Tag: projects

1 year ago I left BBC R&D, what’s happen since?

1 year ago I officially left the BBC after just short of 21 years.
Looking back at the post I wrote about how I had been since August 2024, when I first learned my position was at risk and the one I wrote in March 2025. A heck of a lot has happened in the last year. I now have my own business doing a number of different things, but all still focused on the public space. Although it’s been pretty stressful, especially at the start I have found some moments of joy and pleasure.

One of the simple but simple but hardest things is rethinking my role. I still occasionally use a bio which mentions working at the BBC as the Senior Firestarter. I have been calling myself Founder & Firestarter, which is ok. But thanks to Angie & Jennifer, I now have a better description of what I’m doing.

I’m a Digital futurologist, using data and insight to change people’s lives for the better.

Within the BBC, I was always a bit of an intrapreneur always pushing for new projects and approaches. I tended to bend the rules because they were not fit for purpose, be it forwarding calendar invites to my one and only calendar (separation of work and pleasure was never going to be the same for me). The result of this meant my network was vast and diverse. It was never just work, it was driving to a societal public purpose. I was never going to switch to a capitalist stance, and struggled when going to a few new networking events.

I become an advisor to quite a few different projects/organisations. Starting with the Amplify project (the only media related thing I’m doing now), then for the Open Rights Group (something I couldn’t ever do as a BBC employee) and Johannes asked me if I’d be interested in doing the same for the Fediforum. This was just before the future of social report was finally made public, thanks to existing colleagues (Bill, Antonia, Tristan, Todd and others).

My interest in the future of social connected with where I wanted to go and had pushed hard for the BBC to take a lot more seriously. I’m starting to push a bit harder on the social stuff as I have a big interest in how people meet, date, play and less alone lone generally. Currently I have a podcast series around modern intimacy, ideas/plans around the next generation of social platforms (the fediverse = Activitypub & ATproto) and finally my own book which I likely will self publish along with the dating manifesto.

My main work which actually pays is working with New_Public on the Public Service Incubator. It’s a good position and hope to be doing a lot more with them as the project matures to the open web.

During the year I did have some other roles I was asked about but I turned them down as I felt I moved on from a lot of the media stuff. Although Perceptive and adaptive media stuff is waiting for the right time. to rethink it Likewise, I had a lot of people ask about AI related stuff, which I have spoke about at a few events already. To date AI still doesn’t feature on my CV.

Screen of awardees at Mydata 2025 conference
You can see my face on the 2rd row, 3 from the right

My interest in data is still important with the digital legacy work, especially the machine readable wishes project with the first workshop at MyData 2025. It was also great to be given an award for my impact on Mydata over the years. Another place I have been focusing on more then previously. At FOSDEM 2026, I gave 2 talks. One a workshop on the machine readable wishes and the second one around Human data interaction, its a talk I thought about while at My Data 2025 and participating into their updated constitution.

Ian and Sam talking digital legacy from the FOSDEM social stage
Sam talking alongside myself at FOSDEM 2026

I have also met a few people on the way, a couple of them starting working for me (as such). Sam, was introduced to me by his mother who I knew from BBC World Service. He’s a highly skilled developer and interested in socially important projects which work for people. Hence the machine readable wishes was a ideal connection point. I have been thinking about the setup like a work experience with mentoring. The strange thing is that Sam isn’t the only one…

Ian Forrester talking in London to a crowd
Me talking about AI to the private heathcare industry

Currently I’m at a crossroads because I agreed to myself I would give the business one year… Its been just over a year now. I actually setup the business in mid April.

I like the freedom of running my own business but I don’t like the instability of chasing jobs. I have also made things tricky by working on multiple things. I had some advice from Jennifer who was slight shocked when I said I would give it a year and see (one of the decisions I made with my coaching. just before leaving the BBC) .To be honest the business isn’t doing too bad but I really hoped I would have some lecturing to add to the part time work and startup projects.

Balancing what it would be like to go back into full time work with the interesting life of running my own business is top of mind. I’m also super aware of the difficulty of getting a full time job right now. So many of my older friends are struggling with applying, gong through many rounds of interviews and unrealistic salaries. The tech industry is so full of lay-offs and insatiability. It seems to make sense to take advantage of personality, thoughts and build something for me.

As a whole its amazing where I was a year ago and wouldn’t have imagined I would be where I am now. But I can’t rest, I need to move forward as I have much I want to do, setup and achieve…

Maybe the firestarter is still apart of me… ?

The way of the firestarter?

3 graphs showing the design process from start of a project to the end
The way of the firestarter’s design process, treat as alpha version 00.2

I was talking with a colleague in London the other week. One of the great thing about working in the same space face to face is being able to noodle together. (I won’t talk about any endless whiteboarding right now).

Anyway one of the things which was mentioned was the design process being messy before it becomes clearer. (Without going into the number of different design methodologies). While they were drawing the multiple iterations, I started to think about how I work.

This is when I started to draw something like the bottom graph and started thinking to what degrees the existing methodologies are incompatible with a collaborative future. I don’t mean just co-designing together but actually building things which people can take forward in a slightly different direction or space.

When I drew it I thought about how I like to starting and proving the worth through research/experiments but also attracting more people into the project to share ideas and thoughts. Ideally there would be other lines which intersect with lines joining and leaving I guess? My old manager use to describe me as a different type of researcher but I can never remember what he called it.

I got a few examples I was describing when drawing. they mainly come from the Perceptive Media space including the Living room of the future and hopefully Adaptive podcasting soon. But even looking at the BBC Backstage era of creating a platform for others to explore above and beyond.

Makerba.se documents all projects

The Beauty Project

I recently joined makerba.se.

Makerbase is:

  • A place to tell the world what you made, and to find out who made the things you love.

  • Edited by everyone. You can change and add to anything that you see.

  • A way to see projects: Stuff like apps and web sites and digital works of art. (Not companies or employers.)

  • A list of makers: People who create projects, described by what they’vedone, not their job titles.

  • Limited access, for now, while we get things ready for everyone. We’ll add you to the waitlist if someone hasn’t already added you as a maker.

I like the concept, which allows you to document all types of project. When I say project I mean anything you class as a project. This means anything!

A while ago I mentioned documenting geekdinner and the past generally. I tried to do this with Wikipedia but my entries were rejected. Makerbase seems much more apt for this type of thing. The whole thing is a wiki, so you can easily link and join items together. It reminds me of Lanyrd in underlying structure, which is good. But like lanyrd I wondered about building up this tangled web of information and what happens when investment goes into it?

So before I signed up I read through the terms/end user licence agreement which was actually really well written with plain english. Theres nothing about what happens if the service ends, I was looking for a data portability angle but I’m sure its coming… something to tweet them about.

Is this a linkedin killer? No I don’t think so, its filling in the area in between linkedin and the stuff which happens on Github. Neither have the space for things like geeks talk sexy or personal projects like learning a diabolo trick. I can already imagine the links with other sites like meetup and even lanyrd.

I like it and the only thing better would be if it was distributed instead of centralised. It seems worthy of backing.