2003 Technical Colloquium hailed as success

The 2003 Technical Colloquium, hosted by the Royal Television Society Thames Valley Centre, has been hailed as a success by both delegates and speakers.
The topic, ‘A Revolution in Programme Production?’, looked at the way that production workflow and associated technical issues are now changing and how this will progress over the coming years.
The first speaker was Mark Jones of BBC News. His topic, entitled simply ‘Technical Issues’, explored the core notions surrounding large multi-group desktop production systems. Much of this was based on his experience with the BBC's Jupiter project - the centralising of content for its entire London Television Centre news operation. Jones made his key point early on in his speech, saying: "Do not forget about the users - the journalists." He went on to emphasise the fact that just because the technology exists does not mean that it has to be used.
This dovetailed with Bruce Devlin's (Snell and Wilcox) technical discussion of the merits - and sometimes demerits - of MXF and AAF. One of the core points that Devlin made was the fact that effort is ongoing to ensure that "there is as little divergence as possible in the underlying data models of MXF and AAF."
Granby Patrick of the Marquis Broadcast Consultancy examined the changing role of servers and stressed that broadcasters need to look carefully at exactly what they want a server to do prior to purchase. He highlighted the changing nature of the broadcast model - interactivity and PVRs being two examples - and therefore the changing role of servers and associated architecture.
Phil Myers of Pinnacle concentrated on the shift from hardware-based editing to the software model based on the rapid increase in plug-in use. He argued that this provided enhanced scalability and flexibility.
The day was concluded with a presentation from David Hedley of Sony Europe looking at the role of systems integrators. He concentrated on the point that in this changing world it is even more important that client and integrator are aware of what will be achieved with a given installation.
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