Profile: Simon Frusher, BT

His cv includes time at Reed Publishing and Barclays, but his 20-year career began in technical staging on corporate events, conferences and roadshows. He started at BT in 1998 and in 2001, led the team to build a hi-tech auditorium and TV studios that on average have produced 250 events, more than 500 videos, and 150-plus live webcasts, each year.

- What are your main responsibilities?

Part of the day job is still to run the head office team for the auditorium and studio, but part of that increasingly includes developing new ways of using BT products, such as telepresence, to drive the use of virtual events, a growing trend at BT. My job is about exploring new technologies and repackaging old ones to meet the fast-paced communications needs of BT to its internal and external audiences.

- How has your role changed over the past year?

This year, we’ve taken on corporate video for the whole of BT, facilitating much of our output. Anything bar adverts comes through my team, and we consult on putting material together, and commissioning content. I’m currently pushing regular short magazine type videos updates, via a ‘catch up TV’ portal-which may well replace a number of more traditional comms channels. My team is a mixture of BT in-house and freelance resource, so if I don’t know how to do something, someone in my contact book will. It’s also changed in that BT’s focus on doing things smarter and as cost effectively as possible through function centralisation has meant that I’ve been working on the commercialisation of BT’s streaming offer and taking what we’ve been doing internally for 10 years and pushing that externally as part of our product portfolio.

- How has av changed in the telecommunications sector?

The credit crunch has pushed us all into levering efficiencies through skill sets and costs. It’s this that has led to the growth of videoconferencing, not just with telepresence but developments like desktop vcon, which has changed the whole industry and have had an obvious impact on the role of av across the board in the corporate world.

- What’s the most impressive piece of kit you’ve used?

The emergence of top quality vcon/telepresence has to be up there in terms of powerful technologies, but I don’t go far without my HD flip camera.

- What makes you tick?

I’m an old-school av man, and enjoy the face-to-face networking I get to do. But virtual communication, and everything it encompasses, is also a passion not just because of the technology behind the scenes, but also how we can improve them to really engage audiences. I love my rugby and though I cycle into work most days, I’m also a motorbike enthusiast.