Name: Sam Seddon
Position: IBM Client & Programme Executive for Wimbledon
Where I’m from: Manchester, England
Where I call home: Oxford, England
Focusing on right now: Friday was one of our big testing days. We did testing for one of our data entry systems and scoring systems to get ready for The Championships on Monday. We went live with all of our digital systems when qualifying started, so we’re kind of live on one set of systems and getting ready to go live on the next set of systems.
Best advice: From a team perspective, my best advice is don’t assume you will have all the best ideas and be willing to listen to others. You need to get the right team around you and enable them to be the best they can be because you want your entire program to be the best it can be.
Execs I admire: Wimbledon CEO RICHARD LEWIS. The All England Lawn Tennis Club's aspiration to be the best tennis tournament in the world by some distance is, by all measures, a challenging target. I think Richard’s ability to continue to deliver in that respect is quite admirable. Another would be British Olympic Gold medal-winning sailor BEN AINSLIE, who just stepped into the role as the Land Rover BAR Team Principal during the America’s Cup.
Must have for a new hire: You can teach bright people new skills, but it’s very hard to teach people the right attitude. I’m always looking for people who are very proactive, have a very inquiring mind and don’t settle for second best because they believe they can achieve more.
Book shelf: I’ve got two by my bedside right now that I’m enjoying for different reasons. One is “THE GREATEST” by British table tennis player and now sports journalist MATTHEW SYED. It’s a collection of his writings on what it takes to be a great sportsperson. The second one is the Lonely Planet’s “OUR LIST OF THE 500 BEST PLACES TO SEE.” I’m browsing through that as a travel junkie to see where I’d like to go next.
Must-have music: The last band that I went to see were THE STONE ROSES. They came to Wembley Stadium a couple of weeks ago, which was great. I’m also a late comer to the dance music scene, so GROOVE ARMADA is another band I look for as well as CHEMICAL BROTHERS.
First thing in the morning: Coffee. I’m actually more of a morning person so I like to get my day sorted early. I have an ongoing task list that I organize by importance and time to deliver, so I refresh my mind around that each day and give myself an objective of what I’m going to get through that day.
Talking tech: We are debuting quite a few components of our artificial intelligence platform Watson at Wimbledon this year. We have a fan chat bot named Fred, which is a solution that will allow fans to interact with the bot and ask questions about the website, location, event and various other areas so they can get the most out of their day on site at Wimbledon. We’re using some of the same capabilities to generate highlight packages. By combination of key points in the match, visual recognition and sound, the technology is identifying what is the highlight package and automatically creating that with video graphics and making it available to the Wimbledon team.
Food for thought: My brother’s a chef and runs his own restaurant in Scotland, so I love my food and generally am willing to eat most things. I particularly like Thai or Asian food, that’s kind of my go-to food.
How I unwind: I like to cook. I also like wild running, so just finding a path in the fields or the mountains near where I live. I like to see where I end up, get lost and try to find my way back.
Day in the life: Given the fact that I work on such a big event, it’s very much dependent on what time of the year it is. We start preparing for next year’s Wimbledon very soon and I have my first meeting on that coming up, so it’s a year-round planning activity. During Wimbledon I’m part of the IT operational management team, so assessments are first thing in the morning to see where we are. Then we’ll go through checking all the activations on site and checking with the technology team there.
