The aQ team
Background on some of our team and details of their extensive experience in the broadcast industry.
Neil Hutchins, CEO
Neil officially joined Autocue on 6th January 1993, having actually started work a few days earlier, on New Year's Eve, as Westcountry Television began transmitting for the first time. Having served a short and intense apprenticeship in their new regional newsroom based in Plymouth, he went on to look after other new installations at HTV in Cardiff and Bristol, then 'This Morning' at Granada TV in Liverpool, followed by other projects including Athens and Berlin (a notable installation because it began on Christmas Day!). Returning, eventually, to the UK, he was seconded to Channel One - a new cable TV station providing dedicated 24x7 news and current affairs programming for London - essentially one of the first true 'Local TV' channels in the country. After a year, the secondment became permanent, and he managed the newsroom and automation elements of the subsequent roll-out to new locations in Bristol and Liverpool. Returning to Autocue in 1997 as CTO, he looked after (in various combinations at different times) development, support and workflow sales operations through both the MBO in 2000 and the Root / Epic purchase in 2005. In 2013 he agreed terms for a new management buyout, this time for the workflow business from Autocue, and formed AQ BROADCAST LIMITED in October of the same year.
Neil is married with three children and lives in Berkshire, UK.
Geoff Back, CTO
Geoff joined Autocue a few months earlier than Neil, on 15th November 1992. He was based initially at GMTV in London, as they also launched their new morning programming under the new UK franchises.
After a few years installing and supporting NewsMaker and teleprompter systems around the world, he switched back to full time research and development (his first love), beginning with Autocue’s “WinCue” prompting product – their first Windows-based teleprompter, released in 1996.
He was instrumental in the development of every significant software product Autocue produced since then, including the revolutionary QBox IP-based teleprompter system, the QSeries scripting, newsroom, automation and media management range, the AVS video server family and the APS production suite. Now as CTO of aQ Broadcast, he is continuing to take the systems in new and exciting directions.
Geoff is based on the Wirral, UK.
Peter Filippone, Senior Engineer (Americas)
Peter studied Computer Science at Queens College, City University of New York and held positions as a network system administrator, helpdesk manager, project manager and programmer for a handful of New York City-based technology companies, from the late 80's to the late 90's. In 1999, Peter joined QTV/Autocue, initially based in New York and focused on teleprompter systems, but subsequently moving to North Carolina to take a wider support role including the QSeries software. He joined aQ Broadcast in November 2015 with a wide range of duties including telephone and email support, case tracking and management, software testing, documentation, on-site commissioning and training on the company's product line, as well as providing technical sales support. Peter now lives and works in Charlotte, NC.
Richard Waldron, Senior Engineer
Richard discovered an interest in Broadcasting while studying for an honours degree in Software Development at the University of Huddersfield, spending the third year of the degree working as a praktikant (placement student) developer at R.Barth KG in Hamburg, Germany, developing software for the Radio broadcasting industry.
Upon completing his degree, Richard joined Autocue in Southfields, south-west London in the summer of 2000 as a Software Developer, working directly for Neil and Geoff developing and supporting the WinCue software suite, later known as QSeries, as well as QMedia and the standalone prompting products.
He has worked on many different projects for Autocue since then, notable ones including speech recognition and distributed/multiple prompting control. He has also carried out a great deal of work involving the MOS protocol, providing interfaces both into and out of QNews.
Richard moved from the London office to Auckland, NZ in January 2008 where he is now based full-time.
