12 TVBEurope
www.tvbeurope.com June 2014 in association with
Who moved my workfl ow? Avid roundtable at BT Tower
Last month, TVBEurope, in association with Avid, hosted another of its successful industry roundtables. Acting editor Neal Romanek reports
THE LATEST TVBEurope roundtable, entitled ‘Collaborative Workfl ows’, was held last month at London’s landmark BT Tower. Its purpose was to gather industry leaders to analyse and share common challenges in the brave new world of fi le-based workfl ows. Many thorny issues were raised, including the conundrum of fi le-based workfl ows fuelling the very fi res they aim to put out. The reception afterward was held high atop BT Tower, and featured a stunning view of a rain-drenched London — accompanied by a double- rainbow — perhaps a sign that
the stormy world of digital workfl ows would eventually have a happy ending. The industry participants willing to put all their workfl ow problems on the table were (in alphabetical order): Steve Bennedik, head of technology at Sky News; Tom Cordiner, VP international sales at Avid; Jose de Freitas, CTO of Ireland’s TV3; Ian Draysey, manager, post production engineering at Discovery; Craig Dwyer, senior director Global Center of Excellence at Avid; Steve Fish, RVP technology and operations at Turner Broadcasting System Europe; Alla Salehian CEO of TIMA, accompanied by TIMA’s
head of operations, Ammar Hijazi; Paul Stevenson, director of technology and technical operations at ITV News; Martyn Suker, head of production innovation at ITV Studios, and Mark Wilson-Dunn, VP sales and marketing at BT Media and Broadcast.
The panel was moderated by veteran TVBEurope correspondent Philip Stevens, accompanied by TVBEurope’s new executive editor, James McKeown, and acting editor, Neal Romanek. Workfl ows in the broadcast industry are being challenged by fi le-based implementations, and a project’s journey from
concept to delivery is no longer the linear path it once was. Like many industries, broadcast has adopted change slowly, but in the past year, a tipping-point in fi le-based workfl ows and IP delivery seems to have been reached. An IT-rate of change, more rapid than the slower, hardware-centric rate of change of a decade ago, has hit the industry like a hurricane. But there are payoffs in up-ending the old workfl ows — whole new vistas have opened for creative collaboration and content distribution.
How can broadcasters and content producers rethink their workfl ows in this new
collaborative environment, where production is now more ecosystem than assembly line? And what needs to be preserved from the old, linear models of production? These were the central questions the roundtable aimed to address.
Tom Cordiner of Avid lead the charge, opening with an introduction to the company’s Avid Everywhere concept of production workfl ows. Avid Everywhere is the vision developed by Avid’s new forward-looking CEO, Louis Hernandez, Jr. Avid Everywhere aims to reimagine the entire production workfl ow to more realistically represent current, ‘non-linear’ modes of collaboration. Few could impune Hernandez’s zeal and commitment to the new
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