The 2009 Streaming Media Dream Team
Stephen Clee, Managing Director,Datmedia
Previous job titles:
• Head of Outside Broadcast, InterFACE Pirate Radio
Proudest achievments:
• Turning on Europe’s first 24/7 internet radio station, 1996
• Starting Datmedia, 2000
• International Webcasting Association Europe award for innovation in streaming, 2007/08
• Launch of Datpresenter V2, 2009
Next big thing:
• Datmedia EPG Publisher
Biggest trend you see in online video:
• H.264 & VC-1 video
Biggest challenge facing the industry:
• Quality & Reliability - What happens after convergence....
John Dillon, Chief Marketing Officer, Velocix
Previous job titles:
• Chief Marketing Officer, Surf Control (Internet Security)
• VP Marketing, webMethods (Business Integration)
• VP Marketing, Volantis (Mobile Middleware)
• VP Marketing, Extricity (B2B Integration)
Proudest achievements:
• Carving out a successful professional career in technology after having been written off as a teenager. To be fair, I did little at school to convince anyone otherwise! Fortunately, I woke up to the realities of the world and the need to a solid education just in time and with my first ever turnaround plan, ended up with a university degree in Computer Science and post graduate diploma in management on my resume.
• Making a positive difference for every team that I have led and managed.
• Making the transition from software developer to CMO, in many steps over several years and learning everything that there is to know about technology businesses on the way.
Next big thing:
"Turning the tidal wave of interest that hit us following the launch of Velocix Metro, our CDN solution for Internet Service Providers, and the announcements we made with Verizon in December last year. It seems that our timing was spot on with just about every ISP around the globe looking to define their strategy for CDN. "
Biggest trend in online video:
"Difficult to pick out a single trend. There are so many interesting developments. Perhaps most interesting of all is the realization that CDN providers may not be the best place for video content owners to turn for their delivery needs. Commercial video delivery tends to to be more about regional rather than global distribution for a number of reasons. Language is the most obvious, closely followed by cultural barriers. When these can be overcome, digital rights may need to be navigated, and then there is the question of what region the supporting advertising rights have been purchased for. The big commercial web video successes today are regional services like Hulu, BBC iPlayer, Netflix, etc, all restricted to their domestic markets. The traditional value proposition of CDN providers – accelerating Websites globally is not what’s needed. In fact, if you think who is best placed with deep regional delivery infrastructure, its Internet Service Providers rather than CDN Providers... Interesting times ahead!
Biggest challenge facing the industry:
"Fixing the economics associated with digital delivery. Today, not everyone in the content delivery value chain is appropriately compensated for the role that they play. Content owners pay CDNs for premium delivery services, but none of this flows through to ISPs who have an increasing volume of video traffic dumped on them to deliver on to their subscribers. Collaboration is needed between all participants in the video delivery chain to ensure that everyone is rewarded and has motivation to make things better. We’ll get there in the end, but it will be that much faster and sustainable if all parties are pulling in the same direction."
Daniel Ek, CEO & Co-founder,Spotify
Previous job titles:
• CTO, Stardoll
• CTO, Tradera
• I was also founder and CEO of Swedish startup Advertigo, a contextual online advertising startup, which was acquired by TradeDoubler, in 2006.
Proudest achievements:
• I'm very proud of the team we've put together at Spotify and the work we're doing right now.
Next big thing:
"Apart from my ultimate playlist? Spotify is my focus at the moment and still has a long way to go before it can be called the next big thing! "
Biggest trend in online music:
" I think in the music industry we're seeing a shift from a direct ownership model to a model where access to music is what's important. "
Biggest challenge facing the industry:
"With the current economic crisis there are a lot of challenges, advertising budgets are usually cut back a lot. Also convincing people that there are good, legal alternative to music piracy is a big challenge."
Stephen Emmot , Head of Web Services,London School of Economics and Political Science
Previous job titles:
• Web Editor, King's College London
• Project Manager, Webmedia
Proudest achievements:
"Being fortunate enough to make a positive contribution to LSE is my main achievement. This has led to many opportunities including establishing LSE's podcasting programme and LSE's first live stream of a public event: "The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means" by George Soros and Howard Davies on 21 May 2008. Of course none of this would be possible without the people I work with, both within LSE and externally. I'm part of a larger team." Next big thing:
"We're redeveloping our website following a review. It will improve radically within months, but this will rely on technical enhancement of our CMS to help us better provide rich media and crucially then syndicate this to other providers. We're currently looking at how we can make metadata (eg tagging) work harder to improve syndication. Moreover, we're exploring the channels available to us for syndication: pursing ears and eyeballs. Improving metrics through monitoring and reporting rich media usage underway."
Biggest trend you see in online video:
"Well, my perspective is that of a web manager in education but the trend is certainly pointing towards video and audio being the primary source of content versus pages of text. There's a long way to go but the numbers are already suggesting that there is a growing appetite for watching and listening instead of just reading. The tipping point is when professional communicators (i.e. those who are paid to write documents, reports, etc) can and do start recording as fluently as they write. User-generated content is obviously leading the way, but will professional communicators be able to deliver provenance without a team or specialist AV skills? Moreover, do they yet have the tools: the rich media equivalent of the word processor?"
Biggest challenge facing our industry:
"Seamless navigation within and between rich media. Being able to seamlessly transit from a video clip to a podcast and then on to a web page has the potential to improve engagement with content. Not everything in a rich media asset is relevant, and the content I seek is often scattered between assets. There are hints of this already (e.g. annotations on YouTube). Although there are standards I think, as ever, it takes the right software and its adoption to deliver solutions that then transform the medium. We've seen this with the move to Flash-based video, which is still a joy. Even so, when listening to a podcast on the train I would like to hyperlink from a spoken quote to the audio book or written report without having to use a laptop."
Jon Gisby, Director Future Media and Technology Channel 4
Previous job titles:
• Managing Director, Yahoo! UK
• Managing Director Portals, Freeserve
Proudest achivements:
• Getting feedback from users when we've made a difference
Next big thing:
• Re-inventing public service media
Biggest trend in online video:
• Video consumption is becoming social, not scheduled
Biggest challenge facing the industry:
• Competing for attention in entirely new ways
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