Streaming Media - April/May 2008 - (Page 38)

the most telling evidence that the streaming media industry (yes, I used that word, even though one of my first post-return articles was about how this isn’t an industry at all) has rebounded and is back on track to meet expectations set for it back in 1997. We all have our litmus tests or barometers to gauge how well something’s doing. One of mine is traffic in Silicon Valley, specifically on Highway 101. During the boom it was bumper-to-bumper traffic; then, in the early 2000/2001 time frame you could actually drive from San Jose, Calif., to San Francisco International Airport on 101 without encountering a traffic backup. Today traffic’s a bit denser and traffic slowdowns are quite common, even if it’s (thankfully) not back up to bubble-era levels. For Dan Rayburn, executive vice president of Streaming Media, it’s the schwag, as he famously stood up and announced before a keynote at Streaming Media West 2006, clutching a lighted yo-yo. “I haven’t seen a giveaway on the show floor over 10 cents in the last few years,” Rayburn said. “But this yo-yo proves we are back in the hot spot.” So I went looking and found a website (www. calmx.com/articles/bl61200.htm) that showed all the schwag gathered from the Streaming Media East 2000 show, held June 14, 2000 at the Hilton New York. Those of a decade of streamingmedia.com Best in Show We asked our inaugural Streaming Media All-Stars for their remembrances of highlights from Streaming Media shows past or their take on the importance of the shows to the industry. Here’s what they had to say. STEPHEN CONDON I remember being on the floor at Streaming Media East 2000 and constantly bumping into ex-cable industry peers who were stunned at the opportunities and interest in streaming media. TODD HERMAN I remember a very senior media executive from broadcast TV who—as he pointed at my PC and slammed the table—told me at a show 3 years ago, “My programming will never appear on that device!” I sincerely congratulate him for having the courage to be wrong and to admit it by doing the extensive streaming of his programming he does now; he does it amazingly well. CHRIS HOCK I remember conducting the keynote speech at Streaming Media West in 2005, just as Flash video was starting to gain momentum. But regardless of whether I’m speaking or not, the Streaming Media conferences have always been a great opportunity for me to meet customers and get together with partners. TONY KLEJNA I remember back in 2001 when East was held at Javits in New York. Microsoft demonstrated the new Windows Media format by cutting the network cable—and the stream kept playing. DOUG MCINTYRE The thing that I remember most was the huge sums of money that Microsoft Windows Media and RealNetworks used to spend on promoting their products at Streaming Media shows. Both were eventually replaced to a large extent by the Adobe Flash player. NICO MCLANE The East conference is always my barometer for measuring where we were, where we are, and where we are going. RICH MAVROGEANES It’s not a single event, but watching the conference’s birth, almost death, and newfound popularity has been interesting. Conference attendance is a useful metric to discover market interest levels. In recent years it’s amazingly encouraging. DON MICHELS I remember watching Mark Cuban dance at one of the show’s social events, long before Yahoo! lined his pockets or ABC gave him dancing lessons! CRAIG MOEHL I remember hard debating with panel members at Streaming Media Europe 2001. ANDREW OLSON At Streaming Media 2001, thePlatform was in the Microsoft partner pavilion at the Javits center for our first trade show, and one of the telco providers had an outage there in NYC. Our primary CDN for demos had no redundancy, so we couldn’t demonstrate any video. In the meantime, we had members of the press checking out the system so we showed them how thePlatform MPS allows you to dynamically switch CDNs. We were back up and streaming before the end of the interview. NEAL PAGE The parties!!! GREG PULIER Over the years people have tried to break up our industry by verticals, technologies, or services. The Streaming Media shows, sites, newsletters, and magazine have been the only consistent glue that designates and differentiates our industry. They are the primary forums for communicating new ideas and highlighting new products, as well as learning about innovations and trends in the space not only for providers of tools, but also for end users. We saw this shift at the last conference where, besides many vendors, many potential end users of streaming media were attending to gain knowledge. TOM STREETER I’ll never forget the crush of people at the opening of the East show in 2000, most of them 20-somethings with lofty (or dumb) titles and cell phones glued to their ears. Fast-forward a year to the West show and the exhibit floor in Long Beach, Calif., looked like a crime scene with all the tape marking where booths would have been had their sponsoring companies not gone out of business. Also, I can’t remember what year Lou Dobbs spoke when he was running Space.com, but it may be the last time he ever talked that long without mentioning illegal aliens. BEN WAGGONER Making Joel Unickow eat tongue and drink a Dr. Brown’s Celery at the Carnegie Deli while pitching him on what was to become Silverlight was unforgettable (as much as he might wish otherwise). 38 STREAMING MEDIA April/May 2008 http://streamingmedia.com http://calmx.com/articles/bl61200.htm

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Streaming Media - April/May 2008

Streaming Media - April/May 2008 Table of Contents Beyond the Bottom Line Technology and Business Trends by the Numbers (Not So) Instant Karma MSN Autos Revs Up Video Production Dow Finds the Right Streaming Chemistry Why Video Is Changing the World A Decade of StreamingMedia.com What's Your Digital Media Strategy? Blasts From the Past: A Decade (Almost) of StreamingMedia.com Headlines Analyze That A League of Their Own: Streaming Media All-Stars Where Are They Now? Wanted: Sexy HDTV That Connects to the Internet and Services All DVRs Anystream Agility Inlet Technologies Spinnaker S3000

Streaming Media - April/May 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.