United Kingdom | Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers

The UK Section holds monthly evening meetings, where we get together to socialise and discuss topics impacting our industry. Below are write-ups of our meetings in 2024.

May meeting in The North

SMPTE UK North: Launch Event!

On 1 May 2024, 75 SMPTE members and friends met at Salford University's facility at MediaCity for our very first event of SMPTE UK North.

SMPTE UK's Chair, John Ellerton, opened the meeting, talking about SMPTE and the UK Section.

We were then treated to an in-depth tour of Dock 10's impressive studio facilities!

The main part of the meeting was an interactive debate about the future of SMPTE in the North of England. Lots of great ideas were shared. There is clearly a lot of energy and enthusiasm for networking and knowledge-sharing!

As ever for a SMPTE UK meeting, there were ample refreshments, this time courtesy of our kind sponsors, Dock10. Many thanks to Dock 10 for this, and for providing the studio tours. Many thanks also to Salford University for providing the meeting room.

April meeting

SMPTE UK debates... The future of media infrastructure

On Thu 25 Apr 2024, 85 SMPTE UK members and friends met at the iconic BT Tower in London.

BT Tower at Night

Our evening was all about the future of infrastructure for media production and distribution. As we head inexorably towards a cloud-centric world, interoperability remains paramount to maintain inter-working between organisations. But innovation is moving at such a fast pace, is this happening or are we facing a number of closed, proprietary environments?

Andy Rayner, CTO at Appear chaired this evening's fascinating debate with his industry expert panel: Richard Hastie, Kieran Kunhya and David Atkins. Unfortunately Claire Wilkie, our 4th panellist was unable to join us.

This event was filmed, and a video will be posted soon.

March meeting

SMPTE UK explores: “How do I keep my skills current as everything changes?"

On Thu 21 Mar 2024, 50 SMPTE UK members and friends including students from Salford and Ravensbourne Universities met at Eviden's MidCity Place offices in London for an evening exploring what it takes to develop as an engineer in media today.

We explored career transformations from broadcast to cloud engineering and new age outside-broadcast thinking; sharing areas to focus learning on and what new broadcast systems really look like.

We heard from a number of speakers including Matt Dickinson, Cloud Engineering Manager within Sky's Origination department who looked at some of the most cutting edge cloud playout workflows and CI/CD methodologies.

From MCR operators to solutions architects, we explored where the industry is going and how to continue learning as the technology and workflows change around us!

We are grateful to Techex for funding the ample refreshments, and to Eviden for hosting the evening.

February meeting

SMPTE UK explores… The Future of Gaming

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Photos credit to Wren Wood.

On 14 February 30 SMPTE members and friends met at TechUK in London for a fascinating evening as part of their season on Industries of the Future. Half of the attendees were students, including members from Aberdeen, Salford and York Universities!

We heard from Rory Daniels, TechUK's Programme Manager for Emerging Technologies as he described the emerging technologies that are set to underpin the gaming industry of tomorrow, including AI, AR/VR/XR/spatial computing, cloud computing, advanced semiconductors (GPUs), blockchain, IoT, and drones. He explained the fundamentals of the technologies themselves, how he expects these to converge in interesting and significant ways, and how the experience of game creation or gaming may change as a result. He also brought in examples from some of techUK's member organisations, such as NVIDIA, Xbox and Tencent.

Joseph Teasdale from Enders Analysis then discussed their recent Gaming Industry report, covering the business of gaming technology.

Finally we heard from Louis Arrigoni, Cinematic Video Producer and Creative Designer for Games. Louis talked about his career journey from a BSc in Audio Engineering into the world of gaming and some of the fascinating projects he has worked on along the way.

We're grateful to TechUK for hosting this evening event for us, and for providing ample refreshments!

TechUK is the UK's technology trade association, focussed on shaping policy, accelerating innovation and developing markets. Find out more here.

January meeting

SMPTE UK celebrates... Young Innovators and Emerging Talent

Our annual event bringing students, graduates and industry people together was an immense success!

On 25 Jan 2024, 200 SMPTE members and friends, including over 130 students and young talent met at Sky's Central Cinema for an evening celebrating the achievements of young innovators and showing pathways into media engineering. We saw some really interesting lightening talks from recent graduates at Anna Valley, EVS and Sky; and then a very encouraging panel featuring young talent at Solent, NEP and Channel 4. This was then followed by a time of networking where young talent were deliberately mixed with groups of industry experts. There was lots of great conversation and many connections made!

We're incredibly grateful to Sky for hosting the event, providing more than ample supplies of pizza and drinks, and also for providing tours of the Sky Sports studios for students in the afternoon before the event.