The 2009 Streaming Media Dream Team
Jason Gleave, Chief Executive Flyonthewall
Previous job titles:
• Chairman and Chief Executive, The Auction Channel Proudest achievements:
"I would have to say FlyOnTheWall – we entered the market at such an early stage, we were told that the Internet would never be stable enough and access never fast enough for people to engage properly with video online. I have a great team behind me who believed in my vision, most notably Patrick Asché, who has been our CTO since day one (and not forgetting also my hugely supportive wife and family!!) FlyOnTheWall has prospered despite the industry’s early critics and the challenging, ever evolving landscape of the streaming media marketplace, meaning we always have to ensure we are one step ahead."
Next big thing:
"We are delighted to be actively expanding internationally, with the opening of our new office in Abu Dhabi in 2009, servicing our clients and partners throughout the UAE and Middle East markets." Biggest trend in online video:
"For many years online video delivery has been pushed out to clients/users and has been seen as a ‘nice to have’ rather than a core requirement – with the dramatic improvements in quality, accessibility, reach and with audience education being driven by the likes of YouTube and the news broadcasters, there is now a growing expectation from users that online video coverage will be provided for any event either live or as a minimum, on-demand."
Biggest challenge facing the industry:
"With the growth of DIY/off the shelf solutions, one of the challenges facing us is to ensure that clients understand the value of employing specialist, experienced providers to deliver their critical event coverage, not least because of the myriad of pitfalls that you can encounter, but to ensure that there is delivery both pre, during and post event that adds value to the overall communications objective."
Philip Haggar, Board Director, Twofour Digital
Previous job titles:
• Chairman, International Webcasting Association (Europe)
• Director, Westminster Digital Ltd
• Managing Director, Makeni Ltd
Proudest achievements:
• 17 years with Mrs H and still laughing, much helped by Maddie (16) and Gemma (12)
•Launching and running Zambia’s first independent radio station, Radio Christian Voice, for 3 years and then leaving it running for the next 10+ years staffed wholly by a local team.
• Recording a video (quite a few years ago) explaining why I should be the first British astronaut, and accidentally leaving the studio output live, right through Master Control and down to MTV Europe transmission! It taught me humility (and caution) and I’m proud to keep learning from my frequent mistakes. And somewhat less proud in making so many!
• Growing Makeni and selling it to Twofour, a company that I watched from the sidelines and long admired
Next big thing:
• MEDIAFREEDOM™ – our format agnostic; rapidly evolving Enterprise Video Platform, adding controlled syndication of media across social networking platforms … and beyond.
• Invisible, unique digital watermarking at the point of ‘purchase’ allowing freedom to play media on any device, but with obvious consequences if shared a little too far! And yes, mentioning this to the user way in advance.
Biggest trend in the industry:
"'It’s so easy anyone can do it,' which is moderately true! Almost anyone with web literacy can upload a video to a social network, which is rather good for Facebook; Youtube and co. Its also inspiring; fun and even unifying for users, breaking down geographic barriers; connecting and reconnecting us regardless of distance or time. I think online video communication is the closest you can get to someone, without meeting in the flesh and usage is going to continue to rocket up.
Biggest challenge facing the industry:
• 'It’s so easy anyone can do it.' The problem is that too many organizations can’t keep up with the advances in Internet video. On the one-hand, you have Internet applications like YouTube that are easy to use, but risk associating your brand with the worst excesses of User Generated Content and help build YouTube (and Google’s) brand, traffic and ad-revenue. On the other hand, you’ve got in-house systems designed by (and for) engineers; tied to the internal network and almost impossible to evolve.
• Quickly giving users the content they need, where they need it
• Keeping control of a growing video library in different formats
• Giving real-time measurements on how content is being watched
• Add to this the choices we have to make each day - Silverlight; Playready; IIS 8 with Smooth Streaming ;Adobe Air; FMS 3.5; FMRMS etc.
• Making strategic decisions in this enterprise video ‘space’ reminds me of a constantly changing asteroid field through which aspiring Han Solos need to fly through. Great fun for a video game. Not so much fun for a professional, corporate communicator or marketing director. And so, for the foreseeable future, there could well be a role for some of us yet!
Joffrey Haring, Director of Technology and Operations, World Television
Previous job titles:
• Web Platform Architect, World Television
• Senior Production Manager, Virtue Communications
• Production Manager, Unit.Net
Proudest achievements:
• Finalizing a 24-month project whereby we consolidated and upgraded our core network to support gigabit throughput and watching the first couple of gigabit events run smoothly and successfully. All this while the webcasting application StreamStudio was in normal operations! I'm proud to say that StreamStudio is now more than five years old and has been used to host over 7,250 unique webcasts. On average that's 1,450 webcast a year, or 6.5 per working day! And its content is being watched by more than a million unique visitors per year.
• Or a specific job that included streaming an event for a client that had 14 different incoming feeds and 56 streams and was watched by 14,000 visitors in 44 countries throughout the world.
Next big thing:
"I believe that HD Streaming (720p) will become the next big thing in the corporate world. Although more and more consumers of content are moving towards more portable devices than the traditional computer or TV screens, the actual delivery mechanism (streams) will most likely consolidate into one type!"
Biggest trend in online video:
"Probably everyone, everywhere being able to consume content at any given time. Online video is no longer bound to a desktop or laptop, now portable devices have got the screen size and processing power to allow users to consume whenever they can!"
Biggest challenge facing the industry:
"I think the biggest challenge is actually the bandwidth capacity that big corporates need to invest in. We can spot a clear trend in our own throughput that shows that content is king and more and more people want to consume and watch the content as soon as it becomes available."
Leon Huijbers, Staff Manager, Multimedia Department, Technical University of Delft
Other job title:
• Chairman of the national group of Media Directors in Education, CAWO
Proudest achievements:
• Revitalizing the service—and product—range of the media department in Delft, I came up with a vision and strategy to boost the digital learning environment in the Netherlands. It lacked initiatives, while the sense of urgency was high. The plan consists of installing digi-cockpits in all lecture halls on campus, a capturing method to produce scientific educational content for publishing purposes on the Internet.
• An initiative to build a Learning Centre on campus, consisting all modern devices to bring the on- and offline learning world together. 20 of 80 halls are finished, the others are planned. Collegerama is the publishing medium and an example for many. The E-learning centre is ready in concept, and construction starts within a year.
Next big thing:
"I’ll be exploring the possibilities and techniques to introduce the Holo-teacher. This hologram of a teacher will be able to be present in class from a distance or in more than 1 room at the same time." Biggest trend in online video:
"The use of video online will be more integrated with text, PPT, simulation, new devices like digital panels, digital paper, library materials, conferencing tools, and other information sources." Biggest challenge facing the industry:
"Leaping great steps forward, thanks to the financial crisis of today which offers chances."
Sebastian Moeritz, CEO, dicas; President, MPEG Industry Forum
Proudest achievements:
• dicas: Being part of this unique company, which has evolved from a pure video coding specialist, starting out ten years ago, to a world-class soft- and hardware manufacturer of MPEG-4 / MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 coding and streaming solutions
• MPEGIF: Serving a fantastic membership and working together with a great Board of Directors, to deliver the success of MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 as the video compression codec of the future, which has, in the last few years, emerged as the clear successor to MPEG-2
Biggest trend you see the online video:
"That only adequate control of online video content will enable meaningful business models and attract advertisers. "
Biggest challenge facing the industry:
"In addition to ensuring that the current hard economic climate passes our industry with minimum negative impact, it is to agree a set of standards enabling truly interoperable systems for the creation, delivery and consumption of video content."
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