Presentation I gave at Yahoo Hackday 2009 on the work at that time of BBC Backstage and R&D.

1. BBC Backstage 2009Rain Ashford, technologistBBC Research & development

2. Backstage is run by… Ian Forrester in Manchester Rain Ashford in London

4. encourage & support UK developers

5. a license similar to CC non-commercial

6. champion ‘open culture’ around the BBC, releasing data, feeds & APIs

8. Idea Store http://ideas.welcomebackstage.com/ideatorrent/ If you’ve got a great idea for re-using BBC content – share it! You can: vote, comment comment, get help and watch ideas grow!

9. Open Lab – a sister site for Backstagehttp://backstage.bbc.co.uk/openlab/ For teachers, learners, students, developers - anyone with an idea for a learning resource wanting to develop it into a prototype.

10. BBC Micro for the 21st Century The recent 25th anniversary of the BBC Micro set us thinking about what it would take to create something as amazing today.

12. BBC approached Sinclair, Dragon, Acorn & others, but the Acorn Proton came out as best

13. although the BBC Micro was quite expensive compared to the Spectrum and the Commodore 64, 1.5 million Micros were sold and also 400,000 books

14. Appeared in schools all over the UK from 1982

15. 4 ‘BBC’ models (Model A, B, B+64 and B+128) 8 later (Master & Archemedies

17. stats indicate CompSci course applications are dwindling

18. UK is becoming a services nation rather than building products for its consumers

19. how we can and should handle vast amounts of data if we don’t own, understand or have access to the systems that control it?

21. culture of throwaway tech means lots to pull apart & play with

22. mash-up culture means getting into electronics /coding much more *ahem* socially acceptable

23. Arduinos, motors, sensors and other kit are easily availble

24. Homebrew gaming: Pandora, GP2x, etc

27. ran workshops on the work of Backstage & talked around idead for a BBC Micro for the 21st Century

28. put on demos of our Virtual Steadycam, audio visualisation & open source multitouch

29. we filmed the event

31. wanted to demonstrate rapid prototyping power of arduino

32. fun for kids to play with

35. collaboration between Backstage & RAD teams

36. designed to be sharable, remixable and redistributable - released under a Creative Commons Attribution (Non-Commercial) license

37. we’re looking at various codecs & releasing video in lots of different formats: OggTheora, Matroska, AVI, Flash, MOV and more to come

38. looking at distribution methods

39. we want this to help shape how the BBC makes and encodes contentThis is my camera kit ^^^ 

41. a longer 30 minute video, containing deeper conversations

42. the Asset Bundle, containing (nearly) everything we used and didn't use to make the videos

43. for you to remix, use in your own edits or just experiment with

44. they’re also on Blip, YouTube, Pirate Bay & BitTorrent

46. Homura Games Development Tool & Frameworkhttp://java.cms.livjm.ac.uk/homura/index.php BBC R&D Have been working with John Moores University on Homura, an open source games engine – the code is now available!

48. provides all the necessary tools to develop 3D game-like applications that the user downloads and plays/runs by clicking on a url on a web page

50. simple and fast to useg

51. uses a graphical interface for may tasks

52. interesting features such as shading plus scope to add features such as streaming

54. It is an open-source project that aims to share its solutions publicly. BBC Audio & Music Interactive will be working with our FM&T colleagues, an independent development company called LShift, and the wider Open Source community to create this new technology

56. Backstage Developer focused podcastshttp://welcomebackstage.com/ We’re looking at cross company podcasts and will soon be looking for people who’d like to be part of it!

58. World Service stories

59. use URL bar to navigate

60. BBC 300 official Twitter profiles & status

61. it’s not finished yet, but we’re building it as we go along

62. it’s not too neat & tidy 

63. there’s not search option just copy & paste to find stuff

64. all RESTful

65. explore and have fun!http://mammoth.welcomebackstage.com/exist/rest/ws/persian/story/2009/01/090111_shr_princeharry.xml

66. To find out more or get in touch: http://welcomebackstage.com/ Follow us on Twitter: @bbc_backstage Thanks! rain.ashford@bbc.co.uk