I’m going to break rule number 1 about writing a new blog post… man, it’s been a long time since I’ve posted something here! What a graveyard this blog has been! Great to be back!

Now that that’s out of the way, here’s what I’ve been up to over the past couple of months…

I’ve taken a full time job with Global Television in Burnaby. It’s really a continuation of the work I’ve been doing there over the past year. I’m doing a lot of the graphics automation work for the Digital Newsroom project. Essentially Global Television went from having full control rooms in every station across Canada to having 4 production supercentres in Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, and Toronto. So at our station in Vancouver, we handle the technical requirements of getting the shows to air in Montreal, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Kelowna, Victoria, as well as the shows in Vancouver. The local reporters and anchors are still in the local markets, we just have the cameras, stories, and everything fed back to Vancouver, and all the control room functions happen in one of our three control rooms in Vancouver. In order for this to work, the graphics systems have to tie into the scripting systems so all the names you see on the screen can be entered in Montreal or wherever, and show up on a computer in Vancouver to be inserted into the show. Since Victoria, Kelowna, and Global National all have different graphics looks than the local Global look, we have to be able to take the graphics data and have it seamlessly show up in the look of the show you happen to be doing without retyping all the names.

Suffice it to say that this is a technical challenge that hasn’t really been attempted previously, and was too juicy for me to pass up. It’s not everyday that you get the chance to be a part of something that complex and interesting at the broadcast level. I’ve learned a ton about not only news workflow, but writing code and really getting deep into the workings of the Avid Deko character generator, and how to make it do what we needed it to do.

That being said, upNext Media continues in a different form. I closed the office at the end of January, as it wasn’t being used, and moved back to being a home-based business. While continuing to support the ongoing projects that we are a part of, I will have an announcement soon about a new endevour we are taking on.

In the meantime, great to be back!