John Maxwell Hobbs

As well as being a music producer and composer, John Maxwell Hobbs is CEO of music tech startup Streamline, media consultant and the former Head of Technology at BBC Scotland.

Articles by John Maxwell Hobbs

IBC Accelerators: Master Control Cloud

The Master Control Cloud project, part of the 2025 IBC Accelerator Media Innovation Programme, aims to build a proof-of-concept system that reimagines the traditional broadcast master control room as a scalable, cloud-native service.

Read more

Catena: Unifying Device Control Across the Media Industry

Catena is a word that means, ‘connected series or chain,’ and is also the appropriate name for the broadcast industry’s answer to a problem that has only grown more acute with the rise of IP, cloud, and hybrid workflows: fragmented, insecure, and proprietary device control. Developed under SMPTE’s Rapid Industry Solutions Open Services Alliance (RIS-OSA) and recently introduced into SMPTE’s formal standards process, Catena aims to deliver ‘a single secure protocol for control of media devices and services,’ providing a unified, vendor and platform agnostic control plane.

Read more