People have often been surprised by the breadth of activity that Waters Techncal Services is involved with but it is the convergence of two key communication technologies that lies at the core of Hugh Waters’ consultancy. Here Hugh takes a few moments to describe how the Company came about and what it does.
The world has changed in the 15 years since the World Wide
Web was invented. Where once there was a clear separation between television
and all other forms of entertainment or communication, today that is no longer
the case.
When Hugh Waters was Technical Director of a very large
London TV facilities company back in the late 1990s he began to recognise the
beginnings of a revolution and determined to become involved.
Today there is no separation at all between traditional TV
and the internet, one merges with the other, sometimes supporting, sometimes competing
but always evolving together.
In the intervening years Hugh took on a more senior
management role as Managing Director reporting to the main board of a PLC,
experience that burned into him the need for business leaders to keep abreast
of the far reaching changes in the world around them. With a bias towards
technology Hugh’s interest in and desire to engage with internet services grew
until in the early years of this century he launched his own Technical
Management Consultancy, Waters Technical Services.
Waters Technical Services was well placed to bring to bear
all the skills acquired over the previous decade to manage a diverse range of
projects from digital TV stations to film grading facilities, using the project analysis techniques
and attention to detail gained in the high pressure world of television post
production. These projects are built upon technology that powers both the internet and TV.
But that was insufficient
for Hugh and he went on to launch a successful web design company that
specialised in producing user-managed websites long before most others in the
field had realised that it was far better for website owners to be able to
maintain their own websites.
The need to make websites commercial tools was one of the driving forces in the establishment of the Websitebuilders web design and web marketing consultancy. It is no longer safe to leave the design of a website to a graphics designer. A website, like any high-tech system has to be carefully crafted using very specialist knowledge. Like TV, content and connectivity are everything.
Hugh’s business partner is his wife, Jane Waters. Jane, too,
is a driven technocrat and a specialist in databases and programming. Jane’s
long association with the equestrian world led to the creation of www.ridingdiary.co.uk, the UK’s
premier riding events listing website and, from that, a range of supporting
information websites.
Nowadays Hugh and Jane bring their wealth of experties
to Government, TV, Commerical and Equestrian businesses, be they websites,
high-tech facilities or planning management.
Hugh Waters is Managing Director of Waters Technical Services, a specialist technical management consultancy focussed on TV and Internet media.
