how people live, work and communicate. Having empathy and people-centrism at the core of technology and product development gives greater likelihood of understanding and meeting needs now, in the next few years and in the future.

​​BBC R&D’s AI in Production project aims to understand how AI and Machine Learning will impact the broadcast industry. We’re trying to understand how machines will take on the simpler, more repetitive tasks in future production teams, freeing up humans to focus more on the creative aspects of their work. For example, perhaps AI-controlled cameras could be used to create basic shots, like simple close-ups of people moving around a stage, freeing up human camera operators to offer more elaborate options such as jib and dolly shots. Such a system would increase production values within a fixed budget, or broaden the range of output that broadcasters could offer.

A key question that needs to be answered before we can implement this kind of automation is, how do we teach computers what is interesting? Of all the things in a scene or on a stage, which will capture a viewer’s attention? One intriguing possibility is that when a show has a live audience, we might be able to get that audience themselves to help – by trying to identify what captures their attention. Understanding that could give us insights into the things that a viewer at home might want a television director to show to them.

At the moment, this is just an interesting idea, but the BBC, LFCI and Alan Turing Institute’s conference on AI, Society and the Media gives us a rare opportunity to carry out an experiment to test this concept. The organisers have kindly agreed to let us set up some cameras in the auditorium. We’ll use them to film part of the audience (who will have been informed about the experiment), and we intend to analyse those recordings after the event. In this analysis we’ll see if there are any patterns in the way that audience direct their attention that could be useful in of giving AI algorithms a hint regarding what might be the most interesting parts of the stage, at any given moment.

​​There are a number of caveats here. We’ll need to judge the lighting levels in the venue carefully, so that we have enough light for our filming without interfering with the proper ambiance for the conference. We may struggle to get enough people in focus, or at high enough resolution for the results to be useful. It may even turn out that audience attention just isn’t that useful as a way of predicting what viewers would like to see! That’s part and parcel of doing scientific research, though – we’ll learn something useful, even if it’s just that our original idea was a bad one.

To help navigate a world of ever increasing information, the BBC has worked with a start-up to experiment with new technologies that could enable audiences to read BBC content faster than they ever have before. Cyrus Saihan is Head of Digital Partnerships and explains more on this exciting project.

The number of emails, messages and news stories that we read is increasing at a phenomenal rate: the average UK adult now spends more time online and consuming media each day than they do sleeping. We wanted to see what new technologies could be applied to make this overload of information easier for our audiences to manage.

Sherlock Holmes and Spock from Star Trek might be fictional characters, but the idea of having a superhuman ability to process information quickly is an exciting one.

For this experiment, we worked with the start-up Spritz to see how science and speed reading technologies might be able to help us make our day-to-day lives that little bit easier.

How does it work? 323h1c

The standard way of presenting and reading text is by putting text in horizontal lines and then moving your eyes across a page as you read each sentence from left to right. Each time that you read a word, your eyes look for a certain point within the word. After your eyes have found that point in the word, your brain starts to process and interpret the meaning of the word that you are looking at, before moving on to the next one. It is thought that the eye movement required when you move your eyes across a line in a sentence can take up as much as 80% of your time spent reading.

In our experiment, each word shown on screen has one letter that is highlighted red, to draw your attention to that point in the word. That letter is the optimal recognition point in the word and helps your brain quickly process the word, with as little eye movement as possible.

The technology that we have used in our experiment works on the theory that, by showing you only one word at a time, your eyes can stay in a fixed position and so don’t have to be constantly moving whilst you read. As a result, the rate at which you can read can be dramatically increased.

Does it work? 76j4y

Having only one word appear on a page at a time when reading takes some getting used to, but from my experience and from testing it out with a few colleagues in the office, the general feeling is that after a few minutes of trying this new style of reading, it becomes relatively easy.

The average person reads at a rate of about 200 words per minute, but reading in this way appears to enable you to go well above this average speed.

