Thank you, BBC Red Button 24/7 Service

The BBC ITV team (interactive tv that is) within BBC New Media department, based out of the beautiful but ageing Bush House on London's The Strand was my home for many years at the start of my career.

The name changed (BBC Red Button) and the location changed (BBC White City, BBC Oxford Road Manchester, BBC Media City Salford), but my heart is firmly placed in those meandering corridors and rooms of Bush House, working side by side with colleagues from the various BBC World Service language sections.

Straight out of Uni, I was dropped into a group of driven, smart and caring developers, project managers and producers. It wasn't all hugs and puppies, but most people knew the benefit (including rapidly-updating news, sport and weather) we were bringing to people without access to the internet back then in the early 2000s.

For a long time, the team was split in half; those that worked on the 24/7 services, and those that worked on event-based services such as Glastonbury, Wimbledon, the Olympics etc. There was a natural competitiveness, but when needs must, we worked together to get things done.

There are war stories of fixing things at the last minute. There were times of team celebration and times of immense team sadness.

There were times spent working late into the night trying to shave 10 bytes off of an ASN file (#MHEG!) to get it to load onto an ancient OnDigital receiver. There were times spent putting the world to rights in the Bush House Bar, surrounded by one hundred different languages, smoke and joy.

Interactive TV in the UK pushed boundaries. As part of this, it suffered from some early adopter's syndrome. Other countries watched and learned from what we did. It's wonderful to see 24/7 services in other countries going strong, and it's sad to see the BBC's 24/7 service be retired, but with internet connectivity ever more ubiquitous, it was an inevitability.

On a personal note, I made some wonderful friends in the process. I don't see all of them as often as I should, but think of them often as I reminisce about the best development team that I've been a part of.