25 years ago, through one of those chains of events that often transform our lives, I got a job in which my boss told me that pretty much the first thing I had to do was get on a plane and fly to the other side of the world. I found myself in the F1 pit lane in Melbourne in 2000.
This was my first ever experience of a big live television event, and I immediately knew that the was the right place for me. From that moment on I immersed myself in the technology and practices of the broadcast industry. I learnt that the absolute top priority in live television was that everything had to work perfectly first time, because there never was a second chance.
So, for 25 years, I have been in the heart of the live television industry, learning as much as I can about what producers are trying to achieve, and as much as possible about the technology that empowers them. I love learning all there is to know about making productions better, faster and more secure.
After a while I stepped back from doing it myself to providing a service for the companies and individuals who are making the best television. I moved into sales, but I really had no interest in being a box-shifter - there are plenty of distributors out there who do that and do it well.
From a purely selfish point of view, I wanted to keep my knowledge at the cutting edge, to continue to know all there is to know. Now, though, I offer that knowledge to others who need it, through Hornets Tech.
I have gone six paragraphs in this blog before saying that technology is changing fast in our industry. But it really is, and it is raising huge issues. That is why I believe that the industry needs people like me and my company: to demystify the transformative changes; and to empower creative talents with new ways of using the technology.
From the start of television until really very recently, producers were limited by what the hardware could do. Broadcast and production platforms were built, and were largely inflexible - you had to fit your creative concepts into the architecture you had.
The rapid advances of the last few years - software-defined systems, miniaturisation, IP connectivity and more - have put the producer in the driving seat. The creative team sets out what a broadcast should look like, and the engineers have to build a platform and a workflow to make it happen.
Let me be clear: this is a great place to be. It makes live production an even more exciting place to be working. Cookie-cutter standardised productions are being replaced by a vision of how each single event can be unique, bringing new insights and engagement for ever-more demanding audiences.
This is where Hornets Tech comes in. We work closely with some of the key developers who are driving the advances in television. They are throwing up all manner of new concepts and possibilities: our role is to completely understand what they can do, and bring those capabilities to production companies in the language of production.
IP connectivity, for example, brings the real possibility of remote and collaborative production workflows. But there completely natural nervousness around areas like latency - will all the signals arrive at the same time or will some be so delayed that we cannot cut them live? Security, too, is a huge issue: no-one wants to lose critical feeds to pirates or cyber-attackers.
Wireless cameras are hugely attractive for producers, getting many more intimate viewpoints which add value to the coverage. But there are many different ways of providing the radio link: which is going to provide the most reliability, the most security, the least latency?
Our promise is that we really understand even the latest in technology, and how practical and affordable it will be in the context of each production. Calmly and clearly, we will help you put the right equipment together into a complete system that performs the way you want it, allowing you to concentrate on capturing all the action.
Hornets Tech is a UK and Ireland distributor for the best manufacturers in the sector, including Domo Broadcast Systems for highly stable RF cameras and SipRadius for the most advanced IP connectivity. But if, having talked your requirements through, we see that a better solution lies elsewhere then we will tell you. More than that, we will introduce you to people we think you can trust to deliver.
It all comes back to where I started. Live television is a fantastically exciting place to be, but it depends upon complex technology working together, completely reliably, every time. Our goal is to talk to users and developers, to turn those technical demands - however advanced, however challenging - into a cost-effective, practical solution.