Thursday
Room 1 - Level 3
20:15 - 21:15
(UTC±00)
Talk (60 min)
NDC Party - Geek Out - Television and Video
Every wondered how in 97 years we got from a mechanical camera invented by John Logie Baird to streaming live videos to your phone?
Taking years of experience of working at the BBC, BSkyB and QVC, we'll be covering how television originally worked, the revolution of recorded programmes (tape and DVDs), the move to digital, why changing a satellite channel takes over a second, how CRTs and modern flat screens actually work, and the basics of video compression.
Liam Westley
Liam Westley is Head of Engineering at FreemarketFX, a fintech startup specializing in foreign currency trading, with a cloud native platform in Azure. He quite likes working near London Bridge as there is some fantastic food and coffee to be had within a few minutes walk.
Previous to FreemarketFX, Liam worked at Huddle just down the road in Aldgate helping the mobile and desktop teams create apps to play nicely with microservices. At Criteria MX, a digital media startup he worked as a consultant via his own company Tiger Computer Services Ltd, specialising in software for Broadcast Television. His Niagara SMS moderation system was used by QVC UK for eight years to display SMS messages from viewers, live, on screen. Liam is also responsible for the ticketing system for Hat Trick Productions which provides e-tickets to shows such as Have I Got News For You and Room 101.
Liam has worked for chellomedia, GMTV, BSkyB, SmashedAtom and Original Thinking Group. In his time he created the first in house weather system for Sky News using Visual Basic 1.0, acted as architect for two general election systems, project managed the launch of the GMTV web site, was key to delivering the first interactive television chat service in the UK for BSkyB and helped launch the first live shopping channels in the Netherlands.