There are some brilliant technical minds at the BBC buried deep in an array of fascinating projects - but we don't know enough about these developers and the work they do. In the second of our occasional column profiling the BBC's technologists, we speak to Tristan Ferne, senior development producer in audio, music and mobile at the Future Media and Technology department.
Ferne joined the BBC after graduating with a degree in cybernetics from the University of Reading, starting out at the research and development centre in Kingswood Warren. He explains how his small team approach their work like a startup, and how the BBC still has a tendency to view the web as a supporting medium for broadcast.
• What are you working on?
"I lead a small research and development team where I work in the intersecting space of radio, music and the internet. We try to innovate in this area by applying developments from other fields and seeing connections between things. To do this we build prototypes - web applications, sites, hacks and even hardware. As well as day-to-day projects we also try to create a culture of innovation in our department. I lead the projects, communicate our work and occasionally write a bit of code.
"During the summer we launched Radio Pop which is a prototype social radio listening website. People who sign up to Radio Pop can track their live online BBC radio listening. They can then see a history of what they listened to as well as statistics and graphs, and have a public profile page showing their favourite radio networks and programmes. It's part of the social web so you can add your friends, see their listening, subscribe to their latest programmes feed or see their aggregated listening statistics. We want to experiment and learn about what social radio could be.
"Alongside Radio Pop we also commissioned a consultancy called Schulze & Webb to build a prototype social radio called Olinda which features modularity and social networking in a physical device. Olinda connects to Radio Pop and alerts you in an understated way that your friends are listening right now using a series of lights on its front; there's a video demonstration and photos online, as well as a press pack.
"Our current project is codenamed Moose 6. It's based on the work of Louis Von Ahn who devised the ESP game, one of a series of Games With A Purpose - his idea being that you can combine gameplay with ways of creating useful data. So Moose 6 combines tagging and music discovery in a game for BBC 6 Music listeners.
Ferne works alongside software engineer and Flash developer Chris Bowley and brings in different members of the department according to the needs of the project. His boss is former Virgin Radio digital media director James Cridland, who heads the BBC's audio and music interactive department.
"We are planning to launch it early next year so I can't say much more yet, but the ideal for us would be for it to work really well and then get integrated into the BBC website or even become part of a radio show.
"One analogy I use for my team is that it we're a bit like a start-up embedded within the BBC."
• How important was public service principle in your decision to join the BBC?
"I like to think we're generally doing good for the audience and the country, so it was pretty important to me. Plus I love listening to Radio 4 and nothing like that really exists anywhere else."
• How important is the BBC to the UK's tech industry?
"I think it is very important. Typically people talk about this in relation to the web, and the BBC has made a big contribution there, not least through some of the UK's best web people who currently work or have worked in the BBC. But the BBC also makes big contributions to broadcast technology. There are some very clever and hard-working people in places like Kingswood Warren who you don't hear much about but without whom you wouldn't have digital radio or Freeview or Freesat or many more.
"I think one of the biggest roles we have is in supporting and creating open specifications on the web and elsewhere."
• What one thing would make the BBC better?
"The ability to change and react faster to technological developments, though that is hard in a large organisation."
• Do you worry about the future of the organisation?
"I do a little. Taken as a whole, I'm not sure it completely understands the web and how much things are going to change.
"It still sometimes treats the web as a supporting medium for broadcast programmes when it can be so much more than that. But change is happening and there's a lot of really exciting work happening right now in FM&T."
• Tristan Ferne runs the BBC Radio Labs blog, and outside work writes at cookinrelaxin.com and posts to Flickr. Outside work, he's currently experimenting with visualisations of data from Current Cost meters, which measure home electricity usage.
More BBC Builders:
• BBC builders: Tom Scott, and the team behind /programmes and /music