Meta Broadcast

Chris Jackson - CEO

Chris founded MetaBroadcast in 2007 in order to fulfill his vision of simple video and audio products crafted from high-quality metadata. With in-depth experience of developing strategy and technology for online and offline media, he guides his team in building innovative content navigation and distribution software.

Chris’s thinking has been informing industry-wide services and debates for a decade. He still acts as a consultant, through MetaBroadcast and other organisations. Prior to starting his own venture, he worked as Head of Strategy at the BBC, and as a senior consultant across the Media and Technology practices at McKinsey. He led projects involving broadcasters, publishers, TV platforms, independent producers, private equity investors and regulators. His practice was focused on the UK, reaching the US, continental Europe, and the Middle East.

Before McKinsey Chris worked as a developer and as project manager on a wide range of websites, becoming an entrepreneur in the process. He also built web, DAB, and DTT systems at BBC Research and briefly designed novel phone directories at BT labs. In the distant past Chris produced sports and music programmes for BBC and independent local radio. He holds an MEng degree in Computer Science and Electronics from Imperial College London.

Chris is a history buff, and likes anything that gets a crowd excited. There is very little he doesn’t know about the Olympics. But his real passion is cooking. After spending years perfecting the art of meat brining and sous-vide cooking at home using makeshift contraptions, Chris has dedicated himself to barbecuing and smoking in the recent years. He’s never happy when it rains, which is quite daring for a Brit, but then again he got to barbecue in December. And in Antigua.

Blog posts by Chris

Mirona Iliescu - COO & Experience Designer

Mirona stepped up as COO in July 2010. She had been covering experience design, project management, and communications for a while. With a background in computer science and communication sciences, in the past Mirona ran her own image management consultancy, wrote and presented on communication in the digital era, was IPRA Council Chair for Romania and co-founded a newsletter company.

Mirona has coordinated branding and image projects, built websites and campaigns, created and implemented CSR programs and managed events with thousands of guests including celebrities, international artists, and prime ministers. Among others, she advised Heineken, ING, Nokia, Red Bull and Shell.

At one time or another Mirona also held her own as radio anchor and producer, TV editor, assistant producer and screenplay writer, record industry A&R manager, PR consultant, copywriter, translator, voice over, DJ and… bartender. She was published in Esquire, featured on Tate Liverpool’s poster for its Colour Chart exhibition, and was of the first Londoners to join Twitter in August 2006.

In recent years Mirona turned a large balcony into an urban garden, complete with native hedges, unreliable flowers, tasty herbs, unruly trees, summer fruit and unripe veg ramping up to over 150 live species. Apparently, the beauty lies in the delicate balance between chasing slugs off strawberries and blackbirds off olives, while welcoming bees on lavender and barbecue chefs on the patio.

Blog posts by Mirona

Fred van den Driessche - Engineer

Fred joined MetaBroadcast soon after finishing his degree at Imperial College where he received a 1st class MEng in Computing. During his time at Imperial he created the Swan project, a web application framework for the actor-based language Stage.

Fred previously worked at Starview Technology in Silicon Valley where he developed applications for real-time factory logistics and data analysis. He has also worked on the JST project at Imperial aiming to bring session-type protocols to Java.

On Saturdays Fred can usually be found playing at scrum-half for Arioch Crusaders RFC. At other times he enjoys wandering around with his camera. But overall most of his time is spent preparing his safe-house for the zombie apocalypse.

Blog posts by Fred

Luke Wesley-Holley - Design Technologist

Born and schooled in Hull, East Yorkshire, Luke ventured as far as Leeds Met to study Multimedia Technology. A month after finishing the course he was in a web design agency, churning out half day designs and three day builds and drinking 5 mugs of tea a day. 6 months later he joined IMJack as a junior designer but his ability with HTML and CSS cemented his role as UI Developer, converting design to efficient, semantic and accessible code. The whole time maintaining a healthy 4 mugs of tea a day (pint mugs).

