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.

After spending 2010 perfecting the art of meat brining and sous-vide cooking at home using makeshift contraptions, Chris has dedicated himself to serious barbecuing and smoking in 2011. He’s never happy when it rains, which is quite daring for a Brit, but then again he’s been vindicated by barbecuing in December.

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 one of the first Londoners to join Twitter in August 2006.

In 2011 Mirona turned a second floor city terrace into an urban garden, complete with native hedges, flowering plants, trees, herbs, fruit, veg and salads ramping up to over 150 species if all were to succeed. The only worrying aspect, from her point of view, is the variety and volume of pests attracted by such an unexpected temple of edibility in Central London.

Blog posts by Mirona

Dan Bell - Engineer

Dan joined us from Altio where he developed a web application framework for super scary stocks and banking information (amongst other things). Experience of aggregating lots of information from disparate sources held him in good stead for joining our development team.

Dan received his degree in Computing from Bournemouth University, during which time he worked on mobile phone protocol stacks. Previously in a band, he’s knee deep into live acts these days. Dan also dabbles in video game development, and sky’s the limit for his future interests.

Currently, he is trying some ‘traditional’ engineering: designing a device that will keep his hair out of his eyes whilst maintaining his air of coolness.

Blog posts by Dan

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.

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 and CSS across every browser you could think of (even IE) while pushing a few pixels when asked.

When he’s not at MB Towers or working on small personal projects 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

Lucy Turner - Office Manager

Born and raised in the north of New Zealand, Lucy joined us in November 2011 after a pampering holiday in Hawaii. Both of which mean she’s not afraid of a little bit of snow. Lucy saw working for MetaBroadcast as an opportunity to enhance her media skills in the European capital of tech, as well as learn about an interesting and diverse industry.

She brings a Bachelor of Dance, experience in event management, and a year spent as the first point of contact for Parmco Sales Ltd. During that time, Lucy saved enough to move to the UK for some life and work experience. And sure enough, Grace soon connected her with MetaBroadcast, thus reinforcing the budding tradition of always having at least one New Zealander on board.

While in the UK, Lucy will binge on musical theatre and dance performances, and travel up and down the country’s unreliable railways with glee.

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.