'This is an honour for all of us' - 30 years of teamwork behind knighthood for presenter turned tech guru Ian Taylor
Wednesday, 30 December 2020
From rock’n’roll singer, to children’s TV presenter, to tech mogul – Ian Taylor has done a bit of everything.
Now he will also become a knight.
In this year's New Year’s Honours, Taylor will be appointed a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to broadcasting, business and the community.
But the Dunedin-based innovator said the credit really belongs to, “the wonderful group of people who’ve been around me for the past 35 years”.
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“Really, this is an honour for all of us. I’ve always been a storyteller, but the people I work with, they wrote the story,” he said.
Taylor, who belongs to the Ngāti Kahungunu and Nga Puhi iwi, became lead singer of the band Kal-Q-Lated Risk in 1967, before becoming a TV presenter, best known for TVNZ children’s programmes Play School and Spot On.
But it is his work as one of New Zealand's foremost technology innovators which earned him his knighthood.
Taylor founded television production company Taylormade Media in 1989, and internationally acclaimed computer animation company Animation Research a year later.
Animation Research developed the Virtual Eye real-time sports animation system, which changed the way the world watches sports like sailing, golf, and cricket.
“In 1989, I barely knew what a computer was. But computer science professor Geoff Wyvill told me this 3-D animation would be the thing of the future, and introduced me to four of his top students, and said these four will be the ones to make it happen.
“All four of them are still with me.”
Taylor said one of the most memorable moments of his career was 30 years ago when two of those staff, Paul Sharp and Stu Smith, wrote the first code for the America’s Cup.
“That was the moment that started all this, I remember seeing a blue and a yellow boat on the screen and thinking, how did they do this?
“They’re still writing the latest code … I turned 70 this year, and I still go into work every day with these people and am amazed by what they’re doing.”
Animation Research won the award for ‘outstanding new approaches in sports broadcasting’ at the 2015 Sports Emmy Awards for developing the America’s Cup mobile app, and in 2019 Taylor was named New Zealand Innovator of the Year.
Taylor said he is currently focused on his Tech for Good initiative, which develops technology tools for use in education and healthcare.
In 2017, the company helped develop a virtual reality programme for sick children, to “take away their fear of MRI scans”.
“Peter Dooley, who was a manager at Christchurch Hospital, came to me and said, ‘we’ve got to stop putting drugs into these kids.’”
Patients must lie still in the MRI machine for 45 minutes and many children, he said, were too scared without sedation.
Working with the Methodist Mission, the company has also been trialling a virtual reality program to help improve numeracy and literacy skills among inmates at the Otago Corrections Facility.
“It’s had no Government funding so far, but we really want to roll it out nationwide so it can make a difference to people who didn’t get the best start in life.”
His latest project, called Land of Voyagers, will be rolled out on the back of the 2021 America’s Cup, and is a cause close to his heart.
“It is a learning platform about Polynesian navigation, and it really shows how the America’s Cup racers are sailing and racing in the footsteps of Kupe … His double-hulled waka was the boat of its time too.
“But really, it’s about helping our Māori and Pasifika kids understand the power they have in them.”