In September 2010 Luke moved to London and scoured the internet for a job in the big smoke! He found MetaBroadcast, they met, they talked, one thing led to another and now he’s working hard to deliver bulletproof HTML, CSS, JavaScript, node.js (you get the gist) across every browser you could think of (even IE) while also pushing a few pixels when asked.

When he’s not at MB Towers or working for other ZOOLDN customers, he’s probably watching Formula 1, watching a film, watching Twitter, watching the kettle or watching his back.

Blog posts by Luke

Jonathan Tweed - Product Manager

Jonathan joined MetaBroadcast after five years at the BBC. Much of that was spent working on the core metadata platform for BBC iPlayer and other BBC programme sites, but more recently he explored future directions for the BBC’s knowledge products and the BBC archive.

With an outstanding record in both early stage product development and leading established projects, Jonathan relies on a solid mix of editorial, design and technical skills to deliver innovative online media products. He has a degree in Computing from the University of Leeds.

A wannabe landscape photographer, Jonathan does his best to photograph London high and low. He also frequently travels outside of the city in search of a field in which to set up his tripod.

Blog posts by Jonathan

Tom McAdam - CTO

Tom joined MetaBroadcast after spending 9 years with UBS Investment Bank, some in foreign lands learning a southern drawl. At UBS he went all the way from graduate trainee to Director, developing and managing derivatives trading systems. Tom has now swapped all that for new challenges, as he has a wealth of experience in building large enterprise systems, and an urge to rediscover his taste for the fast paced world of young companies.

Tom is not exactly new to this media lark. He previously ran a web development agency with Chris, in the gold rush early days of the web. It’s a legacy that left him maintaining sites and servers for his nearest and dearest to this day, including kindly nudging Mirona to renew her precious domains! He’s seen quite a bit and, most importantly, acquired that priceless hands-on experience of making magic happen overnight with unparalleled energy and skill.

Tom graduated from Imperial College with an MEng in Computing, then spent some time travelling the world of people before entering the world of work. It’s no surprise then that he loves the great outdoors, either on foot, up the nearest mountain (sadly not near enough to London), or on two wheels around the roads of London, though he really prefers country lanes with fewer bendy buses.

Blog posts by Tom

Adam Horwich - Systems Engineer

Hailing from the Industrial Garden Town of Scunthorpe, Adam joined MetaBroadcast after cutting his sysadmin teeth for 3 years delivering Public Sector High Performance Computing Services and devising security and monitoring systems for the Science and Technology Facilities Council. He then ventured into the private sector where he rapidly rose from a Senior Linux Sysadmin to Director of Support Services for StreamUK. Feeling short of a challenge Adam then met Chris, Mirona and Tom and the rest is history.

Adam graduated from Sheffield Hallam University with a 1st Class (Hons) Degree in Computing. He’s been involved in media in one form or another since his Degree’s placement year delivering rich media and videoconferencing services for Manchester University.

If not found in the kitchen baking irresponsibly indulgent desserts, Adam likes to counterbalance such habits by being a bit of a gym enthusiast. He’s also an avid film fan, a videogame virtuoso, and a social media, err, maniac.

Blog posts by Adam

Liam Green-Hughes - Application Developer

Liam joined MetaBroadcast after six years with The Open University, during which he worked on a number of projects including the university’s first Facebook apps, its first experimental app for Boxee and the setting up of the OU research repository. Prior to that Liam worked in telematics, and for a telecommunications company in the area of billing.

He is a keen blogger and has been writing greenhughes.com since 2007. Liam’s site has proved popular with a mixture of technical articles, reviews and opinion. In his own time, he develops various applications, one of which allows people to see on their TV how their MP has been voting in Parliament. Despite this technical career and a lifelong interest in computing, Liam is a law graduate!

When not at a computer, he can be found cheering along his local ice hockey side, trying to play the keyboard or in a coffee shop chatting to friends.

