change, influence and ia at the bbc
DESCRIPTION
Can IA influence the business? It is something all IAs have aspired to in our roles as change managers as well as documenters of existing and future functionality on web sites; the ability to one day say, My IA changed the way the organisation works! At the BBC, we are beginning to see results of a product that is changing little by little; the way programme information is held, managed and used. For the last year, we have been developing PIPs (Programme Information Pages) a data store of programme information that is used to automatically create pages for every programme broadcast; the first network being Radio 3 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3). PIPs has unexpectedly been a catalyst for change; changing the way programming information is written by schedulers and content producers, to the way this information is stored and pushed out of broadcast systems. This presentation will talk about IA and change and how it happens in unexpected places.TRANSCRIPT
1Margaret Hanley© BBC 06/03/2005
6 March 2004
Change, influence and IA at the BBC
Margaret Hanley
Executive Producer - Core Products
Bbc.co.uk
2Margaret Hanley© BBC 06/03/2005
6 March 2004
Introduction
• Margaret Hanley• Executive Producer – Core Products BBC• Worked on three continents – Australia, USA
and UK• Been both a consultant and internal staff to
companies like Sensis (Yellow Pages in Australia), Argus Associates (US), Ingenta (UK and BBC (UK)
3Margaret Hanley© BBC 06/03/2005
6 March 2004
Agenda
• BBC Background
• Influence and culture within the BBC
• What is PIPs?
• What was the IA challenge?
• Systems, people and content
• Lessons Learnt
• Questions
4Margaret Hanley© BBC 06/03/2005
6 March 2004
BBC Background
• Divisions or “petals” with New Media groups
• Central New Media division that develops applications
• Programme information traditionally created with or after the programme finished – very incomplete information
• One credible/complete source based on TV/Radio listings
5Margaret Hanley© BBC 06/03/2005
6 March 2004
Influence and culture at the BBC
• Emphasis is on established traditional media– TV; then Radio; then New Media
• Changing culture; new DG, change of audience consumption of media– Reduction in traditional media use for younger
audiences
• Networking is important
6Margaret Hanley© BBC 06/03/2005
6 March 2004
PIPs
• Programme information pages – a page for every programme episode, broadcast on BBC
• Cross-divisional project– Radio and Music interactive and New Media
Central
7Margaret Hanley© BBC 06/03/2005
6 March 2004
8Margaret Hanley© BBC 06/03/2005
6 March 2004
9Margaret Hanley© BBC 06/03/2005
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IA Challenge
• Use of content from one source – complete but very badly structured – unable to distinguish a brand title from an episode title in the free-text long description field
• In the short term, to make small editorial changes within the feed to allow that separation; in the long term, identify how to change the source to give us the content in the right format
10Margaret Hanley© BBC 06/03/2005
6 March 2004
IA Challenge
• Content limited– Some programmes had lots of information;
some had very little– So hard to create a page layout that didn’t
look empty– No consistent metadata attached to a
programme information
11Margaret Hanley© BBC 06/03/2005
6 March 2004
12Margaret Hanley© BBC 06/03/2005
6 March 2004
Systems, people and content
• Systems– Using industry and business standards – the BBC
does have a corporate data standard SMEF ™– that our product uses it; but very few other systems do
– Digital TV and Radio production at the BBC is just starting to happen
– So now there is leverage from the “business” to actually use it in upstream system like digital production or capture of information by Information and Archive
13Margaret Hanley© BBC 06/03/2005
6 March 2004
Systems, people and content
• People/ Cultural change– Changing working practices so that content could be
re-used and highlighting that metadata about a programme can be as important as the programme itself
– See Radio 3 staff work better with the EPG Unit– Start creating content earlier in the process
• making use of broadcast assistants • I & A staff • working together rather than always doing it downstream
once the content has been created
14Margaret Hanley© BBC 06/03/2005
6 March 2004
Systems, people and content
• Content– Quality of content becoming better once the content is
“seen in perpetuity”, rather than deleted after 7 days– More information collated together and built upon by
the people who know about it – the production staff and the users
– Moving from metadata standards that are used to find a tape again or create an Electronic Programme Guide to one with more granularity and depth
15Margaret Hanley© BBC 06/03/2005
6 March 2004
Incremental change
• Change in systems in such a large organisation like the BBC takes time and is mostly bottom-up – it infiltrates the organisation; imposition in “the most creative organisation in the world” doesn’t work
• Radical and revolutionary change takes time and is top-down – both are happening at the BBC
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Influence
• Networking is a more powerful influencer than pure business value
• But…New Media people don’t consider themselves inferior or as “only support” to the main business as many in HR or Finance have; and this has been re-enforced in the org structure
17Margaret Hanley© BBC 06/03/2005
6 March 2004
Influence
• New Media is using existing frameworks to help generate change; and it’s leading the BBC in this
• Using SMEF™ and then asking the upstream for the information to be provided in the same format
18Margaret Hanley© BBC 06/03/2005
6 March 2004
Lessons learnt
• Once the product is released it is easier (and harder) to go forward– Easier with an application that you can
actually see– Harder everyone wants a piece and the ability
to interface with other– Gets pretty weird when the DG talks about
context and findability – the core of your work
19Margaret Hanley© BBC 06/03/2005
6 March 2004
Thank you
Questions or comments?
Margaret Hanley