Curriculum vitae: Michela Ledwidge

A Word version is also available from http://michela.thequality.com

Personal details

Name: Michela Ledwidge    

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Address: 9 Wyndham St.
London W1H 1DB
UK
Telephone: +44 (0) 7775 840 950
Email: michela@thequality.com
Date of birth: 18 January 1972 (Canberra)
Nationality: Australian, Italian
Languages: English, French, Italian

Experience summary

I am a film-maker and systems architect.

  • Writer, Director, Producer
  • Project Manager
  • Systems Architect (business, technology, sustainability)
  • Digital Artist and and Developer
  • Live performer and Public Speaker

Employment history

Contract: MOD Films (UK)
Job title: Director
Duration: July 2004 - ongoing

Designed a real-time playback and distribution system for next-generation story content across cinema, game console and web platforms. Received a NESTA Invention and Innovation award. Wrote, directed and produced world-first re-mixable short film, Sanctuary (shot on 35mm in Australia, May 2005).

Employer: thequality.com (UK, AU)
Job title: Director
Duration: April 1993 - ongoing

Consultant to various Internet projects. Recently worked for NESTA - proposal assessment and being a mentor to digital artist (integrated wireless networking, real-time data processing and live animal tracking). Developed business plan for MOD Films. Produced Europe's first multi-lingual streaming interactive 3D cartoon, Horses for Courses.

Contract: Department of Trade and Industry (UK, AU)
Job title: Technical Design Authority/Systems Architect
Duration: September 2001 - ongoing

Consultant to the Small Business Services, DTI. Responsible for technical strategy for DTI online services and integration with other UK Government departments, particularily the Office of the E-Envoy, and the Business Link network. Management of SBS technical staff and suppliers.

Contract: Cap Gemini Ernst & Young (UK)
Job title: Systems Designer
Duration: March 2001 - April 2001

Designed the front-end for the Government General Practitioner project
(multimedia kiosk application for deployment into UK Post Office branches).

Contract: Accenture (UK)
Job title: Systems Architect
Duration: May 2000 - September 2000

Architect of the editorial content management system and streaming media service for Premium TV, an NTL subsidiary and UK football club portal network. Managed the tender for selecting on-demand video and live radio webcast production partners.

Contract: sportal.com (UK, FR)
Job title: Technical Producer
Duration: March 2000 - April 2000

Producer of Excite UK sport, compiled from sportal and BSkyB data feeds, and hosted by this pan-European sports portal. Managed team of seven producers.
Contract: boo.com (UK,US)
Job title: Project Manager
Duration: May 1999 - November 1999

Responsible for troubleshooting operations during the launch of a £70million dot.com (sports and leisure-wear online retail and magazine). Coordinated technical and business testing (London, New York, Stockholm, Munich, Paris). Managed team of six and coordinated staff (450) and suppliers (e-commerce, financial, and call centre systems, two logistics service providers, and web production).

Contract: BBC Online (UK)
Job title: Team leader
Duration: February 1999 - April 1999

Technical lead on the BBC Forums project hosting the BBC online communities (web discussion forums). Designed the prototype and supervised in-house developers and designers (14). This was a ground-up replacement for the previous system overwhelmed by East Enders and Doctor Who discussions.

Contract: Reuters (UK)
Job title: Technical Project Manager
Duration: May 1998 - December 1998

Project manager and Internet consultant within International Marketing/Communications. Re-developed the Euro website, managed real-time publishing of data during the euro Big Bang Weekend and introduced intranet business processes to the department.

Contract: Brilliant Digital Entertainment (AU)
Job title: Screenwriter
Duration: May 1997 - February 1998

Wrote a feature-length multipath movie (200+ pages of screenplay plus a technical specification for the b3d streaming 3D format.

Employer: Next Online (AU)
Job title: Project manager/Producer
Duration: July 1996 - April 1997

Lead content developer and facilitator of in-house (e.g. Rolling Stone, hyper@ctive) and client web sites. Next was the first web production company in Australia.

Employer: National Library of Australia (AU)
Job title: Webmaster
Duration: December 1993 - June 1996

Established and developed the National Library's Web, Gopher, and USENET services. Liaised with other government departments (e.g. Dept. of Finance) in initiating web services in Canberra.

Employer: University of Sydney (AU)
Job title: Casual tutor (Basser Department of Computer Science).
Duration: January 1993 - December 1993

Gave first year Computer Science tutorials, supervised workshops, marked
exams and was a consultant to the university Library.

