data

After years of refusal by the global streaming companies to share their viewing data, new light will soon be shed on the performance of Netflix, Amazon and Disney+ – and PSB streaming services such as All 4 and BBC iPlayer – by the industry ratings body Barb.

From the late summer, Barb expects to publish regular viewing figures for SVoD services on the same basis as those for broadcast television. This will allow meaningful comparisons to be made for the first time.

Ericsson’s Steve Plunkett and EE’s Matt Stagg outlined the current state and potential of 5G, which is due to launch officially in 2020, to the Thames Valley Centre in mid-November.

As I find my seat among the 150 or more people who have come to Steve Dann’s latest Meetup, I know that the evening will be stimulating and, possibly, provocative. Dann, CEO of Amplified Robot, runs regular monthly Meetups, and this one, “AR and VR in medical education”, is being held in a lecture theatre at St Bartholomew’s Hospital.

London is an exciting place to be, as we live and work through the digital revolution in content creation and distribution.

One of the delights of my job is meeting people and discovering nuggets, as I call them, of insight that help build ideas and solve problems. I find the more random they are, the better.

Anya Hindmarch, the designer, has a family saying “Things come of things” – so never say no to a meeting which might seem a bit leftfield.