大象传媒

For those who don鈥檛 know me, I鈥檓 a researcher for 大象传媒 Research & Development. For the last fifteen months I鈥檝e been on attachment with 大象传媒 Scotland聽learning about how R&D interfaces with production divisions. Prior to my attachment I worked closely with Ian on Backstage events such as the Edinburgh Un-Festival and so now I鈥檓 back in the fold I鈥檝e been asked to work with a small team on the closedown and migration of .听

A few weeks have passed since the announcement that Backstage is due to close. It鈥檚 taken a while to get up to speed but recently we鈥檝e really started to get a clear idea on what we need to do to close down Backstage in a way that preserves its legacy and continues to support its community. Here鈥檚 a brief rundown of what we鈥檝e been up to.

At the moment we鈥檙e working our way through the 聽to working out which projects are still live. All APIs and feeds will remain available until we establish what will replace the website at which point we鈥檒l migrate everything to its new home. We鈥檙e also looking at how to archive the content no longer in use as a resource for the future.听

We鈥檙e in discussion with a couple of organisations about the new home for the Backstage developer community. What we want to do is plug the current community into the wider groups at large in the UK looking at open and linked data. Allied to this is a piece of work looking at 聽how we continue to evangelise the provision of open data internally at the 大象传媒.

To help commemorate Backstage we鈥檒l be producing a retrospective ebook at the end of the year. Created in collaboration with 聽it will draw on the whole of Backstage鈥檚 five year run, telling the stories of the people, projects and institutions involved in a project that crossed lines and pushed boundaries. We鈥檒l be running a number of extracts from over the coming months. In this first one Kevin tells the story of Backstage鈥檚 birth:

鈥淭he whole idea was to do it quite slowly and quietly, don鈥檛 have a big fanfare, do it under the radar.鈥� James Boardwell.

Out of the ashes of the 聽rose a new, more open web. Instead of simply offering linked pages, sites began offering APIs - 聽that allowed developers to build additional functionality on top of existing sites.

,听allowing developers to query its index of more than 2bn web documents. Amazon launched its 聽three months later. Both companies gave developers a way to build applications with their content and integrate those applications easily with their sites.

The shift from static web pages to APIs and applications was not lost on , at the time the 大象传媒鈥檚 head of innovation. Just after the turn of the century Locke was part of a team working on a report looking at the predicted state of broadband in the UK in 2014. The report found that,

鈥渢he 大象传媒, which is very focused on control and broadcasting and one-to-many communications, was unlikely to be able to adapt enough to get the full affordance of network connections, social media and so on.鈥�

Locke believed that the 大象传媒 should enable open innovation by working with of new technologies to spur development. , at the time with 大象传媒 Future Media & Technology, was working with developers both inside and outside the 大象传媒. Locke and Loosemore met at Bush House, the headquarters of the 大象传媒 World Service, and over pizza sketched out a model for innovation to engage with lead users. This model was to become Backstage.

Backstage was all about enabling the 大象传媒 to engage with the external developer community. Image courtesy of Rain Ashford.

The community would be open but self-selecting, attracting people possessing not only unique skills but also a focused passion for digital technology and the future of media. Locke asked a member of his innovation team, , to 聽manage the project.

The first step was to see what feeds already existed at the 大象传媒.听

鈥淎 lot of data was available without anyone actually knowing it, especially around news,鈥� Boardwell said. Many 大象传媒 sites already were producing but while people were aware of them, the knowledge and understanding of them was limited.

Due to the , Loosemore went to them to find a developer for the project. had already been doing similar work. Previously he had given a presentation to 大象传媒 News Website management about what a 鈥槾笙蟠� News API鈥� might look like. Nothing came of the meeting but he continued to build small prototypes in his spare time. One of these prototypes caught Loosemore鈥檚 eye and he asked Metcalfe to join the Backstage project.

鈥淯se our stuff to make your stuff.鈥� A project using Arduino kit and weather feeds to create ambient info-lighting? We can do that. Image courtesy of Rain Ashford.

In its early days the project had a informality and a daringness to it that was quite uncommon in the 大象传媒. Instead of going to management and asking for permission for the data, Metcalfe would speak directly to other 大象传媒 developers and ask them to expose a feed. Often it was possible but just wasn鈥檛 being done.

News was their first early win, with Metcalfe working with many of his former colleagues.

鈥淭hat was what we launched with. The whole idea was to do it quite slowly and quietly, don鈥檛 have a big fanfare, do it under the radar,鈥� Boardwell said.

Metcalfe remembers Backstage then having the atmosphere of a start-up.

鈥淚n the early days it was just James Boardwell and myself working full time on the project. We both did anything that needed to be done 鈥� from working with ops guys to set the server up through to liaising with the legal department on the creation of the license Backstage made the data available under.鈥�

Much of Boardwell鈥檚 early work was with legal teams to come up with a licence acceptable to both the 大象传媒 and the external developers they hoped to engage.

鈥淎t the time, there was a massive thing about alternative use, not allowing reuse, which obviously for developers was a 聽nightmare,鈥� Boardwell said. They spent a lot of time introducing the legal teams to the idea and eventually got a license that the legal team were happy to 鈥渞un with for a while.鈥� They agreed on a wording that was .

With knowledgeable and enthusiastic staff on board, a licence in place and sources for the data feeds acquired, Backstage was ready for launch.

We鈥檒l be posting more extracts from Suw and Kevin over the next month. In the meantime please feel free to share your memories of Backstage with us and let us know your thoughts on our plans for the future.

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