Films

  • 2005 - "Sanctuary" Writer/Director/Producer (10 mins) - in post production
  • 2004 - "Missed" Director/Editor (10 mins)
  • 2004 - "Extreme T" Director/Editor (3 mins)
  • 2003 - "The Scheme" Writer/Director/Producer/Editor (5 mins)
  • 2001- "Horses for Courses" Writer/Director/Producer/Editor/Animator (5 mins)
  • 2000 - "Grow Yer Own" Writer/Director/Producer/Editor (18 mins)
  • 1999 - "bman" Writer/Director/Producer/Editor (17 mins)

For more information see http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1580719/

Selected Group Exhibitions

  • 2004 - SPAA (Australia)
  • 2004 - OutVideo (Russia)
  • 2003 - ContactEurope (Italy)
  • 2003 - Europrix (Austria)
  • 2003 - Goteborg Art Sounds (Sweden)
  • 2002 - University Paris IV Sorbonne (France)
  • 2001, 2002 - SIGGRAPH (USA)
  • 2000 - ICA (UK)

For full listing see http://thequality.com/people/michela/vj/

Publications

  • 2005 "MOD the movies - sustaining the story through live performance"
    AMIP Conference, Macquarie University Graduate School of Business
  • 2002 "A case study of web3d film-making - Horses for Courses"
    ACM SIGGRAPH Conference Abstracts and Applications, p.297 (PDF).
  • Articles for develop and internet.au magazines.

Key software experience

Visual Audio
  • Final Cut Pro
  • 3D Studio MAX 5/Character Studio 4
  • Adobe Photoshop
  • Macromedia Director
  • Macromedia Flash
  • Adobe Premiere
  • Adobe After Effects
  • DVD Studio Pro
  • Side FX Houdini
  • Touch Derivative
  • Arkaos VJ
  • Pro Tools
  • Logic
  • Shockwave Audio
  • Voxware
  • Sonic Solutions
  • Soundtrack

Systems experience overview

Languages Operating Systems Databases
  • perl
  • python
  • XML / XSL / XPath
  • X3D / VRML
  • SQL
  • Javascript
  • Lingo
  • C / C++
  • UML
  • Java
  • PHP
  • Visual Basic
  • Pascal
  • Windows (XP, 2000,NT4, 98SE, 95, 3.11)
  • Unix (AIX, IRIX, Linux, Sun, MIPS, Solaris, DEC, OSX)
  • Mac OS 9.2, OSX
  • Plan 9
  • Commodore 64
  • Oracle 7/8i
  • MySQL
  • Sybase ASE 11
  • Access 97
  • SQL Server 6.5
             Protocols and services (software)
  • PRINCE Project Management Method (MS Project)
  • HTTP (Apache, Sun iPlanet, MS IIS)
  • SMIL, RTP, H264, MPEG, MBONE, streaming media (Real, Windows and Quicktime)
  • XML (Cocoon, AxKit, XSLT, Moveable Type)
  • TCP/IP, NNTP, SMTP, POP3, IMAP, IRC
  • OLE, MAPI, CORBA
  • Database: ODBC, DBD (Oraperl, Cold Fusion)
  • CGI, ASP, NSAPI
  • SSL, PGP, public key encryption
  • Proxy cache (Harvest, Squid, NetCache)
  • Enterprise Application Servers (Interworld,Intershop,Broadvision,Weblogic)
  • Content management systems (Vignette Story Server,Mediasurface,Interwoven Teamsite)

Education

Primary and Secondary education

Bachelor of Arts, Sydney University (1990-1993)

  • Major studies: Computer Science (Honours) and French.
  • Minor studies: English and Pure Maths.
  • Honours thesis on hypertext authoring. Wrote HTML browser/authoring tool.
    Set up first Web site in New South Wales (April 1993).

Post-graduate courses

  • Introduction to Oracle:SQL, Oracle Training Services (1996)
  • Using Oracle Textserver, Oracle Training Services (1996)
  • The Art of Documentary, Australian Film Television and Radio School (1998)
  • The Perl Conference, San Jose - LDAP, CORBA, XML (1998)
  • After Effects Crammer, The Finishing School NFTRS London (2001)

Other activities

  • BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Committee Member (2002 - 2004)
  • Web3D Consortium Professional Member
  • Special Interest Group on Open Source, UK Cabinet Office (2002 - 2004)
  • Not enough blading
  • Not enough dancing

References provided on request

Last updated 20050803