/Interview/ Q&A: Matthew Cashmore
16/06/2008 | Filed under Discover > Interview
On 21-22 June the BBC is running another hack day, dubbed Mashed08. Matthew Cashmore tells us what the weekend will be like and what’s next for BBC Backstage
net: What can we expect from the BBC’s Mashed event?
MC: Hundreds of developers, tonnes of kit, thousands of great ideas and a hell of a lot of bean bags. But essentially it all boils down to one thing. Cool stuff.
.net: Who’s your guest star this year?
MC: The developers are the stars. Corny I know, but these are the people this whole thing is organised for, and without them it’s nothing. We do have a pretty amazing person to host the presentations on the Sunday, but we’re leaving that as a surprise for everyone on the day. The biggest star of all, though, is Alexandra Palace itself. For the first time since 1956 it’ll actually be broadcasting TV again! The signal is only live for the weekend, and it’s there to allow developers, for the first time, to be able to hack the interactive services around live TV. We’re rebroadcasting BBC One, so you can hack Country File on Sunday morning, but there’ll be two other channels, both of which will be throwing out tutorials and other content from people like O’Reilly.
.net: One of the talks on Saturday is titled ‘How to hack the BBC’s TV services’. What will it teach developers?
MC: MHEG is what it’s all about. It’s a tough language to get into, and has a sharp learning curve. We’re hoping over the weekend that we’ll be able to get developers up to speed on the basics and that people will be able to build and broadcast their own interactive TV services alongside the live TV broadcast at the event.
.net: What’s the response been like so far?
MC: So far we have 500 people signed up and some of them are already getting started on their hacks. In fact a bunch of developers are building a flight simulator to bring along that they intend to fly around the world in Google Earth, making all their data available as they go. You’ll have everything you’d get from a real plane, right there inside Ally Pally!
.net: How many developers are you expecting?
MC: We reckon we’ll get about 500 people from across the UK and Europe in total. We already know there are people coming from Brussels, France and Germany, and for the first time we’re running free buses to the event from Newcastle, Sheffield, Manchester, Liverpool, Cardiff and Bristol.
.net: Why did the BBC decide to put on hack days?
MC: We know that many of the most cutting edge ideas don’t come out of large organisations. It’s often our audiences who push the boundaries in terms of new innovations. The audience for events such as Mashed is a group that particularly excels in this. They’re highly intelligent and come to these events from all over Europe for the love of technology and the chance to build exciting new things with our content, data and APIs.
They have a philosophy of openness and consider that the more we share with them, the more they value and trust the BBC, so that’s what we do. We want to build cool stuff, and it shouldn’t matter if that idea comes from inside the BBC or outside. This event lets us be open and share our ideas, and allows the community to share its ideas with us.
.net: What’s your favourite project that’s come out of BBC Backstage so far?
MC: Boring I know, but it’s some work that a bunch of guys at Box UK are doing with the TPEG data. Essentially they’re grabbing it, storing it and running some logic over it to start to identify trends. They’re coming along this year and will be making much of that data available for people to mess with. It doesn’t sound fun until you realise that if you combine that with the weather data and historic news stories you can work out exactly which routes are safest/fastest depending on the weather/time of day/historical data.
.net: What’s in the pipeline for BBC Backstage?
MC: New website soon. Developer profiles and the ability to gather a team online to build a project together. Shed loads more data and APIs. A better forum and mailing list. More podcasts and more access to the inner workings of the BBC.
.net: The BBC has just announced it will start broadcasting BBC1 live online. How do you think this will go down, considering the fuss ISPs made when the iPlayer went live?
MC: Clearly, there are implications for the ISPs. Building strong relationships with them is crucial to the ongoing accessibility of our products and services, so we’re in discussions with them and those discussions are ongoing and generally positive. Our approach with BBC iPlayer has been to work with the ISPs and to manage traffic responsibly: that’s one of the reasons for making it available initially in open beta behind a walled garden.
Our position is this: demand is a good thing; services and content that drive demand such as BBC iPlayer and BBC programme content without causing congestion are a good thing. With our content, we put demand into the networks. The solution is NOT to throttle demand and, by doing so, create a digital divide. This is not just an issue for the BBC, but for all broadcasters and for all content producers. It’s about building a digital Britain, and it’s in the interests of the UK economy that we work together to leapfrog Britain into the vanguard of next-generation broadband nations.
.net: What other exciting things are happening at the BBC labs at the moment that you can talk about?
MC: Fantastically cool ideas about creating worlds around content that are actually engaging and work. The ability to build items that exist in that world and take them away with you. Building that kind of system from the ground up so that it doesn’t exit on bbc.co.uk but everywhere.
Matthew Cashmore
Job: Senior research producer for BBC Research & Innovation
Age: 27
Education: Matthew left school at 16 and learned how to service jet engines. After that, he went to Swansea University to train as a nurse, managed the student radio station and from there got a job as breakfast show presenter on Bridge FM.
Career: Matthew worked at UBC Media where he was integral in developing a working commercial model for podcasting, and produced the podcasts for The Times, The Sun, The Telegraph and major record labels. At the BBC he worked as a broadcast assistant, rolled out the Where I Live sites, built the Travel News portal, and launched the now-defunct BBC Surfing Portal. He’s also worked as an aerospace technician.
Blog: www.thelondonbiker.com and backstage.bbc.co.uk
