Ian Hillson
I remember at one of those meetings in a TVC studio to explain how "Producer Choice" would work, and how said producer would have all his money to spend as he wished on BBC facilities or external ones.
A producer stands up and asks the panel: "..So if I don’t wish to spend it on an office at TVC, then I can go down the Bush and rent a cheap room and a phone line and save some money on my overheads….?"
Of course not!
Albert Barber
There was a strange deal whereby we were charged more to rent a phone in the office per year than to buy one in Argos; and keep it permanently.
This seemed odd since the BBC had a good rate for phone lines but it had to go through an outside company, can’t remember the name. I mentioned it to the Manager and was told I couldn’t do what I suggested.
Someone else said it was a brown envelope deal now we were using an outside company: this could be part of the mythology and gossip that grew out of Producer Choice whereby departments were trying to keep Producers using the various internal facilities.
Bernard Newnham
Though it was cheaper to rent a meeting room at QPR than TC, so people would, leaving the TC rooms empty. All very silly.
Ian Hillson
It was Siemens they then bought the Beeb’s IT unit, BBC Technology, in 2004 – and were subsequently entrusted (?) with implementing DMI, something they quickly bought themselves out of, realising the magnitude of the task.
Alec Bray
A sideline to Siemens and Ian’s comment – “… [Siemens] bought the Beeb’s IT unit, BBC Technology…”
Having said "Goodbye…" to TC and the Beeb in May 1967, I found myself in the last years of my working life going back to TC (and what used to be BBC Technology but was by now Siemens).
I worked for Telelogic, a Swedish firm headquartered in California. We specialised in software development tools, and my area was configuration and change management, using a product variously called "Continuus", "Continuus Synergy", "Synergy" (until Telelogic was taken over by IBM).
On my first visit I had to go to the offices on the east side of Wood Lane, opposite TC and overlooking the White City underground station. Had Siemens notices about the place, but "Ariel" was scattered everywhere. The job was to install the Configuration Management product on the software development machines. I was never fully up to speed about the nature of the software but basically it was a way of streaming news footage and editing and distributing it around to users. That make sense?
The initial development had taken place by BBC America, and BBC America had selected Synergy as the configuration management tool to use with the development. Siemens in the UK were going to work on the development in parallel so they HAD to use the same configuration management tool to keep everything in step.
So I roll up to the site, ready to install. It was going to be tricky, because the Synergy product usually used Informix as the backend database, but we gave uses the option to use Oracle if they wished (although this was a more difficult – er no – more "interesting" install) and of course the BBC – Siemens – wanted to use Oracle on Sun Solaris servers (again, a more interesting install). But there was no server! No Oracle!
Turned out that, in spite of all the pre-installation material that we had sent out, Siemens thought that I was going to install Solaris and then install Oracle and then install our product. Eventually the team leader realised his error, and said that he would have to get a Unix expert up from somewhere down around the Bush, Some time later, this guy arrived and I chatted with him about what was needed in terms of the Unix Server and Oracle. So away I went to return another day.
On the second visit, it was to install Synergy on the server. For one reason or another, installation on Unix and Oracle usually took about a day – creating tables spaces etc – and during time I chatted to the team leader (I’ve binned my day-books so can’t say names or dates). This chap was an expert in Oracle (which is why Oracle was used) and was very good at Oracle, Unix and basic configuration management – I felt reassured that the installation was in good hands. Once set up, it would normally run OK.
A slight complication was that the guys in BBC America and those at White City were to use DCM (Distributed Change and Configuration Management) so that the newer of any version of source files would be made available to the other team under controlled conditions, but this usually worked fine.
A year or so later I got a call to revisit Siemens at White City. ".. Synergy is dreadful too, it doesn’t work, it is broken, it is slow… " – and so on. Off I trot. Well, the first thing is that the team leader who knew all about Oracle and all about Unix (Solaris) has left – and none of the others know or care about Oracle or know or care about Solaris, and don’t want to use Synergy. Also, the development group in BBC America who had started the whole thing anyway have passed the whole shebang over to the UK, and the UK team want to use a rival (free) product called Subversion.
I looked at their database. It was an absolute mess. Long story short, the DCM transfers had been totally mismanaged and stuff was corrupt.
After discussion, we decided that what I would try to do was (over a period of visits) to recover the database, give some training to the guys and then let them decide how to continue. So over about 6 visits or so, I got the Synergy database in a reasonable state – so that the last stuff done could be retrieved if necessary – chatted to them about Synergy and Subversion and so on. During this time they moved offices INTO Television Centre, so in my last couple of visits I was back in TC! But what a state the place was in. Offices on the floor I was working on were just dumping grounds, it looked as if no one was taking care of any of the spaces, dirty dingy and demoralising (even then).
Eventually the team decided that they were going to use free Subversion instead of Synergy, but they did pay me something of a compliment. This was on the lines of "… We absolutely loathed Synergy but you have shown us how it could work and how good it could be. We have changed our opinion of it…"
