Ian has over 20 years’ experience in the communications, IT and media sectors, specialising in defining, developing and delivering internet, IPTV, interactive TV and broadband services for global blue chip organisations and start-ups.

Prior to joining Virgin Media he spent four years as a consultant for organisations including the Digital TV Group, working to develop the industry association’s connected TV strategy. He worked on the launch of Freesat and IP Vision’s Fetch TV and also advised Capita plc on the UK’s Digital Switchover Help Scheme.

Ian has held senior digital media and technology positions at Home Choice (now TalkTalk), the BBC where he worked on the early development of what became Freeview, and at Cable and Wireless plc.

Both resellers and end users alike are struggling to keep up with the ever-expanding field of video streaming technology. This session will provide the fundamentals of today’s streaming technology, from planning to specification and implementation of appropriate streaming solutions for virtually any application. Particular focus will be paid to the growing challenge of managing workflow and key barriers to adoption including training, security, and content management. Attendees will leave armed with the knowledge and tools to overcome these barriers and automate workflow within your organisation.

The massive consumer adoption of smartphones, tablets and connected TVs is one of the most exciting yet daunting developments confronting broadcasters today. On the one hand, the proliferation of devices provides powerful new opportunities to expand audience reach and engage consumers with new interactive experiences. On the other hand, this device landscape has produced an increasingly complex and fragmented runtime environment for broadcasters, from HTML5 and Flash to native applications for iOS and Android and more. This session will showcase how major broadcasters are navigating these challenges and achieving success with video across different platforms and devices.  

Presented by Germany’s international broadcaster, Deutsche Welle, this session will cover a strategy for improving multimedia websites for HTML5, particularly for delivery to mobile devices. It will address multiple formats and technologies – including HTML5 web development, encoding, and delivery tools - and share relevant examples and statistics.

For all the buzz about online video advertising, most content owners have yet to be able to turn their online video from cost centre to profit centre. Still, strong signals suggest that video monetisation is around the corner , provided content owners don't pull back in today's tight economy. What will it take to reach that tipping point and what direct cost and revenue impact will it have on content owners? With all the different ads formats on the web today, which ones have the greatest ability to help content owners monetise content and why? 

From the Danish Parliament to 10 Downing Street, government offices across Europe are utilising online video to meet the needs of their constituents and advance public policy. Our panellists will discuss the unique needs of government video, from content creation to audience measurement and analytics.

Dom Robinson, Chair of the Content Delivery Summit, will present an overview of the discussions there and shed light on the latest trends, challenges, and opportunities in the European content delivery market. Topics will include next-generation services, infrastructure trends and the push for CDN federation. 

This session identifies the most relevant adaptive streaming technologies and details the most critical factors for comparing them. Next, it details how to choose the ideal number of streams and key encoding parameters. Then it provides an overview of options for encoding and serving the streams, and closes by describing techniques for serving multiple target platforms like Flash and iDevices with one set of encoded H.264 files. 

The rapid growth of Android OS-based handsets, along with emerging tablets using the Android “Honeycomb” operating system, provides an opportunity for an alternate platform to Apple's Flash-free iOS. What are the challenges faced by developers and content creators that wish to push video and rich-media web browsing experiences to the diverse Android OS marketplace? Tim Siglin, co-founder of consulting firm Transitions, Inc., was asked to find those answers, which were published in a series of reports commissioned by Adobe, Inc. The results were surprising on a number of levels, based on extensive testing of more than a dozen handsets and tablets. Siglin will share those results and a number of other insights into the use of particular streaming protocols on Android in an informative, question-and-answer session format.  

The Arab Spring came to most viewers not via traditional broadcast technologies but via smartphones, and more and more tools are appearing on the market that allow for broadcast-quality streaming via 3G networks. So what are the technological and market implications of a world where all one needs to deliver news is access to a cellular data network? Our panellists will discuss and debate the topic.  

As executives strive to create a social media footprint, they make an effort to integrate a variety of applications into their business strategy. This session will explore social media webcasting and the effects of incorporating social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook and other group chat functionalities into a live webcast. Attendees will learn about the impact of corporate guidelines on social media, the use of social media in webcasting, and the effects of social media webcasting on the corporate message. 

Join us for an informal drinks reception in Streaming Media’s Expo – a chance to network with your global peers and find out who’s won the annual Streaming Media European Readers’ Choice Awards.

