Last Day at KW

After 60 years my dept is quitting it's historical, hysterical head quarters- the much vaunted, dodgily vaulted Kingswood Warren. And today is my last day on site. There's a mix of emotions here- actually rather a strong mix due to some very sad news we heard this morning, which I shan't go into here. Relating to the move though, one can't help imagining one hears snatches of Elgar's "Nimrod" echoing down the halls.



As a place to work, KW (as it's known to it's denizens) has charms and quirks a plenty. Huge spaces purpose built to shoot and show films, and converted decades ago to demonstrate television. Grand meeting suites with oak panels, and bay windows opening onto the croquet lawn. Here too was, for many years, the core of the BBC's onlne presence, built out of the sheer bloodymindedness of our now Cheif Scientist, Brandon Butterworth.



[Edit- I've just had a walk around the old site- and a grumble about the past is not the right send off]



What I won't miss about KW:

• Having no clue what's happening in the rest of the BBC ever.
• Missing lunch by 5 minutes.
• The lingering debilitating depression of the Varney/Highfield era.
• Vile tea and coffee.
• No mobile reception.
• Baking in summer, baking in winter (the central heating pipes liquid magma direct from the earths core to every single room)
• Long tedious deeply depressing conversations about previous senior management in the canteen.
• Empty offices and corridors echoing with the rattle of dismantling equipment.
  

What I will miss.

• The Ceiling in A-Block reception.
• That there's almost always a secret short cut from one place to another (it's great fun to finish a presentation to a room full of invited guests and then disappear through a hidden door!)
  
• Mullioned windows
• Flying rockets on the feild
• Deer and fauns in the morning mist.
• Seeing colleagues knocking mud from the allotments off their boots in the hall
• Long facinating deeply technical conversations about everything from linear induction motors to victorial optical intruments in the canteen.
• Always finding new rooms I never knew existed.
  
• Bowling googlies on the lawn.
• Carols in the snow.
  
• Yoga in the club hut.
• The Canteen Staff- stars one and all.
  

I know I never made the most of this place. I don't know if I could have. It seemed it had been here for ever, and we would never leave, but in an hour, I'm off.


* I joined R&D around the time of this lowest ebb, so much of this is hearsay, and in the interests of legal boilerplating, it can be read as a largely fictionalised account of the past.

CC Attribution to Rainrabbit for the mullioned window pic- one of very many lovely shots of KW from Rain.

Rumours II- R&D changes

Although the technology and new media bit of the BBC (now known, bizarrely as 'Future Media and Technology') has emerged from the latest round of cuts relatively unscathed, there are indeed some changes on the way. The largest from where I'm stood are those impacting on the old R&D area. It's now called R&I (Research and Innovation) by the way, but let's not go there.

The changes are really three fold- we're relocating, splitting into two main groups, and clumping the projects differently.

The Move- we always knew that Kingswood Warren was going to be sold, and it went on the market a few weeks ago. It's a bit of a shame (who wouldn't lament the loss of a Victorian mansion in acres of landscaped surrey countryside as a workplace- sigh) but the real worry has always been the impact on the work, not so much the sentimentality or love of the place. It has, right now, got some of the most brilliant research infrastructure and culture- studios, labs, test chambers, RF facilities, dedicated server suites, and it's own wonderful IT staff, not to mention a dedicated technical library (with real librarians- WHOOT 'Shhhhh!' sorry), and some of the most fabulous rooms for meetings and mini conferences. It is too big, and too far from the rest of the BBC though, and has been a bit of the boffin gulag for too long.

I think, personally, that in trying to fix the admittedly broken relationship with the rest of the BBC something rather awful happened. A 'shock and awe' decapitation of a difficult area was followed up with an ill planned administration, shades of the emerald city perhaps, but at least now, with these new changes, there is a recognition that not only must some things be stopped, some others need to begin. (Oblique, moi!?!). So, we're moving. Except not to a similar more appropriately sized facility in the neighborhood.

See, that had been 'PLAN A'- a new, smaller, KW nearby, perhaps on a better connection to central London. However, apparently management were surprised when that sort of thing, for the accom alone, looked like being about £10million. Frankly that appalls me. Not the cost, but that fact that it was a surprise. I mean, if you're going to sell something for £20 million (best guess at the low end of the market value for KW) and want something half the size nearby, well maybe you'll be paying about half that. So anyway, all shocked and stuff, we're not buying a new gaff. Fair enough. We're moving to the grottiest offices we have in W12- White City- the Ministry of Truth, the monstrous carbuncle, Ceacescu Towers. Yes, as Factual deal with loosing headcount, and promptly bail on their worst cubby holes, we pile in. And I suspect that the budget for fitting them out will not be free. I wonder if anyone senior will be 'surprised' by the cost.

Weirder is to come though, because we are also going to have the heavy kit- the studios, the server suites, the labs, slotted into Television Centre. That too is on my list of crap BBC buildings, and I'm not at all sorry we're selling it. At least, I wasn't, until they told me they were moving part of my dept. into it. Kind of makes you wonder just how much left hand/ right hand comms are going on. Or if there's much of a future in anything other than the shortest possible terms for the group. Ah well, I'm sure it will be fine. I know I'll do my level best to make it fine, brilliant even. But still, you know, weird isn't it.

Gosh, this has gone and got big. Ok, so more of the split and reclumping next time, and perhaps also a comment on the importance, or utter irrelevance, of the Amazon S3 European launch from a large scale A/V master archive point of view.

Critical Mass, Almost

Yesterday to KW for an inter-corporate meet. It was good and interesting, and well worth setting up, but I can't help feeling we didn't quite reach the dizzy heights of synergy that we might all have wanted. This is a shame, but I need to think abut why it happened this way this time, how we ought to take this connection forward, and see if there are any lessons to learn so we can 'spark up' quicker.

Now, I'm not going to say what the other agencies were- wouldn't be fair, and whilst my employers very generously tolerate this published info, there's no saying how it would go down with less, um, well, with others.

What ended up happening was a very loosely structured talk, with various eminently qualified and experienced people (and me) piping up in turn and holding forth on their own areas of interest, and most of the rest of us sitting, nodding, and wondering what on earth we could do about it. There were three organisations represented there, but in essence there were perhaps rather more, because the 'we' in this were coming from perhaps three separate areas of the beeb. Sometimes this is fine- in fact meetings outside the beeb are sometimes the most effective way to meet people around this place who are working on similar themes to yourself, but in other divisions or areas.

In this case though, I think it actually counted against us. On the one hand we saw a very interesting exchange of ideas, but on the other we didn't see a well presented cogent presentation of what we, the BBC had to offer. We had info around DAB radio, DAB+, data feeds, video analysis (though perhaps we ought to have had more), EU and DTI projects and engagement programs like Backstage . However, I don't really think we really put over a great, compelling offering.

Similarly, I wonder if we really got a grip on what the other agencies were offering, how they wanted and were mandated to engage with their public or what they really wanted from us.

Perhaps, if we are going to do this sort of thing again we should take a little time to organise the engagements- to build a good idea of who would offer what, and to present a more cogent offering. We need to have a better approach to presenting 'works in progress' too. It is a difficult thing to do- give guidance as to the direction you expect new radical approaches to delivering content to go- but I think we can do better.