The 2008 Streaming Media All-Stars

Sponsored by

Rob Glaser, Founder, Chairman, and CEO, RealNetworks, Inc.

"With Glaser at the helm, Real pioneered the mass medium of internet broadcasting and has been meeting the challenges of digital media ever since"—SM All-Star Nomination

Proudest achievements:
• Introduction of streaming audio in 1995.
• First short films designed for the web.
• Introduction of RealJukebox in 1999, which made personal media easy to enjoy.
• Introduction of RealArcade in 2001, launching the casual games category as we know it today.
• Rhapsody is the first online music service to strike deals with all major labels.
• Introduction of RealPlayer 11, a new generation of media player in 2007 that allows one-click downloading of web video.

Next big thing:
"We remain interested in the evolution of video in a Web 2.0 context and in consumers’ desire to do more with it. We believe there are opportunities to develop innovation that gives consumers what they want but also creates new opportunities for media companies."

Biggest challenge facing the industry:
"The tug of war between rights holders, technology, and consumers, as well as getting to the TV."

Mike Gordon, Co-founder & Chief Strategy Officer, Limelight Networks

"Mike's always got his eye on the next big thing, but never loses sight of practical and business concerns in the here and now."—SM All-Star Nomination

Proudest achievements:
• Professional mentor at the American Film Institute’s Digital Content Lab. I’ve had the opportunity to work with super smart folks from the entertainment, technology, and digital interactive industries.
• Working with ABC television on the launch of ABC.com. Although Limelight’s role was only to deliver the content and provide a media-caliber experience for viewers, I had the opportunity to work closely with ABC’s digital media team on what turned out to be an industry breakthrough (and Emmy-winning) internet video service.
• Working with Microsoft Xbox on the launch of Xbox Live Marketplace. Microsoft’s Xbox division was the first major game console manufacturer to launch internet-downloadable game updates, starting with new maps for Halo in summer 2005. Since then, we’ve supported Microsoft through Halo 2 and Halo 3, as well as the launch of Xbox Video Marketplace, and along the way I’ve had the opportunity to learn a tremendous amount about the interests, enthusiasms, and ethos of the global gamer community.
• Membership on the ISOC Advisory Council. The Internet Society (ISOC) is the umbrella organization of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), Internet Architecture Board (IAB), and Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Just getting started on this, but it’s a chance to contribute to the overall evolution and development of the internet, the most important technology of our era.
• Limelight’s initial public offering. The stock has been beaten down pretty far since we went public, but the IPO was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet and work with an incredible group of investment bankers and investors.

Next big thing:
Globally delivered, scalable, high-performance computer/store/deliver services.

Biggest change over the last 10 years:
Ten years ago, streaming anything over the internet was a novelty for users and an experiment for media companies. Today, online audiences take the internet for granted and media companies and enterprises view internet media as a central part of their businesses. Users expect the video, song, or game to start immediately when they press "play," they expect it to play continuously at maximum resolution, and they expect software upgrades and downloads to happen seamlessly. Media companies and enterprises expect to be able to flawlessly and profitably reach audiences, users, and customers. And both expect these things to happen each and every time, across a virtually unlimited range of titles, topics, conversations, and experiences.

Biggest challenge facing the industry:
The biggest challenge the industry faces is to evolve today’s largely technical conversation about servers, bandwidth, algorithms, and throughput statistics to a more meaningful dialogue with content producers about engagement, enthusiasm, ratings, revenue, the Long Tail, and business models. Our customers are storytellers and their audiences are looking for a better human experience—and we as an industry need to be focused on that, not our technical obsessions.

Todd Herman, Chairman and Chief Creative Officer, Technomedia Trends
Former GM, Media Strategy and Monetization, MSN

"Great understanding not only of technology but of human behavior." —SM All-Star Nomination

Proudest achievements:
• I worked with brilliant people. My biggest career achievement has been the distinct honor to work with, and learn from, Scott Moore (now an SVP at Yahoo!), Charlie Tillinghast (President of MSNBC.com), Joanne Bradford, (former Chief Media Revenue Officer of MSN, now head of all of MSN) and advertising legends Tim Hanlon (SVP Denuo), Rishad Tobocowala (Publicis), Adam Gerber (CMO of Quantcast), and Brian Monahan (SVP at IPG Media Lab) as well as Matt Wasserlauf (CEO of Broadband Enterprises), Andy Beers (Former Microsoft Executive), Rick Mandler (SVP, ABC), Matthew Bruno, and Christopher Taylor, my colleague at theDial, and a host of others too long to list but all faithful teachers, professionals, and mentors.
• From my radio listeners I learned the lesson of democratized media. The audience of my talk show helped to make our little Salt Lake City Hot Talk station, KCNR, the 3rd most listened to station out of over 2,000 on Audionet, the precursor to Broadcast.com.
• With my peers in internet radio, like Geoff Rich (former VP of ABC Radio), I helped to prove the power of the medium. At theDial, my internet radio network, we inaugurated 15 top-50 brands and agencies to their first ever internet radio buys, at CPMs higher than broadcast. I am so proud to see what smarter than me, folks like Tim Westergreen, founder of Pandora, have done to mix art & commerce.
• With my staff at theDial, I helped to design powerful technologies. theDial also developed a hugely scalable internet radio platform technology which allowed us to private label the audio streams of an unlimited number of affiliates.
• I wrote the business plan for and launched MSN Video, at the time the first major entry into ad-supported broadband video (with ESPN Motion) which brought over a host of TV content providers to the medium for the first time ever.