Oliver Heckmann is the Engineering Director for YouTube in Europe. He leads a team of 70 software engineers and researchers and is responsible for many partner and user facing projects, including Content ID, Annotations, Insight and Analytics, Video Ingestion and the GData API, as well as large parts of YouTube monetisation, Ads Targeting and Ads Quality. Before working on YouTube Oliver was a manager on the Gmail team. Prior to joining Google in 2006, he led a research team at the Multimedia Communications Lab in Darmstadt, Germany. In 2004, Oliver won an award for the best German Computer Science Dissertation, followed by multiple other awards, including a Google Founders Award. 

This session starts by detailing the playback specs for all iDevices, old and new. Then, it shares the strategies used by prominent iTunes publishers to serve the complete range of installed iDevices. Next, the session switches to cellular wireless delivery, with a technical description of Apple’s HTTP Live Streaming, including recommendations for the number of streams and Apple's encoding parameters. It concludes with a review of encoding options for HTTP Live Streaming and techniques for serving multiple target platforms such as Flash and iDevices with one set of encoded H.264 files. 

With new approaches to content protection and digital rights management (DRM), content publishers are partnering with technology providers to offer solutions that empower, rather than inhibit, consumers. And, as consumers show increased willingness to pay for content if it’s priced right and made easily accessible, it appears that DRM’s dark days are over . Panellists will discuss new DRM and content protection schemes, as well as strategies for deploying them effectively. 

The countries of Northern Europe are considered long time pioneers on broadband and mobile. The web TV offerings in this region are unique in having commercially successful services with rich and engaging broadcast content online commercialised through subscriptions and advertisement. How is this innovative online broadcast market developing further? Hear the thoughts of leading commercial broadcasters in the region. 

2011 will be a year of experimentation for content owners as they seek new ways to engage websavvy viewers. The opportunity that social networks present is one involving interaction and engagement. People are used to receiving online recommendations on what they should buy, where they should eat, and who they should see in concert. The question is whether they will welcom the same interaction and recommendations with regards to what they watch on TV and other devices. Is search simple enough? This session w address how recommendation technologies can tap into social recommendations and the opportunities and pitfalls of transferring internet technologies to other devices.

From new content paradigms to student-created documentaries, schools and universities are relying on online video to shape the way learning moves into the future. Low-cost live streaming solutions, mobile video capture, and open-source video management have dropped the barriers to entry, and this session will discuss the innovative ways those technologies are being applied.  

The ability to target highly defined audiences at scale has long been the calling card of the online advertising industry. Combine that with the sight, sound and motion that are the hallmarks of online video, and you have a powerful tool to engage consumers with targeted, relevant and compelling messages. As the pace of innovation in this space continues to accelerate, media buyers face the challenge of staying on top of the tools that are available to help them execute data-driven video campaigns at scale. In this session, the presenters will discuss the current targeting technology available, giving real-world examples of how it can help brands ensure that their campaign budgets are optimized to reach their core audiences. 

This panel discussion will focus around building effective ecosystems for any-screen delivery, exploring the technical challenges CDNs face, and evaluating solutions for architecting a CDN infrastructure that reliably delivers multiscreen content, cost-effectively. The CDN panel will share their expertise via practical case studies.

Years of conclusive statistics show that streaming can offset travel costs, outsourced services and production costs, and the opportunity costs of removing employees from the office for meetings. But once you've proved the ROI on paper and have your programme going, the question becomes, “How does the enterprise deliver on the promise?” This session features first-hand examples from Times 100 Companies that are using streaming to support core communications, training, and educational programs and employing metrics to prove cost savings and employee engagement.  

Content owners can now choose from a large number of new transcoding solutions including in-house enterprise-class software and hardware appliances; cloud-based solutions; and transcoding services offered by CDNs and other third-party vendors. Given this breadth of choices, choosing the right transcoding mechanism, or combination of mechanisms, has significant impact on the cost, quality, security and reliability of the overall solution. This session focuses on the benefits and trade-offs of each mechanism and helps you select the best solution for your needs.  

Facebook has now overtaken Yahoo! as a source of video views, placing it second only to Google. As Facebook is now a primary source of content discovery and viewing environment, it’s undeniable that social media and video make a very powerful combination. Whether you are a media company syndicating your content to social channels or a brand marketer using social profiles to build awareness and nurture customer relationships, video and social media can work together to address wide-ranging business goals.