Hi everyone,

It is now just over 80 days since I took on the IPTC Managing Director role on the 1st of June, so I thought it would be a good time to reflect on my experience so far.

I actually started my IPTC “life” in April at the IPTC 2018 Spring Meeting in Athens, Greece – thankfully my previous project allowed me to go to Athens for a few days to meet everyone and see first hand how an IPTC face-to-face meeting works. Everyone was very friendly and welcoming, and I look forward to seeing many familiar and new faces at the Autumn 2018 meeting in Toronto – the hotel booking link will be released in the next few days so keep an eye out! And if you’re not an IPTC member but you’re interested in speaking or attending, see the call for participation for the IPTC Toronto meeting that we released recently and please do get in touch.

Having worked for many media companies over the years – building content management and syndication systems at Fairfax Media and the BBC, working on long and short term projects for various media organisations (Associated Press, TV3 Ireland, BBC Worldwide and Newsworks) and co-founding a startup in the industry (NewsFixed, since acquired by Paydesk) – I have a broad background in the technology side of the media industry. So it’s great to work with some of those organisations plus many more, helping to set the standards that bring the industry together.

Working with the previous MD Michael Steidl has been a breeze. His care and attention to detail meant that handover was very easy, and hopefully I can continue to uphold the high standards that he has set. I wish him the best of luck in enjoying his retirement, and am very thankful that he has offered to stay on as chair of the IPTC Photo Metadata and Video Metadata working groups!

When most people in the industry think of IPTC, they probably think of the technical standards or the controlled vocabularies – but I really see IPTC as a group of people from companies across the news and media industry who are working together to solve the sorts of problems that can only be solved by working together. I really hope that we can continue to work together to solve more problems in the future. If you have ideas, please get in touch – I can be reached at mdirector@iptc.org.

I also plan to get out to many industry events and conferences to meet and learn from people from the industry who may or may not be IPTC members. Thanks to those I have already met at the IPTC Photo Metadata Conference co-located with CEPIC in Berlin in May, the Henry Stewart Digital Asset Management conference in London in June, and I’m looking forward to going to the IBC Conference in Amsterdam in September.

Taking on the role with IPTC has coincided with another change in my life: as the MD role is remote, my wife and I took the opportunity to move to my wife’s home town, the tech hotspot of Tallinn, Estonia. We’re having a great time getting settled here, and if you ever happen to be in Tallinn, please get in touch, I would love to show you around!

Brendan Quinn
IPTC Managing Director