The moment when the Globe to Globe production of Venus and Adonis finally finished transcoding just after midnight on May 1st.
Last August the 麻豆社 and Arts Council England formed a partnership to deliver a new platform for digital arts, The Space.
My team started to build it during August last year, and we launched on May 1st, delivering a multimedia, multi-platform,cross-genre, global arts service that supports video, audio, articles, image galleries, games, interactive applications and live streams and is available on smartphones, tablets, computers, smart TVs, and Freeview HD (Channel 117 if you want to have a look).
It was a bit of a rush.
From nothing a small group of us created a design and user experience, developed a content management system based on a very customised instance, coded responsive design templates to work on a variety of screen sizes, built a transcoding system, procured a cloud-based content management and content delivery network, went through a cycle of user testing, contracted two live streaming suppliers, procured a bespoke VOD (video on demand) application for Freeview HD, launched a Freeview HD channel, and went live with a global site that works on more-or-less any modern browser and quite a few older ones.
After forty days in my own special wilderness, I'm coming up for air after what were certainly the most exciting days of my life at the 麻豆社. On a few occasions I've found myself wondering what on earth I was thinking on the fateful day last year when I muttered 'why don't we build this ourselves' to Tony Ageh and Mo McRoberts, but I don't regret any of it.
We took on the task knowing it would at best be very difficult and at worst prove to be impossible. There have been many late nights and early starts. So many screens, so many refreshes. So many contracts, so many lawyers. So many cables, so many encoding profiles.
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| 06:00 UK time, Saturday, 30 June 2012
