Reflecting on Media Technology moving on from BT London (part 7) and When I was 64

Pilat were on the 19th Floor of this!

BT suffered many exercises in downsizing and technical advances meant that the company at large needed far fewer staff to accomplish the same outcomes, during one of the 'restructures' I decided to take the opportunity to change my work. As when I left ITN quite a few years earlier the company kindly provided me with cash and I took some time to find full time employment, I initially worked on a part time basis to help a group of Somalians living in Europe evaluate a broadcast TV channel (at the time it was Univ TV).

The Somalian population in Europe is generally overlooked and like many groups of immigrants suffers poor life opportunities often with the jobs and housing that others do not want. The idea of supporting this group of people and also being a part of the nation building for them 'back home'  was appealing to me but there were (of course) issues around funding and tensions within the groups looking to form alliances and as I spent more and more time hustling for my pay I knew that this was not a long time job.

After about 6 months I took up a job with Pilat Media a software company that supplied scheduling software to broadcasters, Pilat needed someone who had distribution experience to help develop  a satellite capacity scheduling module for the BBC World Service.

BBC World Service's Old home

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The work role  at Pilat was described as Business Analyst and I came into contact with a new set of disciplines and learnt of the benefits of 'straw men' and meetings to find out how teams worked. Quite a bit of my time was spent at Bush House which was the home of BBC world Service for about 60 years (they're now with the rest of BBC radio in W1) which was a nice place to work.

Dr Harry Steinberg 

The Beatles Ukulele project is often worth a look and I had a listen to 'When I was 64' the version's okay but what is amazing is to learn about the man who performed it  (Dr Harry Steinberg)  if only more of us lived life the way he has