Maggie Philbin

In 1986 I demonstrated an ambitious project on Tomorrow’s World. Over a  million people (mainly schoolchildren) took part and contributed over 147,819 pages of text and pictures about their local area to create the BBC Domesday Project – a pair of interactive videodiscs to celebrate the 900th anniversary of the original Domesday Book. If you brace yourself for 80s hair and shoulder pads, you can watch the original piece here

The equipment needed to play the discs cost over £4000, so it’s not surprising that only a few schools and libraries made the investment. This thorough, yet  idiosyncratic record of life in 1986 is now available to explore and update on the BBC Domesday Reloaded site.

Back in the 80’s we showed how it was possible to “search” and find the information and invited viewers to tell us where they lived so we could track down pictures of their local area. In today’s internet world, it may seem extraordinary but people were delighted to see their village shop come up on the screen.

A Domesday system at the Vintage Computer Festival 2010, Bletchley, UK

There were two discs in the Domesday Project package: the Community Disc and the National Disc. The Community disc is map-based and shows Britain as seen by the people who live there while the National disc is topic based and provides an overview of Britain. The country was divided  4 km wide by 3 km blocks, based on Ordnance Survey grid references. Each block could contain up to 3 photographs and a number of short reflections on life in that area. More detailed maps of key urban areas and blocks of 40×30 km and regional views were captured, allowing “zoom-out” and “zoom-in” functions.

If you check out the block containing York Minster, you won’t find a picture of  the cathedral , the three photographs show a lady ironing clothes, a row of terraced houses and a street scene.

Andy Finney ,who worked on the original project once wrote, “If I personally have  one regret about Domesday, it is that many of the people who contributed to it never got to see the results of their efforts”

He wasn’t alone in thinking this. A 2002 piece in The Observer reflected on the irony of how the original Domesday Book could still be read after 925 years, whilst the then 15 yr old one could not.

He and the team must be thrilled to see their project breathe again, as we all have the chance not only to look back to 1986 but to update all those pictures. And who knows, maybe York Minster will get a look in.

Today I’ll stand up in front of teenagers from 30 schools at the Madejski Stadium in Reading and introduce them to some of the coolest people working in Science, Engineering and Technology. With fabulous support from world class technology companies, TeenTech gives them the  chance to handle the very latest gadgets, carry out experiments and see the reality of the 21st century workplace.

Four years ago, I stood up to deliver a conference keynote and realised I was fed up with talking about the need to help teenagers see opportunities in Science and Technology , the time had come to do something myself.

I went into schools, chatted to thirteen year olds and realised that although they enjoyed going to places like the Science Museum, what they really wanted was to meet real engineers and scientists to see first hand what they did and what they were like as people. When the Open University ran their “Draw a Scientist” as part of their “Invisible Witness” project in 2008, age old stereotypes were very much alive. Although teenagers love using technology, not many understand they could be designing and creating that technology themselves. I wanted to change that.

The result was TeenTech, a unique collaboration between companies, organisations like the IoD, IET, Education Business Partnerships and myself.

So TeenTech sets out to give young teenagers a chance to meet the brilliant people I feel I was so lucky to meet on on Tomorrow’s World. Inspiring, creative and often working on wild and impossible ideas I never believed would ever see the light of day. They’ll meet engineers from BBC R&D responsible for  HDTV and 3D and now working on surround video and projects like Piero, which will enhance our enjoyment of the Olympic Games. They can find out what it’s like to work at Google, how to come up with ideas for home technology with Sky, JVC or Sony ,what it means to be a BT apprentice or develop new products for Proctor & Gamble.

This will be the third TeenTech we’ve done at Reading and we’re now going to run the event elsewhere. In July and September there will be TeenTechs in Humberside and Kent. So if you’d like your company to be involved with helping young people understand what they need to do if they want to engineers their own future, do get in touch.