We have put a few different videos in this blog post, showing you what it is like to read one word at a time at a variety of speeds (ranging from 300 words per minute to 800 words per minute). Try them out and see how easy you find it. To get used to the concept, it might help you if you first practice a bit on the slower speeds.

Can you read four times faster than the average person (800 words per minute)? Have a go on the videos below and see for yourself.

Reading more on screens 725o3c

We are reading more and more on mobile phones, but the screen sizes and text sizes of mobiles are smaller than what we have traditionally been used to with books and magazines. Technologies such as this therefore have the potential to make it much easier for us to read on mobile phones. This way of reading could also possibly be useful on devices such as smart watches, which have even smaller screen sizes.

Speed reading technology like this might make it much easier for you to read the latest news story on your phone (or watch) when jam packed on a bus or train on your way into work.

With the increasing amount of emails, messages and news stories that we see every day, the amount of information that we are consuming on digital devices is constantly increasing. Anything that we can do to make this easier for our audiences is a plus.

As well as making it easier, enlarging text in this way also has accessibility benefits as it could help people with poor vision, enabling them to read websites on their phones with a much larger text size than is usually possible.

Will we all be speed reading in the future?

This is just an experiment, looking at how we might be able to offer a different experience for s of BBC websites, it isn’t something that we are planning on rolling out, it is simply an internal test to see what might be possible.

Mobile phones are now able to identify our face and track the movement of our eyes. As that continues to become common place, could we see a situation where every single word that you see on your mobile phone screen moves position depending on exactly where and how you are looking at your screen?

Many experts are predicting that augmented and mixed reality devices (which superimpose digital images on your view of the real world) could one day replace mobile phones – if that happens, we might need to completely adapt the way that we read – reading large blocks of text in mid-air might not be possible. Perhaps speed reading text floating in the air, one word at a time, might become something that the children of the future consider to be the norm.

They're one of the new must-have digital products - smart speakers, voice technology or intelligent personal assistants - whatever you want to call them, the likes of Alexa and Siri are here to stay. The BBC is developing its own services for the voice age and I caught up with the man in charge, Mukul Devichand, to find out what it's all about. 

So what about the future - what do we have to look forward to in the coming months?

Predicting the future of TV 3x1n3a

Colleagues right across the BBC, in TV, Strategy, Marketing and Audiences and here in Design & Engineering, are giving a lot of thought at the moment to the future of TV.  Things have changed a lot since the launch of BBC iPlayer 10 years ago, and, if the corporation is to stay relevant to its audiences and their changing habits, it will need to address some big trends.  

In a series of reports entitled Foresight, BBC strategists are looking at the emerging technological developments that will change viewing habits in the next 5-10 years.

The report, entitled The Revolution will be Televised, found 5 main challenges for the future of TV:

• Connectivity: The infrastructure that supplies our homes is improving. Over the next three years, the number of homes with connection speeds of 30mps or more will grow and it's expected that by 2037 most TV will be delivered by IP rather than traditional broadcast technology
• The TV set itself is changing. Until recently most viewers saw the EPG (electronic programme guide) or a broadcast channel by default when they turned on their box. Now TV service providers are putting on-demand or pay TV options ahead of the linear EPG. Others are offering TV  sticks so you can plug their services straight in....or have voice controlled apps built into the TV
• Personalisation:  Through subscription information, companies like Amazon and Netflix are providing content tailored for the viewer, while the BBC is experimenting with different endings to programmes or even food programming depending on what's in your fridge
• Tech giants are making big inroads into TV content.  Facebook is eyeing up sports rights such as cricket and baseball, partly to attract more rs. Google is investing heavily in Youtube as its video platform.  Netflix and Amazon appear to be in a spending war worth billions on original content while Apple is also entering the market with a reported initial fund of $1 billion.
• generated content:  Cheaper TV making equipment is making it easier for the amateur film-maker community to deliver more sophisticated content...and through a growing number of platforms and channels, its easier to deliver it to their growing audiences.

