I have now had the pleasure of visiting the BBC. Even though I know a few people who work at the BBC—and many more who used to—I’ve never had the opportunity before to get a look under Auntie Beeb’s new media skirts. Then I got an email asking if I’d be willing to come in and chat about microformats.
I’m always more than willing to rabbit on at length about microformats. Just wind me up and watch me go. It’s particulary pleasurable to natter on to a bunch of smart people working at Europe’s largest website.
There seems to be quite a lot of interest in microformats at the BBC. I spoke in a meeting room packed to the gills with people from a number of different departments. There are quite a few separate areas where people are already experimenting with hCalendar, hCard and rel-tag. Of those, hCalendar is clearly the forerunner: consider that schedule listings are essentially displaying a series of events.
Seeing as I was over at the BBC anyway, I took the opportunity to meet up with Ian for lunch. We compared notes on Hackday and he let me know the the Backstage folks were intrigued by Hackfight. This could be the start of a beautiful friendship.
With my visit to the BBC in East London at end, I hopped on the Central Line all the way across town for a quick visit to the Last.fm HQ. I always like getting a behind-the-scenes look at websites that I make use of on a daily basis. Hannah even managed to take some time out of her busy schedule to go for a coffee—it’s those CBS dollars at work.
All in all, it was a fun day out in London. But I was still glad to get back to Brighton… especially ‘cause I made it back in time for the fun at the Geek Wine Thing. London’s fine in small doses but I wouldn’t want to do that commute every day.