General Magic

In 1990 Apple spun out a secret team called General Magic to invent the smart-phone; these designers, engineers and entrepreneurs saw the future twenty years before it happened and influenced the world we live in today. 

General Magic, the movie, was made to capture the spirit of those of us who dream big and the life-changing consequences when we fail, fail again, and ultimately succeed. 

We hosted a sneak-preview private screening of General Magic last night for a small group of friends to celebrate technological innovation here at Global. Directors Matt Maude and Sarah Kerruish have created a compelling documentary which combines footage captured at the time with current interviews and is a must-watch for anyone interested in technology and product development.

We too have had our share of failures which have contributed to some of our biggest successes. We had to live through advertisement clashing, inconsistent audio levels and device incompatibilities before we honed our DAX to become the most advanced audio programmatic platform in the world with an audience reach of 160 million people. We've pushed technologists to deliver outside broadcasts from unlikely locations (from Lapland to the London Eye), trained our radio presenters using Virtual Reality and created immersive and impactful advertising using binaural sound.

Whilst the technological developments are exciting, the underlying theme of General Magic the movie is actually all about people and emotions; look at what can happen when you assemble a great team of diverse technologists, give them a compelling problem to solve and allow them to fail along the way.