The BBC challenge 4s4e6w

So what does this mean for BBC services? Clearly there will be challenges ahead of creating new formats, new types of programming and even new ways of delivering programming. The BBC has a history of combining technical innovation alongside its content from the beginning of radio and TV and into the internet age.  Can it keep pace now though?

A recent of TV and D&E senior management was quizzed on this. One of the main conclusions of the discussion was that keeping up to date with new trends had to be balanced with offering value for money for the licence fee and providing universal services for all audiences.  So it's a tricky balance.

While there's unlikely to be an immediate revolution, there will be plenty more evolution of TV services to update you on via this blog.

We've just published a review that shows the amazing value the BBC's R&D work has delivered for licence fee payers, and the broader economy, over the last Charter. With this, and a new year ahead of us, it’s a good time to reflect on what we’ve achieved so far and what more we want to do in the year ahead.

The BBC’s Design & Engineering team has changed a lot over the past two years as we seek to equip the BBC for the digital age. But I think 2018 is going to be an even more important year for us as we step up our work to reinvent the BBC for a new generation.

As we look outside the organisation, at the way society in the UK and around the world is being reshaped by technology, the pace of change is challenging even our most dramatic predictions. Younger people, 16-34 year olds, are moving away from linear TV and radio faster than we thought, and the media and creative narrative was increasingly dominated by the west coast tech giants in 2017.

In order to maintain our role in society the BBC needs to use this Charter period to focus on transformation.

To do this, we need to bring together our unique editorial and engineering expertise to have a positive impact on society, as we have for nearly 100 years. The power of this partnership and our core values should not be underestimated.

We have the opportunity - and the obligation - to help shape this new age, ensuring our audiences have choices in the information society we are creating. It is no small challenge that we are taking on; it is complex and touches all parts of our group along with colleagues across the organisation. We don’t have all the answers but we are beginning to understand some of the questions:

• How do we balance existing broadcast services with the potential of an internet-based future?
• What is the right digital product portfolio for audiences of now and next?
• Is the content we create today - TV and radio programmes, online articles - sufficient to deliver our public purposes in this new age?
• Are there new ways of us delivering our mission beyond content services?
• What are the production work-flows and tools we will need?
• What enterprise services will the employees of the next 10 years expect in order to deliver this future?

BBC Design & Engineering has worked hard delivering the services we are responsible for and, at the same time, building a new division. We now have the right foundation in place to really start focussing on re-inventing the BBC. I’m looking forward to 2018 and to a year where we see the re-invention of the BBC really gathering pace.

One of Design & Engineering’s Lead Architects, Sandeep Thandi, talks about the recent Technology Strategy & Architecture Community event, which saw over 90 people come together from across the division.

It was with a feeling of excitement and anticipation that I set off for my first Technology Strategy & Architecture (TS&A) Unconference day, their third such event designed to bring together the BBC’s community of technical strategists and architectural practitioners.

The theme was Empowerment & Disruption, a topic close to my heart having read a number of books on business innovation including The Business Model Generation, The Science of Serendipity & The Lean Start Up. The event was hosted at Amazon’s HQ in London (who are no strangers to disruption) so it promised to be an insightful day.

Andy Conroy, Controller of BBC Research & Development, delivered an energetic conference opener which reflected on how we are an organisation with a long history of innovation and creativity. We have people in our organisation who innovate every day and who, when given the space, time and community to collaborate, can produce world-class and innovative results. But to get even better, we need to be bolder and more daring in our approach.

Innovation = Shared Community 3615y

If any part of the day embodied empowerment within the BBC, it was the stories shared by other of the community - from iPlayer anecdotes to Jedi proverbs - and it soon became obvious to me that innovation takes many forms. What really hit home was that this community is already doing a number of great things and all the solutions to our problems had come from people within the room.

