New recruits
Hello.
It’s been a while since I’ve written anything on blog, so I thought it was time for an update.
As with any new project, the last couple of months have been a bit of blur with myriad different tasks, new relationships to build, issues to fix and workflows and processes to set up.
All going in the right direction so far though, thankfully.
One of the most exciting aspects of this project has been recruiting a new team. So in addition to myself, product lead Lloyd Shepherd, producer Dylan Haskins and project manager Robert Isitt, we have three new recruits.
Cordelia Hebblethwaite, our new commissioning editor, has been digital lead at Newsnight for two-and-a-half years — but comes with bags of experience from across digital and radio journalism too. She also spent a year as a fellow on the John S Knight Journalism programme at Stanford University which led to her publishing the Social Media Reporter.
Sophie Robehmed is our new digital and social producer — and has a wealth of experience from across digital, print, radio and television. Most recently, she’s been working on Woman’s Hour’s debut digital team where she focused on getting the Woman’s Hour word out online, in the press and on social. She also made a fabulous documentary — Laura Mvula: Generation Anxiety.
And Ewa Headley is our new AV producer. She worked at BBC Worldwide as a digital producer on BBC Future, Culture and Britain and played a key role in creating assets for Sir David Attenborough’s Story of Life app, which recently won a Lovie award.
What’s fantastic about the team now is that we all come from different backgrounds and bring a different range of experiences to the project — which I think is a real strength.
I hope everyone will be able to introduce themselves on Medium as the project progresses.
In other news, the BBC Ideas website is nearly finished and we’re really pleased with how it’s looking so far.
We’ve also published our commissioning brief and pitching form , which is aimed at independent production companies who might be interested in creating content for BBC Ideas.
We’re also planning to put on a ‘webinar’ for indies on 1 Nov - do get in touch if you’d like to find out more via bbc.ideas@bbc.co.uk
That’s all from me for now — will update with details of our launch in our next instalment.
