visitors from belgium @ the bbc

Visitors from Belgium
Originally uploaded by robinhamman

This week kicked off with a nice visit from a group of students and docents (lecturers) from a Masters degree course in Communication & Multimedia Design at the Media & Design Academy, part of the Limburg University of Professional Education in Belgium. The course combines Marketing and Communications, Design, Business and Project Management, and even a bit of programming/technical knowledge to help graduates work at the centre of multi-tasking, cross-departmental project and production teams.

They’ve been in London speaking to Last.fm and others about the opportunities social media and stopped in to see us this morning.

After I gave a brief introduction, and completely forgot to introduce myself at all (sorry!), a few colleagues I’d invited to come gave some insight into their work.

Nick Reynolds, Editor of the new BBC Internet Editors Blog, explained that he thinks that BBC people should participate in discussions about the BBC, whether those take place on bbc.co.uk or elsewhere.

Ian Forrester from BBC Backstage, network that makes data available to developers and helps publicise that projects they create with that data (and sometimes buy it back in or help the developers launch the product commercially) spoke about some of the exciting things people are mashing-up.

Chris Vallance, from Radio 5 Live’s Pods and Blogs and, more recently, Radio 4’s iPM, talked about the work he’s been doing to seek out and engage with bloggers and podcasters as sources of contacts and content.

One of our Belgian visitors wanted to know if any BBC staff members had ever been reprimanded for content they’d posted on their personal blog. My reply was that, as far as I’m aware, “serious concern” has been voiced on only a couple of occasions but no one’s been fired or disciplined. I’m sure my colleagues will correct me if I’m wrong on this.

Another question they asked was whether “user generated content” worked as a business model outside the public service funding framework. My response, and this is my personal opinion, is that social media, blogging, online community, and audience submissions all have to take place within a wider editorial context, otherwise they simply drain resources. What I mean is that our efforts to engage with audiences have to be part of the production process rather than something extra that we simply add on the finished product. If it feeds into the editorial core of your programme then it doesn’t matter if there is a business model for the stuff formerly known as user generated content – the programme or product or campaign already has a business model and, by feeding into that end, there’s no need to invent or implement a new business model. New ways of working, sure, but that need not necessarily require a new business model.