BBC Lunch & Learn Event!

Hey guys, 

So after Manchester Digi Cities Week, I was asked back by Gareth Peel (operations and tech support) to help run for another event at BBC Quay House in Media City, BBC Fusion were collaborating with the Technology, Strategy and Architecture Department to put on the Gaming for the Public Good Lunch & Learn Special.

I thought it was a really cool idea to have these seminars on in the office building at lunchtime, as it really doesn’t allow any excuses for staff members to not check it out! They could learn about gaming on their lunch break without having to book time out of the office or commute.

I didn’t need to sign attendees in this time, as it was an internal event, but I did still have to shepherd them around the fifth floor so they could check out the talks, BBC Blue Room Tour, and the free sandwiches.

The event was going to be internally live streamed, so BBC staff who weren’t based in that building could still tune in and watch it, and whilst this is a great idea to make the session even more accessible, it meant I had to face a big fear and (!) WORK A CAMERA!!!!!!! 

I’m a film student so I do know how to use kit, I just have never taken to it particularly naturally. Gareth went through where all of the controls were with me in the morning. 

It wasn’t a ‘set up a wide shot and go’ scenario, it was a 3 camera setup with one wide shot locked in position, and Gareth and I operating another camera each. We each had a set of headphones on and could hear instructions from the vision mixer, telling us what kind of framing they wanted and when they were cutting to us.

The session went down without any injuries and the stream cut to my camera a lot which must be a sign that I had a decent shot so I’m gonna take that as a win, turns out I’m too hard on myself and I’m definitely now more confident in my technical skills.

It was a really cool, interesting event, and I learnt a lot about how gaming can be used for education, charity, and games development for kids. One interesting point brought up during the panel discussion at the end of the event was that, ‘gaming events always spend the first half validating gaming and how huge it is, and THEN get onto the point of what part of gaming they actually wanted to talk about.’

I thought this was a really interesting and valid point, a lot of people my age are fully aware of the massive popularity of the platform, so It made me wonder at what point will gaming  education events NOT have to spend 10 - 30 minutes contextualising and validating the gaming industry before getting on with the topic at hand?

I really had a brilliant time working this event and I was really pleased to get to boost my confidence using the camera stuff, and learn more and get thinking about the gaming industry. I’m so grateful I was invited back to work another event for BBC over here!