17 GENIUS INTERVIEW Barbara Lange
FEED: And you’ve also been cooperating with the HPA (Hollywood Professional Association) and helping them put on events? BL: We partnered with the HPA a couple of years ago. Our stas are blended now and SMPTE run both organisations. That’s been a happy relationship for the last few years and our goal is to blend the technical, SMPTE side with the more creative side of the HPA. It’s a much younger organisation than SMPTE and we really want to help them grow. HPA has a strong place in Hollywood and want to grow that internationally. FEED: We’re in a new, all-digital world, where technologies can evolve and change rapidly. How does a standards body, whose job traditionally is to provide stability, cope with that onslaught of change? What is SMPTE’s function in the new environment? BL: There are groups in the world who say, “We don’t really need standards and standards bodies anymore”. My opinion, and maybe I’m biased, is that in this time of rapid change, there’s a stronger need for a body that cares about due process and still develops a concensus-based standard and, most importantly, is there for the long haul. It’s easy for a group to get together and say, “We’re going to do a specification and we’ll all agree and get it done in
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six months”. But then what happens next? What happens when interest in that technology goes away? Or the people supporting that organisation lose interest? Or they go bankrupt or get acquired? I think organisations like SMPTE and other SDOs (standards developing organisations) are there to curate that technology, not just now but for the future. I think it’s vital that you have that reliability. We care so much about that due process and the curation of technology for the long haul. I think there are other organisations that are there to solve a quick problem – and that might be only for a couple of years – but then what happens? What happens when you build a process based on a technology that was short and sweet at the time, but isn’t curated for the long haul. What happens when you need to fix something? Do you start over? That’s when you need a standard that has longevity and reliability. I think that’s terribly important, especially in these times of change. And over the years we’ve seen that bear out, even from the very beginning. The reason SMPTE was formed was that when
the motion picture industry was starting out there was a lot of chaos. There was a lot of competition around technology, and the industry came together and said, “Wait, this is crazy. We’re not doing ourselves any favours. We need a standard way to operate”. Standards work throughout any industry. Whether it’s finance, health care, consumer products, standards are the baseline that industry can grow on top of. But you’re right that due process takes time, and sometimes people don’t want to wait. We are using more and more software tools to help achieve greater eiciencies, whether they’re collaboration tools or software hubs, like GitHub. As the industry moves more toward software FEED: Has the increasing importance of software in the industry altered or expanded the membership of SMPTE? BL: We have seen some churn, even in the last year or so. But we are seeing new members coming in – the Googles, the Amazons, the Netflixes – and they solutions, we’re becoming more a software-based standards body.
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