Yesterday I was very kindly invited to Cardiff by Mediasmiths and Object Matrix to attend the inaugural 'Workflow Innovations Group' meeting, dealing with the workflow within TV and video production companies and facilities.
As someone involved in the 'outward' facing aspects of the industry I was somewhat worried about peeking into the heart of the video production industry.
But, beyond the jargon, the event featured a wide range of people involved in the production industry (including senior representatives from the BBC and BT as well as many technology suppliers).
The discussions were very well informed and fascinating. The BBC representatives, especially, came over well with their approach to generating and managing metadata. The kind of leadership I believe the BBC should be showing rather than getting involved in hardware platfroms.
Let me try and precis my conclusions, and I apologise for any perceived inaccuracies:
1) The industry is slow in adopting new technologies
2) Technologies are non -standard and therefore often present more problems than they cure
3) Metadata is a particular problem
4) The people generating content have no incentive to generate good metadata
5) Content needs an unique id, as can be found in the music industry
6) An unique id would support complex metadata contexts
7) The unique id should be open, not proprietary
There were weaknesses - the Cloud was largely ignored and there were no action points from the session per se. However, the drinks afterwards were convivial and I'll blog some more about some of the very interesting companies involved.