MPs defeat journalists in technology challenge Articles / News Date: Oct 12, 2009 - 08:08 PM |
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While some PITCOM Parliamentary members sipped wine on the Terrace of the House of Lords on 23rd June, others were pitting their technical knowledge half a mile away in Church House in a stern struggle against teams of journalists and civil servants in the third “BT Technology Challenge” quiz. (Some of those left behind on the terrace see it differently; according to Alun Michael MP and Ian Taylor MP, they were hard at work on the serious business of PITCOM and Parliament - the "high-tech activity of social networking" - while those who took part in the Challenge were "playing hookey".) Either way, the purpose of this “Challenge” was to determine whether MPs or journalists are more IT-ignorant. BT launched the first of these MP v Journalist contests in 2006 after a challenging article in the Guardian with the title “Techno world has MPs beat”. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2006/mar/09/idcards.insideit . That year, a team of MPs called Tel-Star, led by Derek Wyatt, shamed the journalists by winning. A description of that contest by Wendy Grossman, a member of the Guardian’s team of journalists, appeared at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/29/mp_guardian_tech_comp/ A year later, the Guardian had its revenge after a sing-off against a team from the BBC, led by Rory Cellan-Jones, its technology correspondent. The teams of MPs were shamefully defeated by the hacks http://www.pitcom.org.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=172. This year, Rory Cellan Jones of the BBC was the compere for the show, or as he presumptuously preferred to style himself “Mr Speaker” – a day after the House of Commons elected John Bercow as the real Speaker. Tactfully, he was sparing with jokes about duck houses. From time to time he vented his anger at BT’s automated scoring software, which produced dodgy results. Cellan Jones described the software as ‘positively Iranian’. The two, often unruly, teams of MPs were the 2006 winners, Tel-Star, including Derek Wyatt, Chris Mole and Fabian Hamilton, led by John Robertson (joint chairman of apComms), and “The people’s choice”, made up of PITCOM stalwart Ian Stewart, Lembit Opik and Gerry Sutcliffe, with their Captain John Whittingdale (Chairman of the Select Committee on Culture Media and Sport.) The Civil Servants’ team was “Business as usual”, from the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, captained by Stephen O’Fee. The journalistic opposition were the “Guardianistas”, the winners last time, led by Charles Arthur, the editor of Thursday’s Technology Guardian, - who turned up late and found his team stuck at the bottom of the contestants. There was also “The Bright Sparks”, a team from Computing magazine, led by its editor Bryan Glick. The “Daily Telegraph” prudently did not field a team. Most of the quiz consisted of multiple-choice questions like: how many accesses per day does NHS-Direct receive; what is the limit to the number of Friends you can have on Facebook, and the number of followers on Twitter. Lembit Opik claimed two thousand friends, higher than any other MP. The level of ignorance on most topics by both MPs and journalists was worrying. The really challenging task was to produce a YouTube-like video in 15 minutes to make the case why your team should win. When the teams displayed their clips, Rory Cellan Jones commented that if they were BBC camera crews they would all be fired on the spot. The Bright Sparks’ offering came out sideways. The Tel-Stars looked as if they were filming at dead of night, without lighting. The Guardianistas failed to produce anything. Charles Arthur, in various tweets to Cellan Jones during the proceedings, whinged that the trouble was that the Windows software crashed continuously, but it worked fine on a Mac. This was a lame excuse, because he had Jack Schofield on his team, whose “Ask Jack” column has for decades offered unparalleled advice on all things Windows. The clear winners in this round were The People’s Choice, with relatively clear arguments by the four MPs, relatively clearly displayed. Despite this win, overall the Bright Sparks team of techie journalists led at the end of the tournament with a small margin over ‘The People’s Choice”. A sing-off between the two leading teams of Queen’s “Don’t stop me now” resulted in John Whittingdale receiving more votes than Bryan Glick, the Editor of “Computing”. This shows that being Chairman of the Select Committee for Culture, Media and Sport does count for something. And so, on this occasion the MPs trounced the Press. Bryan Glick commented: “we wuz robbed”. The winners nominated The Parkinson’s Disease Society and Pont Hafren - a mental health charity in Wales - to share their £1,000 cheque. Rory Cellan Jones donated his fee to Children in Need. Richard Sarson |
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This article comes from PITCOM http://www.pitcom.org.uk/ The URL for this story is: http://www.pitcom.org.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=209 |