"Serving Up another Wimbledon Winner"
Event Report
On Wednesday, 18th January 2006 at Microsoft's offices in Reading, members of BCS PROMS-G and their guests,
were treated to an entertaining presentation by Roger Blake. Roger, now retired from IBM,
described the challenges of, and technology behind, supporting the Wimbledon Tennis Championships,
where the team managed by IBM grows from a handful during the rest of the year to about 150 people
during the 2 weeks of the tournment.
Last night I attended my first PROMS-G meeting at Microsoft's offices in Reading.
It was a fascinating description of a unique situation - managing the ongoing IT solution for and
running projects to support Wimbledon. The speaker, Roger Blake now retired from IBM, showed us:
- a unique world-class reference site for new technologies
- how no slippage possible as the event runs for two weeks each year
- how to go from an on going operations team of four people to up to one hundred and sixty over the Wimbledon weeks.
We heard some great stories of how lessons were learned, sometimes painfully, and how these
lessons help to ensure a smooth and successful delivery year after year.
Penny Pullan
This was an excellent session and Roger Blake is a fascinating and informative speaker.
The material was well pitched, giving a good appreciation of the project management issues
as well as a good flavour of the detailed systems he delivered.
I learnt a great deal and enjoyed the evening.
Although some of the slides were a little too wordy, Roger presented
an excellent verbal message throughout his presentation
Thanks for organising.
Adrian Harwood
Roger's presentation is available for download (5017k).
| 