MARIA INGOLD
Personal Profile: A visionary leader in technology and business with an impressive 20-year track-record in delivering services, products and brands for a range of blue-chip clients across interactive multimedia, Internet, games, TV and film. An industry-recognised expert in visual technology, active in various organisations including DTG and BAFTA and a worldwide speaker with a long history of presentations, publications and TV and video appearances and a desire to make things easy to understand as well as secure, simple and financially viable.
Capabilities: Media & Entertainment Technology Management and Leadership
  • Deploying multiple simultaneous internal and revenue-driven projects
  • Planning and delivering large-scale multi-year complex projects
  • Finding and implementing cost-cutting but quality-maintaining measures
  • Transforming business thinking by establishing improved methodologies
  • Increasing delivery capability and product quality
Strategic and Commercial Vision and Execution
  • Researching new technology, analysing the market and driving plans
  • Explaining new technologies to the board and establishing business cases
  • Defining technical strategy in alignment with business objectives
  • Developing relationships with new and key suppliers, partners and clients
  • Networking and pitching for and winning new business
  • Leading and prioritising programmes and initiatives
Education: 1996 MFA in Computer Graphics programme - Florida Atlantic University, USA
1991 BSc (Hons) First Class, Computer Science (Minor, Studio Art) - University of New Mexico, USA
Affiliations: Member, DECE (Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem) (Since 2010)
Member, DTG (Digital TV Group) (Since 2010)
Member & Attendee, ACM SIGGRAPH (Since 1994)
Member & Judge, BAFTA - Film, TV and specific Interactive awards (Since 2002)
Member & Mentor, UKRC Get SET Women (Since 2005)
MBCS Member, British Computer Society (Since 2006)
Passports: United States of America, United Kingdom
Languages: English, Spanish, Japanese
Driving Licence: Full UK car driving licence and car

CAREER HISTORY

  

2002 - 2006

Head of Technology, FilmFlex Movies Limited, UK
Company Overview: FilmFlex, co-owned by Sony and Disney, is the largest on demand film service in Europe. With fewer than 20 staff, FilmFlex is profitable with a turnover of £35M. It aggregates and digitally distributes films from 30+ movie suppliers, including all the studios and large UK independents. Through Virgin Media it reaches 3.8 million homes, with over 1 million rentals per month.
Major Responsibilities: Sets FilmFlex’s technical strategy and architects its on-demand solutions across Virgin Media cable and the white label service.
Major Achievements:
  • Architected SD, HD and 3D workflow from receiving, processing to delivery
  • Built secure workflow that delivers content to Virgin Media Cable
  • Designed white label broadband service used for Virgin Media and Film4oD
  • Delivered on-demand 3D films onto Virgin Media Cable prior to Sky launch
  • Saved the company ~£500K per annum with new architecture
  • Built at fraction of resource and cost of other major VOD services in industry

2002 - 2006

Head of IT and Development, OnMedica Group Ltd, UK
Company Overview: OnMedica delivers on demand interactive multimedia and video via its bespoke online tracking and reporting system. Campaigns have been independently proven to significantly increase market share. Global pharmaceutical clients include AstraZeneca, Lilly, Boehringer Ingelheim, Schering, MSD, and Pfizer.
Major Responsibilities: Set the strategy, budgets and delivery of all technology projects. Advised at board level on emerging technologies and potential business opportunities. Managed all IT and development staff and technical partnerships.
Major Achievements:
  • Delivered new enhanced portal, products, CMS, and tools in three months
  • Developed pan-European localised versions of core business product
  • Reduced technical costs 50% in first year and kept costs down ongoing
  • Increasing delivery capability and efficiency by up to 25 times prior volume
  • Enhancing product quality by nearly 100 times previous results
  • Insourced core technical services and led outsourcing of non core activities
  • Slashed new project development time using a modular, extensible design

2001

Technical Director, Digital Arts, UK
Company Overview: Digital Arts delivered creative solutions to corporate and media clients using online, game, and audio and video technology to meet their advertising, promotional, and product needs. The agency also showcased on demand DJ sets from its in-house recording studio on its online urban magazine AMMO CITY.
Major Responsibilities: Technically directed all projects. Managed IT, development and project staff. Determined video, 3D, streaming, mobile, PDA, and Internet hardware and software to deliver the creative proposals while meeting strict client regulations.
Major Achievements:
  • Delivered Blaupunkt GPS 3D driving game for Volkswagen’s Autostadt
  • Delivered online and offline 3D video product navigation for Swiss Re
  • Project-managed AMMO CITY website including audio/video streaming
  • Introduced retroactive and new design and technical project documents

