Reflections on the BBC Internet Blog's "iPlayer day"

Last week's iPlayer Day on the BBC Internet Blog illustrated some of the tensions that still exist between 'corporate' and 'personal' blogging. After the event both Nick Reynolds and Dave Lee have blogged about what they thought well and what didn't.

However, both these posts have appeared on their 'personal' blogs, rather than surfacing on the BBC Internet Blog itself. Nick's post at least featured on the blog's linkroll, but Dave's is yet to surface.

On the day itself I was out and about so I didn't see much of it as it unfolded, but having a quick peek at what was published, three things stood out for me.

Technology isn't just for men...

In the tech and new media business we always seem to have an under-current of discussion about how there are not enough women at conferences, in senior roles, or visible in the industry.

It was great therefore to see that iPlayer Day included blog posts and video clips from some of the women who have worked on the product, and helps illustrate that at the BBC being female is no barrier to having 'senior' in a technology job title. I was pleased to see positive role models like Gemma Garmeson (Senior client-side developer) and Marina Kalkanis (Senior technical architect) given a higher public profile.

It isn't just moving images...

When I used to work on the BBC homepage, I always thought the most important person on the editorial side of things was the picture editor, and I was lucky to work for some years with the very talented Andrew Webb. The image on the homepage set a visual 'tone' for the whole user experience, and even though the promo slot didn't drive a massive number of clickthroughs, it was the key element of the design.

So I was pleased to see that Ashley Stuart-Noble got a slot during iPlayer day to talk about the work that the iPlayer Picture Desk does. Although the video and audio content itself is the driver of iPlayer success, the picture editors can make the final difference between a programme being played or not with their choice of images.

The team also each posted their favourite iPlayer images from the year.

It wasn't always like this...

The streaming iPlayer is an unbridled success, so it is hard to remember back to the cautious launch. After successive announcements that it was 'coming soon' from Ashley Highfield, the download only P2P version of iPlayer crept out as a 'beta' in July 2007.

That followed months of frenzied and mostly circular debate about the DRM system employed.

The launch itself was greeted with a chorus of blog posts from people like, ahem, yours truly, moaning about installation usability, UI behaviour, and being fingered as being outside the UK when I was sitting underneath the very building where the software had been developed.

I therefore liked Ian Hunter's iPlayer day blog post that reflected on how the picture hadn't always been so rosy. I was doing some short-term work at the BBC at the time of launch, and there was a palpable air of expecting the whole thing to fall over. I recall Ian being rather stoical about it at all.

Even when ITV were being allowed by Google to advertise on the keywords 'BBC iPlayer'.

Now, of course, rather than have competitor's adverts on it, 'iplayer' is Google's fastest growing UK search term of the year....