Alan Peaford: maximising tech, broadcasting globally - from his own ‘Green’ Room

Alan Peaford, MBE, is founding, managing director of Aerocomm and has had roles as consultant editor and editor in chief for organisations like Times Aerospace, FlightGlobal and the digital media aerospace platform wearefinn.com.

During lockdown he has been delivering podcasts, videos and news punditry from a makeshift studio at his Essex home.

How have you fared during the lockdown - personally and professionally?

Bizarrely, I have quite enjoyed lockdown. Like most people in aviation, and many in journalism, I spend a lot of time in aeroplanes and travelling - more than six months in every year. Now, at 15 weeks, it is the longest I have gone for many years without being away from home. I loved the extra time for cooking, quizzes, playing cards with my wife and digitalising tea chests full of family photos - but also having clear thinking times for planning new ways to do things.

With my involvement in publishing with Times Group (Arabian Aerospace, African Aerospace and ADS Advance) and my work with FINN (Farnborough International News Network), I knew that we had to do something to keep going through the lockdown. There were challenges, but it has been a heap of fun coming up with solutions and working round technical difficulties.

The home office/ garden room converted to a studio with a giant green screen, lights and cameras and I stole my grandchildren’s pop-up tent and stuffed it with cushions to aid the sound quality for radio interviews (aviation, gratifyingly, has become mainstream focus again) and for the new podcasts we created for Africa and the Middle East.

What are you working on right now?

This week is crazy. We have had audio interviews lined up for three different podcast programmes with aviation folk in Sweden, Dubai, Switzerland, South Africa and Bristol covering space, digital modelling, business aviation, and the airline crisis, as well as three FINN TV video interviews for the wearefinn.com channel with people in the States, UK and Finland as we build up programmes ahead of the virtual Farnborough Airshow. We also had the July issue of African Aerospace going to print on Monday.

I love doing the video programmes. We have been using Zoom and that can be a challenge but with Ian “Billypix” Billinghurst adding extra camera work from two metres away and some clever mixing, it has worked well. I love talking to people and learning new things. Helping simplifying the messages is a buzz - I reckon if I can ask the dumb questions about how, for example, HEPA filters for aircraft cabins make them safe, and I understand it - then others will too. It also helps for when I get called up by the BBC or South African TV to justify a future for aviation and be able to play a small part in restoring confidence and getting us flying again.

Tell us about the first ever Virtual Farnborough Show, your activity at WeareFINN and what can we look forward to?

Like many other great events, Farnborough International Airshow fell victim to Covid- 19. A summer without an Airshow was simply inconceivable for the organisers and so FIA Connect was launched. Taking place the same week that the Airshow - July 20th – it is a series of free-to-attend digital aerospace events.

The plan is to deliver five days of high-quality content, collaboration, thought leadership and industry insight; that will connect the global aerospace industry during a time when we can’t meet. FINN sessions that we would have done in Live Theatre at the real show will instead be online. I am working with a great production team at Smart Digital, and collaborating with other great content providers like FlightGlobal.

FINN celebrated its third birthday in June and it has really grown. The experience of the past three years is helping us to deliver some really good content for the Farnborough Connect event.

What concerns do you have for our industry as we start the road to recovery - which sectors are going to be the first to recover?

Firstly, I believe that the industry will recover but it will slower for some than others. I think there has been a lot of clearing the shelves at companies which will slow their recovery. Some of it I believe was cynical, while for others it was over reaction.

I hope the recovery will see an adoption of technologies that are already available but awaiting governments to accept change - greater use of biometrics, digitalisation and AI. I honestly believe Africa - although being hit hard now - will emerge much stronger and embrace greater liberalisation. I think airlines with the cash reserves or decent government support will be leaner and fitter.

Business aviation also has a great opportunity now to lead from the front to get its message out there about its agility, its safety and security and demonstrate the value that it brings to the global and national economies. This is also the time to focus on the environmental improvements that we can make and take action. Covid must not be an excuse not to push on with implementation.

Do you foresee big changes in the publishing world and the role of journalists?

This pandemic has been brutal for publishers. Locked-down advertisers have stopped spending and without them magazines will struggle to survive. That would be a massive loss to the industry. I may be an old fogey, but I still believe ‘the push” of a quality print job will do a better job than the pull of an online publication for in-depth material or for a company to introduce a new product. Having said that, FINN has introduced me to how analytics of a digital channel can tell you so much. But at the end of the day, content is king. Whether it is online or on paper, the role of the journalist is to bring events into context, to add value and to ask the questions that will cut through the corporate BS and bring clarity to the reader.

What are you most looking forward to post Covid-19?

I hope the shows will return and I can do another show daily sharing lockdown war stories with PR mates, exhibitors and fellow hacks. As one who fell into aviation almost by mistake and was adopted by this great family, I miss people. I miss the hugs and back slaps. Most of all, I miss flying.

BlueSky Business Aviation News | 2nd July 2020 | Issue #564

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