Blog posts by Liam

Rita Lopes - Happiness Officer

With a degree in Organizational Psychology, Rita worked in Human Resources, Strategic Management and People Development. For the past four years, as a Consultant and Trainer for a Portuguese company, she coached people in public institutes, city halls, central government, health care, and communication regulating services. Always finding new things to do and loving a challenge, Rita also did a Masters Degree while juggling projects, clients, and business travel.

Ready for the next big thing, she found becoming a Happiness Officer to be thrilling. What’s not to like about helping people at MetaBroadcast feel really happy about their part in the company and the way things are done? Plus, to be even happier herself, she felt she needed to be in London, so this move was the perfect marriage of two things Rita loves!

As traveling makes her happy, in and from London Rita will continue her flirt with new and different cultures, meeting new people and visiting new places. All the time sending and receiving postcards, like the addict she is.

Blog posts by Rita

Oliver Hall - Engineer

Oliver came to MetaBroadcast mere weeks after graduating from Imperial College London with an MEng in Computing. He spent most of his time there in graphics related courses, completing a major project involving Stereo Camera Calibration, but upon finishing, decided that a change of scene might be good. He’s also completed internships in varying fields, including writing tools for a investment services company, and a six month period dealing with the challenges of low-latency middleware.

When he’s not at work, he can be found jamming on one of his extensive collection of guitars, or gaming into the small hours. He tries to balance his love of beer and cake with sessions at the gym and unhealthy levels of cycling.

Blog posts by Oliver

Tiffany Little - Office Genie

Tiffany happened upon MetaBroadcast aided by a kick and a shove from a well meaning friend, and at once she got excited by the prospect of making wishes come true and helping make everyone happy. Living with the ethos that every day’s a school day, she can't wait to know all about metadata, in parallel with her genie duties.

Tiffany has 5 years of top notch administrative experience under her belt, the last 3 of which were spent with EDF Energy planalysing and kidnapping executives. With a stack of serious qualifications and a desire for things to be flexible, fast and fluid, she seems destined to start granting people wishes.

When not a genie, Tiffany can be found neck deep in oil paint, drinking tea, dancing, taking photos, striking poses, humming and drinking... yet more tea. She’s rather fond of Neil Gaiman, starting with why, keyboards point and click adventures, pylons, robots and ninja art.

Blog posts by Tiffany

Augusto Uehara - Engineer

Augusto found MetaBroadcast through a friend some call the Office Genie, and in reading the blog he thought it looked like a fun gig, so here he is. Augusto was born and educated in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where he learned programming on his own, starting with Pascal, Basic and Autolisp. Eventually, he realised Java was going to be big, thus worth his time.

The rest is history. A history filled with Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and HSBC of late, as Augusto conquered London, but also community involvement and helping out an entrepreneurial-minded friend in the U.S. With a taste for young companies and future technologies, he's now on a quest for NoSQL.

In his spare time, Augusto is a comics geek, film geek, theatre geek, music geek, animation geek and he also organises... geek conventions. To sum it up, he is a big geek. Oh, and he also post lots of pictures of cats on Facebook.

Blog posts by Augusto

Andy Toone - Engineer

Andy has been working with Java for seventeen years. In that time he developed one of the earliest entirely online banking clients, for Smile, and has worked for companies as diverse as Vodafone and Cancer Research UK. With a passion for picking up the latest technologies, he is as at home with mobile applications as distributed server platforms handling terrabyte data sets.

Andy brings a wealth of experience and a pragmatic approach to building complete solutions. His feel for clean data visualisation led to him developing an Android TV Guide based on Atlas. From there it was natural for his relationship with Metabroadcast to grow. He will deny that the lure of cake or Foodie Fridays brought him to join the team.

Andy's enthusiasm for exciting solutions has extended to building a lovely house for his family. The fit is perfect for working at Metabroadcast—the new home also makes room for a small flock of chickens, providing eggs for some quite experimental baking.

Blog posts by Andy