2000

Technical Lead of Broadband/FutureTV, Razorfish, UK
Company Overview: Creative agency Razorfish’s Broadband/Future TV group designed all aspects of Interactive TV and media over broadband to clients within the UK and Europe.
Major Responsibilities: Technically consulted on broadband and Interactive TV proposals.
Major Achievements:
  • Delivered key broadband TV proposals: video streaming advertising, Disney on-demand and BBC asset delivery (Project Irene) using asset management, streaming, and fulfilment for B2B and B2C channels.
  • Delivered key Interactive TV proposals incorporating banking, t-commerce, an electronic programme guide (EPG), and games across a variety of UK and European platforms such as BSkyB, ONdigital, NTL, Telewest using OpenTV SDK, Mediahighway, MHEG-5, and Liberate.

1998 - 2000

Technical Director, Notting Hill Electronic Publishers, UK
Company Overview: Founded by Andreas Whittam Smith, Notting Hill created 2D and 3D sound- reactive visuals for band world tours and nightclubs. Clients included Slinky and Serious Records, Pet Shop Boys, Nine Inch Nails, and Leftfield. The core product, Dancer DNA, created 3D creatures that danced real-time to music.
Major Responsibilities: Managed artists, programmers, and marketing. Created business plan and design documents, including competitive analysis, prioritised requirements, and testing phases. Performed IT administration and 3D, MFC and web development.
Major Achievements:
  • Negotiated the successful buyout of original DancerDNA source code
  • Won a DTI product development award for the DancerDNA project
  • Created company’s business plan and organised annual post-mortem
  • Resolved information sharing and missing dependencies problems
  • Introduced cross-functional schedules and information intranet
  • Developed a 3D framework for Sony Playstation 2 viral marketing application

1997 - 1998

Director of Operations, Studio X UK
Company Overview: Studio X is a Canadian games company. Its plans to set up a UK branch initially based on a game buyout from Ocean Software ended due to lack of funding.
Major Achievements:
  • Organised game buyout negotiations from Ocean
  • Created a new game concept document for successful bank proposal
  • Planned initial set up of the UK games division subsidiary
  • Helped secure a successful deal with Nintendo for a N64 DD product

1996 - 1997

Lead Programmer, Ocean Software Ltd (Infogrames UK/Atari), UK
Company Overview: Ocean, a long-standing company in the games industry, was eventually bought by Infogrames, a French company, who later rebranded the firm as Atari.
Major Achievements:
  • Worked on Victorian steam-punk shoot-em-up 3D PC game Dreadnought
  • Wrote reusable library modules based on DirectX5
  • Helped create, update, and adhere to schedules

1991 - 1996

Multimedia / Graphics and Video Programmer / Artist, IBM, USA
Company Overview: IBM Boca Raton developed the OS/2 operating system and associated OS/2 Multimedia applications and subsystems.
Major Achievements:
  • Co-led eight developers in a software lifecycle model development project
  • Delivered OS/2 Multimedia audio and video applications and subsystems
  • Developed video and 3D components for the OS/2 game SDK
  • Resolved critical client situations in multimedia and games related problems
  • Published five technical articles and a technical disclosure
  • Gave 15 worldwide technical presentations and demos

Key IT Skills

Project Related:

On-demand:
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Database:
APIs/SDKs:

Platforms:
IDEs:
2D/3D Graphics:
Networking:
  • PRINCE2, ITIL, UML, Agile methods (XP), Microsoft Project, AceProject, Booch (Object-Oriented Analysis and Design)
  • MPEG-2 TS, H.264, WMV, PlayReady DRM, DECE
  • C, C++, Visual C++, Embedded Visual C++ 3.0, x86 Assembly
  • HTML, DHTML, XML, XHTML, CSS, RSS, JavaScript, PHP 4, Perl, ASP, VBScript, WML 1.1, also researched Java, .NET
  • MS SQL, MySQL, PostgreSQL, manage Oracle 10g DBAs
  • DirectX, Direct3D, MFC, Flash ActionScript, Director, RealServer, also researched Maya 6 MEL, Pocket PC 2002 SDK, OpenTV SDK and Liberate
  • Windows, Linux (Red Hat), OSX, Pocket PC 2002, DOS, OS/2
  • Visual Studio including SourceSafe
  • Photoshop, Maya 6, Flash, Autodesk Animator Pro and 3D Studio
  • TCP/IP, DHCP, Linux server administration