Meanwhile , we are indebted to the time and energy the companies put into the event, thinking carefully about how to bring their science and technology to life. So a huge thanks to the following for their superb support. They’ll all need to lie in a darkened room for a week afterwards but they’ll know they’ve made a difference

3M, AWE, Berkshire College of Agriculture, BT, BBC, British Computer Society, CADline, Foster Wheeler, Google, IET, Intel, Imago, JVC, Oracle, PepsiCo, Proctor&Gamble, RAF,Research in Motion, Scottish& Southern,Sky, Sony, Specsavers, Syngenta, The Smallpiece Trust, University of Reading, UK Timber Foundation

I said goodbye to one of the most important people in my life this week. Rosemary Gill, the brilliantly intelligent and wickedly rebellious woman who invented SwapShop and Saturday Morning Television, died on Tuesday evening.

I owe everything to Rose- not only my BBC career – but also, because she introduced me to my future husband, my daughter who is named after her.

Unusually for people working in TV, she was completely self-effacing, refusing to take  credit for her sheer genius in putting together the first truely interactive television show.

Typically, in this picture, taken on the set of the very last Swap Shop, you can hardly see her but she’s the woman just to the left of John and behind Noel’s hair.

There’ll be official obituaries in The Times and in Ariel; Rose’s career went right back to the days of live drama at Alexandra Palace and she was hugely respected in the BBC.

But I first met her in April 1978, when she interviewed me for that fabulous job on Saturday mornings. The only problem was I hadn’t the faintest idea what the job was, as Rose had deliberately placed a box numbered ad , not mentioning the BBC or indeed the name of the show. Years later, I asked her why she’s taken a punt on that raw student from Manchester and she said, “Well I asked you one question about your boots and you talked for twenty minutes, so I thought you’d probably be alright”

She was astute, intuitive, with an enormous sense of fun. The planning meetings took place on Friday lunchtimes over a bottle of Frascati and the show was completely unscripted . Only the first 30 seconds, with it’s complicated series of ten second cues to trails were ever rehearsed. Noel remembers the way she would walk across the studio floor, giving him the thumbs up no matter how badly that sequence had run. He suspects she then tore up to the gallery to give some unfortunate a complete bollocking.

She was an inspiration. And over the last thirty years has been a very great friend.

Thank you Rose,for everything.

I’ve just been to see Reading’s biggest ever Christmas present. You’ve probably heard about the disruption to rail services  over Christmas, while they transfer operations from the old Reading signal box to a state of the art centre in Didcot and then haul a massive new 1000 ton steel bridge , which they’ve been building next to the station, to it’s final position across the Caversham Road where it will carry extra tracks. They say it’s the biggest operation on the line since the days of Brunel. They’ll be working 24/7 over  Christmas and New Year to make sure everything’s up and running by 4th January.

I’ve been listening to stories about this for the past few months but this morning, it was awesome to stand in the old post office yard, looking up at the massive completed steel structure, clad in scaffolding, having it’s final waterproofing before the the big move begins on 31st December. It will take four days to get to it’s final position and the move has been carefully rehearsed on CAD systems, as there’s just 25cm of clearance between the bridge and the offices it passes on it’s way to Caversham Rd.

They won’t be using a crane , instead it will be moved by a self propelled modular transporter with  72 axles, each axle turning independently to allow for very precise movements.

If you live nearby and fancy a different start to 2011, the best time to watch the move will be from 8am on Jan 1st. They’re building a mini- grandstand for spectators.

I’ve never been in a signal box before, so it was great to have a final look at the room where they set 3,700 train routes a day. It wasn’t what I expected. The dark, womb -like atmosphere, the sixties equipment and the silent focus. It is the quietest place on the station.

If you’re a rail buff, check out the signal box website.

Back in the day the Reading Panel Signal Box was ‘BR’s widest ranging signal box’. But this will be the last year a Christmas tree lifts the atmospheric twilight, before progress and the new Thames Valley signal box at Didcot sweep it away.