Ben, Thanks a lot for all the time you have been put into the project, the inspiration it has provided, and introductions to both yourself and others at the BBC. I think you can consider what you have achieved a great success, and hopefully the project can be taken onwards and upwards in the future.
Thanks again :) Stephen Miller -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ben Metcalfe Sent: 09 June 2006 12:28 To: backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk Subject: [backstage] It's good night from him... (+ IMPORTANT INFO!) Dear all, Today is my last day working for the BBC, and therefore working as Project Lead on backstage.bbc.co.uk. It's been an honour to have been given the opportunity to not only work on such an amazing project, but also to interactive with all of you guys in the backstage community. You are, after all, what makes the project - without you guys backstage is nothing! Looking back on my 18 months since we set this up, I have mixed emotions. At times it's been a real battle to get the rest of the BBC to understand what we - the remixers, hackers, makers and innovators - are trying to achieve AND what the BBC has to gain from embracing it all. But there have been highs too - getting many of you into the BBC to meet people, to discuss your projects and to work with you to take them to the next level. That bit has been fantastic. But I'm also aware that whilst I've been fighting fires internally and working on some other equally important things (blogs.bbc.co.uk, reboot competition, etc) I've at times been too distant from the community - and I'm very sorry for that. The BBC has many cool projects going on at the moment - the iPlayer (formally MyBBCPlayer, formally iMP) and the new "BBC2.0" project. It's an interesting movement for the BBC away from being just a content provider to being a service (mainly aggregation) provider too. And of course, in this weird world of developer networks and Web2.0, its service orientated API's that have really been successful. Just offering pure content - which lets face it is what the BBC does best (at least for now!) - is not an API in itself and never will be. Until the BBC is ready to leverage API's against these new services it is creating around it's content, I hope backstage can become more community orientated - a place where the commons can gather to innovate together and cross-pollinate ideas about APIs, feeds and web services from ALL providers. That, ultimately, is what the BBC can offer above and beyond its rivals in this space. Lots need to happen for that to occur - there are all sorts to policy reasons why we've never had a forum or any other social-media platform for backstage to really occur. Maybe it's time the community created on? Which brings me onto the final, perhaps most important part, of this email (sorry it's been a long one!). I will continue to participate in the community - I'm not going anywhere. But from tomorrow (Saturday 10th June) I will no longer work for the BBC and as such anything I say on the backstage mailing list, put out as backstage prototypes, etc will not be on behalf of the BBC nor will it necessarily represent the views of the BBC. Sadly I also won't be able to help you with any BBC-related issues or questions either. There will also be a period of hiatus here at the BBC-end of backstage as there won't be any staff working full-time on it for a while. This is a real opportunity for the BBC to really decide what direction it wants to take backstage, and so in the long run it's probably worth a period of delay whilst that all gets agreed. In the meantime I ask you to be patient with Jem and everyone else here at the BBC whilst the period of change occurs. Many thanks for everything! Ben PS: Please continue to email the backstage email address ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) if you have any queries, questions, etc and someone will get back to you. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/ ___________________________________________________________ All new Yahoo! Mail "The new Interface is stunning in its simplicity and ease of use." - PC Magazine http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/