Date: Wednesday 17 Apr 2013
Time: 19:00 – refreshments from 18:30
Speaker: Andy Conroy – COO, BBC Future Media and BBC Online
Location: Engineering and Computing building EC 1-12 – Coventry University
Abstract:
Andy Conroy, the COO of BBC Online, reflected on the role that software engineering and product management will play in determining the BBC’s future role. Andy has been involved with BBC Online since its creation in 1997, first as a producer and more recently as a member of the senior management team responsible for the technology which powers the BBC’s internet services.
He looked at the changes the internet is forcing upon the BBC, how it is responding and what that might as the organisation faces its centenary in 2022. He touched on “non-BBC content”, e.g. Robert Peston’s twitter feed, which has links back into the BBC website, but is sourced by Robert, who owns the content, despite him being a BBC employee. Andy also highlighted the role the public play in bringing in news as it breaks… the Boston Marathon bombs were being reported 25 seconds after it happened (it will never be less that 25 seconds due to the necessary validation checks…)
“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat”
-Teddy Roosevelt, speaking at the Sorbonne in Paris, 23rd April 1910.