10 questions to Michael Sparks, OS Guru at BBC (Part 1)

We've drawn up a list of ten questions for Michael Sparks who is a BBC Senior Research Engineer, specialised in and passionate about Open source. He tells us more about his encounter with the OS movement and more interestingly, some very very good insight on the Kamaelia project. Brace yourself for the 6000+ words answers. Part 2 will be published tomorrow.

First of, let me preface my answers by saying that these answers must be construed generally as personal opinions and preconceptions, and not in any shape or form an official BBC position. I do not speak for the BBC here despite working there, and despite speaking on behalf of the BBC at Linux World London.

1. Who is Michael Sparks?

I'm currently a Senior Research Engineer who works at the BBC, a computer science graduate from Manchester University and have spent my professional career prior to the BBC working on scaling large scale network systems. I'm a software engineer, and I'm interested in improving the tools we use for creating systems both large and small, so that we can get on and implement all the cool tools that SciFi inspires. I also like cats and being random :-)