Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)

Our ABC

From staff mentoring in the Hatchery, presenting at our labs and symposiums, to most recently inviting students to inform a cultural change program, the ABC has been a long-time supporter of our activities.

Nico Earnshaw, Experience Producer in the ABC’s Research and Development arm, worked with Hatchery students on a project where he asked them to come up with ways for future ABC audiences to engage with news stories. Most memorable, says Earnshaw, was a team that came up with an app. “It was quite a simple idea but the line they used to accompany it was ‘You don’t watch half a movie, so why would you follow half the story?’”

What was interesting about the line was that a similar one had been suggested in an internal ABC workshop a few years earlier. What it gave us, he says, is external validation for our ideas. It also challenged the ABC to engage in media experiences outside of its current offerings. “Partnering with outside organisations like UTS allows us to bring in ideas that are too outside the box for the organisation to contemplate but are actually quite realistic.”

Margaret Cassidy, Deputy Director of Technology, agrees. She recently invited students to take part in a series of workshops to look at how the ABC could incorporate principles of lean startups, and design thinking, into their work. “The students are there to bring in a different point of view. They bring value because they make people think outside of an organisational context.”

“As a precinct if we can break down those barriers and people can contribute more, you’re going to have better ideas and solutions.”

Cassidy says that with UTS’s history, of having strong partnerships with industry, it makes sense for the university to be looking outside of itself as well. At the end of the day we’re both about improved problem solving. “This has to be a good thing, not just for our precinct, but for Australia, as it aspires to be a service-led knowledge-based country.”