There are some really fair points here... Firstly I think the BBC is a lot more relevant to developers than most other broadcasters - I think backstage is testament to that - but I also don't think that we've necessarily made ourselves as relevant as we could.
I think we've all been disappointed by the lack of new APIs and feeds that we've released over the last 12 months - no excuses - this is because we've been focusing on being part of the community, being at the conferences and talking to people about what they want.. .this has perhaps left us with a little less internal work than we may have otherwise done... But... What it has achieved is a much bigger buy-in to what we want to do - we've essentially been running around inside the beeb shouting - developers are cool! Work with them. Now we have to concentrate on making that stuff actually available to you - part of that is the new website, part of that is the new totally developer focused list, and part of that is us spending more of our time making these things actually available and working. Giving you the tools to really get inside the beeb and it's systems. To that end we've been working really hard on getting an API gateway online - that's nearly complete - we've been working really hard on making sure that when an API goes live it's properly documented etc... All of these things take time, and I'll be the first to admit that releasing new feeds and APIs has therefore taken a knock. I asked the developer list last week what feeds and APIs they want to see - that is now my number one priority - actually making that stuff available. Ian is furiously typing away right now about the importance of working with the rest of the industry and encouraging developer growth within the UK... Coming soon to an email client near you. m On 9/10/07 11:47, "Phil Gyford" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 10/9/07, Gavin Montague <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> No one I spoke to said that Channel 4 wasn't relevant to them as >> developers. However, Channel 4 hadn't shelled out to sponsor a web >> development conference. > > Fair enough - I wasn't aware of the sponsorship thing. > > >> I'm inclined to think they should stop producing cruft like Strictly >> Come Dancing and focus *more* on becoming an internet startup but, >> again, I'm biased. > > I'm not sure the show's ten million viewers would agree with your > description of it :) - 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/[email protected]/
