On the 27th of march did 10 years ago that we opened the Sixth. It was a project exciting, to which we devote our efforts to get one of the first television channels tapeless of our country, and that is to become a reference in our sector.

The year 2005 I was involved in that would be one of the most important and demanding projects of my professional career and that transformed my understanding of the television. Until that time, I implemented a variety of channels of tv, but always small in size and mainly based on tapes.

The Sixth was born already in the midst of the era of the digital and the assignment was to design a channel fully-tapeless, where the tapes stayed in the door of the canal, only for those providers that still used this medium to send the content.

The challenge was ambitious because, in addition to the concept of ‘tapeless’, the channel should have two locations. The news and the production would be in Madrid and the playout would be based in Barcelona. And that, in 2006, was not as trivial as it may seem to us 10 years later. The requirement was that, although they have more than 600 km between the two sites, the installation should work as if they were two floors of the same building. And thanks to born digital, we get it. Using tape would have been impossible, but with files, the theme was easier. The connectivity between the offices became our highway where you moved the files at high speed.

But most important of all was the team that will be formed, and that, as used to happen in these cases, it was the key to the success of the project.

We got together a group of professionals with profiles very diverse as financial, technical, consultants, operators, producers, and people of contents. And I don't want to forget about the technology manufacturers, the suppliers who supported us. All we put the best of each to make a project a reality.

A multidisciplinary team as the one that formed, contributes a lot to the project, gives a cross-sectional dimension that has an impact on a much broader vision, much more ambitious, and gives you a value that, in those moments, no one reached to catch a glimpse. I think we all learned a lot from everyone. Our knowledge is broadened and we were able to uncover new insights, new perspectives in a business that, at the start, each knowing only their part.

As I said before, my experience at that time, although fairly wide, it was limited to the technical and production. I was an expert on tv but only a part. I had never heard of processes, procedures, integrations, or just management. In the Sixth, I discovered that the television is a business that needs to be managed like any other, that improvisation should be the last resort, that the requirement of a national channel had nothing to do with what I had experienced so far, and that the technique, my goal until then, was only part of the picture, the big picture.

I learned that management systems are needed to support, that there are metrics, KPIs, business rules, which before that there is nothing to solve the challenges intellectually, that the technical part is always fix it, and what's more important is the team and the people.

But above all, the most important thing that I learned is that one must be humble and have the capacity to absorb the knowledge and points of view of others.

I started the project with a partial view, and what I ended up 5 years later with a broad overview of the management of the business, which was the seed of what is today Ebantic. Surely I owe everything that I am today to that project. Obviously, in 5 years there I learned everything, but if that relativicé what I already knew and I took the most of the experience and the knowledge of those around me

Thanks to all who were members of this fantastic team. Do not appoint anyone for fear of letting someone, but I'm sure that every one of them will feel identified when you read this post. I'm very proud to have been part of this project that changed my view of the world.