Legacy = Success 4g6l44

Anne Boden, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Starling Bank, shared her inspiring experiences, which stemmed from wanting to be part of fixing a broken industry. By realising “the things I knew were actually wrong” and learning from Fintech organisations, Anne got a taste of doing things faster. The fundamental operating principle described was agile decision-making and the only things that matter are those which go the customer.

That’s all great for start-up, but what about large enterprises? The trick is to think about legacy as success. We talk about legacy as a negative thing to avoid, however it actually represents the ability to serve a large customer base and serve it well. If we chose to accept it, our challenge now is to serve that customer base in even better ways.

What really struck me about this fundamental leap to fix a broken industry was the need to unlearn all the things believed to be true. Next time someone tells you it can’t be done or shuts down your idea we should ask ourselves: Is this really true or just “how we do things here”?

Challenging the status quo could mean an answer that delivers a better experience to our audiences or internal colleagues – as once said, “Anyone who wants to lead an orchestra must turn their back on the crowd”.

Good = It’s just like TV 6x491p

Technology is enabling changes to audience viewing habits. This is why being a catalyst for driving digital transformation is a key objective for TS&A.

This disruption is causing multiple industries to head towards a collision course, as Matt Stagg, Head of Mobile Video at EE explained in his talk about how trends in audio and visual media consumption have impacted the telecoms industry.

Whilst network and bandwidth challenges in some parts of the country were acknowledged, customer fear of running out of data on their mobile packages is a barrier to how they consume content on their mobile devices. Matt calls this the Choco-Dip effect. It doesn’t look like there is enough chocolate to coat all the breadsticks, so we restrict the amount we use, but in the end we are left with no breadsticks and a surplus of chocolate which might end up being wasted.

Some customers end up in the same situation with their mobile data. It sounds silly, but that makes me wonder what other barriers or constraints do we put ourselves under when coming up with new solutions.

In our response to changes in technology & viewing behaviour, a question remains true; regardless of where we deliver content and how viewing behaviours change, the level of quality is set to: Does this look as good as it does on TV? Addressing this challenge is mandatory for the industry. This is where the technical solutions and debate become interesting and far-reaching. An example of how to address this was in the delivery of the award winning demo of LTE-Broadcast at the FA Cup Final @ Wembley.

When I asked Matt why he was excited about speaking to the BBC, he replied that as one of the main providers of content, they wanted to work with the BBC to provide us with an opportunity to influence and exploit new technology that would bring great content delivery experiences to our audiences.

Transparency is essential for any organisation serious about transformation. This was highlighted in Connon MacRae’s description of Ticketmaster’s journey to DevOps. This applies to organisational structure, cultural boundaries and costs.

And then there was Lego… 4x3337

If you think you know all there is to know from playing with Lego, then think again….During the final activity of the day we were set the Lego Challenge – whereby one team built a Lego model with a set of instructions for another team to follow and build an exact replica. Here are the two lessons I learnt from this serious play activity:

1. Those who shout loudest get heard. Literally, the winning team shouted “we are the best”! We have all been in situations where the idea selected might not be the best, but chosen because it came from someone who has been shouting loudest.
2. “Yes, and…” rather than “No, but”. The facilitator simply smashed apart one group’s structure. The emotion around the room was shock and sadness and this was just a Lego structure built a few minutes earlier. This powerful (and disturbing) metaphor highlights our behaviour when we destroy our colleague’s ideas and when we let our ideas get attacked by others.

At the end of the day, I reflected on a whole new set of vocabulary I had learnt, which embodied Empowerment & Disruption. These were not the words from a glossy best seller but came from real people inside and outside of our organisation. 

"You need an MBA to innovate" explained Andy Conroy. "That’s right; you need Mindset, Beliefs, Approach!" Innovation comes from ordinary people if we empower ourselves, give ourselves the time and space to collaborate, but also be brave. We are also responsible for not crushing the ideas of others in the community because it is working with the community that will enable us to be more innovative every day.