Next big thing:
"I have developed some patent-pending digital media technologies and methods in the area of news, film, and rhetoric. The project is called Three Purple Dots ... it's in relatively deep stealth mode."

Biggest change over last 10 years:
"The expectation for what the technology should do is the biggest change. Ten years ago people were amazed that they could hear their favorite station, a new artist or see stuttering little clips of video—that's over. Because of YouTube, people expect everything to be available in clip form, on-demand and free of charge or rights issues. That value-shift has occurred and will be difficult to re-direct."

Chris Hock, Senior Vice President, Product Management, BlackArrow, Inc.?
Former Flash Product Manager, Adobe

"Chris is one of the few people who can say he changed streaming media forever, and be right." —SM All-Star Nomination

Proudest achivements:
• As director of product management at Macromedia, and later group product manager at Adobe, changed streaming media forever with the launch of Flash Video and the Flash Media Server
• Launched the Flash Video Streaming Service, a hosted service for streaming Flash video via partnerships with leading CDNs including Akamai, Limelight Networks, VitalStream, and others.
• Expanded the Flash Media product line with the introduction of the Flash Media Encoder for the streaming of live Flash Video as well as the laying the foundation for the release of the Flash Media Interactive Server.
• Won an Emmy award in 2006 for Technology and Engineering, Streaming Media Architectures and Components

Next big thing:
"Helping companies monetize their viewer-controlled video! I’m running the product team at BlackArrow, a young Silicon Valley company backed by Cisco, Comcast, and Intel that’s focused on multiplatform ad solutions for viewer controlled video. BlackArrow provides an ad solution for viewer-controlled video that enables media owners and distributors to manage and execute campaigns across multiple platforms: broadband, VOD, DVR, and others. "

Biggest change over the last 10 years:
"I may be a bit biased here, but I think the release of Flash as an alternative platform for delivering video was a game-changer. Prior to this, the existing video delivery platforms had large video players that did not integrate well with web pages and often required users to go through a lengthy, cumbersome installation process. Flash really changed that, providing experiences that could be customized by the publisher and integrated directly into web pages."

Biggest challenge facing the industry:
"The biggest trend effecting media companies today is people shifting away from traditional linear TV to forms of viewer-controlled video such as broadband, VOD and DVR viewing. As a result, the industry is faced with the challenge of needing to find the business models and tools that enable companies recapture ad revenue lost from that shift.

"There are a number of ways to meet these challenges: Cable operators have an opportunity to increase advertising revenues for them and their content providers by enabling dynamic advertising in content delivered via VOD and timeshifted via DVR. Media companies can prepare for changing business models by looking for solutions that lower the cost and complexity of managing video advertising across multiple platforms and ad types. As the broadband video ad market matures, these new solutions will need to enable media companies to easily create new avail opportunities in their video and be able to split inventory among various stakeholders to enable flexible distribution agreements between content providers and their media distributors."

Tony Klejna, Director of Educational Technology, Daemen College

"Tony is all about education, and not just at Daemen College."—SM All-Star Nomination

Proudest achievements:
• Bringing streaming to our institution along with helping to acquire greater bandwidth, new technology, and expanding our reach with video and online learning.
• The opportunity to train decision-makers and technical staff in North America, Europe, and Asia. When I began, there were lots of confused stares in the audience and it has been really rewarding to see each year how folks from multiple industries have learned to successfully apply streaming in their businesses.
• Helping institutions and business leaders to understand the capabilities of streaming and its role in reaching clients and reinforcing learning and marketing opportunities.
• Judging in the Advanced Media category of the Emmy awards andgetting to know some of the very visionary and talented people at the Academy.

Next big thing:
"We have a new multi-million dollar Information Commons under constructionthat will provide great access to online media, collaborative webcasts, andvideoconferencing for our local, regional, and growing international programs in China, Singapore, Laos, Europe, and the Middle East."

Biggest change over last 10 years:
"Several big changes have impacted the industry. Increased bandwidth has been a huge positive for everyone from the corporate and institutional user to the home user. The toolsets for creating and delivering streaming media have come a very long way over the decade. They are much more robust, easier to configure, and provide enough options to satisfy most needs. Certainly the advent of mobile handsets and methods of streaming to them has been the hottest technology in the past several years and will certainly continue to grow for the foreseeable future."

Biggest challenge facing the industry:
"I think that continuing to be able to show good return on investment through the integration of current and emerging technologies into our core businesses will always be something that we will need to keep in mind. We need to remember that we are usually part of a larger business model that actually is driven by profit even though we sometimes get caught up in the coolness of the technology."