by Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen
April 11, 2008

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Andrew Olson, Senior Vice President, Comcast Interactive Media
Chief Operating Officer, The Platform

“A real innovator and champion for the industry”—SM All-Star Nomination

Proudest achievements:
• Being a part of the strategic team that gave birth to thePlatform.
• That thePlatform survived and eventually thrived through the downturn of 2001/2002 by treating our employees with honesty and respect.
• Building thePlatform into a market-leading technology platform that was purchased by Comcast, and is now becoming a core piece of both the internet and cable infrastructure for the world's largest cable company .
• My “Digital Media 101” article series that was published in Streaming magazine back in 2002 and 2003. I've gotten many emails over the years saying that the articles helped people move their businesses forward by helping them grasp not only the technology itself, but also how digital media affects their business model.

Blog: http://saint-somewhere.typepad.com

Next big thing:
"I'm thinking a lot about the intersection of a few trends, particularly increases in video quality (both of displays and of the content), broadband throughput like wide-band cable modems, and personalization. The potential for this to create an unprecedented amount of quality content is staggering, and there will have to be both vastly improved navigation metaphors and smart personalization for consumers to take full advantage of it."

Biggest change over the last 10 years:
What's commonplace today looked like science fiction only a decade ago—we've gone from a blurry picture on your PC to great looking video streaming to a phone in a moving car, and evolved from Napster to Fancast.com ... what hasn't changed?

Biggest challenge facing the industry:
"There's an old saying from a Harvard Business School professor: "Are you in the railroad business, or the transportation business?" I think that video content owners are trying to think creatively, and I hope that continues. If content owners try to protect the status quo too much, we could see a decrease in high quality content and value destruction, rather than creation, throughout the value chain."



Neal Page, CEO & Founder, Inlet Technologies

“Neal made his name with his hardware advances, but he's far more than just a technological wiz. Everything he does is done with an eye toward helping the entire industry grow..”—SM All-Star Nomination

Proudest achievements:
• Pioneering work developing “grandfather” technologies of streaming over IP networks back in 1990–1993. I was privileged to work with really smart colleagues at Sun Microsystems (including Inlet’s CTO Scott Labrozzi), developing hardware compression and software decompression.
• Starting Osprey Technologies. While we failed miserably at ISDN- and modem-based video conferencing, our vision and commitment to IP delivery of video using software playback, i.e. streaming, was what made Osprey successful.
• Partnerships with RealNetworks and Microsoft at the same time. We not only helped RealNetworks launch RealVideo, but we also developed the first live streaming card for digital video sources in collaboration with Microsoft.
• Maintaining a common team of the best and brightest engineers and business colleagues for over a decade. I still can’t figure out why they stick with me, but we do some awesome things with digital media, and that is just really cool.
• Starting Inlet Technologies at the right time to take a streaming into the mainstream, making it as ubiquitous as traditional television. Stay tuned…

Blog: www.inlethd.com/blog

Next big thing:
"Both my company and myself remain dedicated to advancing the streaming industry. We are working on products, technologies and solutions that will seamlessly integrate streaming into the infrastructure that delivers new media over new networks."

Biggest change over the last 10 years:
"The biggest change has been the transition away from a postage stamp novelty to an experience that is fundamentally changing the way people consume media. Streaming is a disruptive foundation technology, combined with broadband IP connectivity that is changing the rules for delivering and consuming content."

Biggest challenge facing the industry
"In order for streaming to become as dependable as television, our industry must take a serious step up in delivering quality, reliability, and optimizations oriented towards the consumer. I’m not talking just the encoder, decoder, user interface or other component. I’m talking about the entire food chain from “glass to glass” to make the experience for the consumer perfect for their network and device. This requires our industry to expand our solution sets far beyond our traditional product offerings, and provide innovations that transparently work within the business of new media, not just the technology of streaming."



Patty Perkins, VP and Special Projects Manager, Wachovia

“Patty’s done incredibly interesting things at Wachovia, and she’s helped the industry see just how good enterprise video can be.”—SM All-Star Nomination

Proudest achievements:
• Managed successful enterprise rollout in 2008 for My V-Net desktop video on demand at Wachovia.
• Managed successful pilot program for desktop video at Wachovia.
• Successful design/implementation in 1999 of interactive distance learning via satellite at First Union National Bank.
• Spoke on and moderated multiple panels on distance education and enterprise video at Streaming Media and other conferences.

Biggest change over the last 10 years:
“For Wachovia (and most large enterprises) it’s been the change in mind-set about the value of streaming and on-demand media for use in communications, employee engagement, and training.”



Greg Pulier, CTO and Founder, IVT, Inc.

“Greg has been able to successfully predict industry trends for more than a decade.”—SM All-Star Nomination

Proudest achievements:
• Creation and Deployment of the first Video Based Training System For all U.S. Toyota Dealerships. This system was used to train all U.S. dealers using centrally managed interactive video infant webcasting products.
• Launching IVT MediaPlatform, the world’s first industrial-strength enterprise class webcasting software system. We were the first to recognize the need for more than simple tools for creating, managing, publishing and measuring rich media webcasts. This realization resulted in the development of a rich media webcasting publishing platform product that has been adopted by many Fortune 500 companies.
• Democratizing the creation of video within the enterprise. What YouTube did for the consumer, we have done for employees: that is, making the process of creating and publishing video so simple that anyone can it. Our IVT Studio video webcasting software product is the only product in its class aimed at the everyday PowerPoint presenter rather than the media professional or highly technical employee. This has resulted in companies like IBM being able to empower their employees to create, publish and measure the response to their own video-based webcast presentations. With all the buzz about “user-generated” content we are ushering the era of “employee-generated” content.
• Signing two of the big three accounting firms as their primary webcasting solution and watching them expand their usage over the years to the point where they run up to 14 events a day with over 5,000 participants on many of the events. This type of major usage in large companies reveals webcasting software to be a significant enterprise application and not simply an isolated tool.
• As a result of offering the world’s first seamlessly integrated website video tools I have produced, shot and directed dozens of videos for inclusion in interactive online experiences that have included Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neill, Kathy Ireland, Heidi Klum and Will Smith. These projects were used for everything from marketing sites to product launches to children’s entertainment. I was also involved in the first mixed martial arts fight webcast for Proelite that preceded the cable airing on Showtime; we included the ability to submit messages, photos and vote on the live activities. I have been involved in producing other exciting webcasts including events for Victoria’s Secret, HBO’s The Sopranos, HBO Boxing and more.

Next big thing:
"We will be offering the ability for teams of geographically disperse presenters to work together to put on web-based presentations. This software will enable companies to switch between live presenters in different locations and have them webcast their video and/or desktops out to unlimited audiences. The software will also enable the switching to prerecorded videos. We are also working on an extremely simple version of our enterprise webcasting software to enable less technical people to put on live presentation over the web."

Biggest change over the last 10 years:
"The biggest changes in streaming media have been the quality, accessibility and adoption. At the same time that bandwidths of the general population and corporations has increased, the technology of the leading streaming players, codecs, and transport protocols have improved tremendously. As a result, more and more people can watch better and better quality video over networks. This has enabled businesses to discover the power and importance of video-based communications and therefore the adoption of webcasting technologies has exploded."

Biggest challenge facing the industry:
"The biggest challenges facing the industry now have to do with changing people’s habits. Many companies have become accustomed to using in-house solutions or simple hardware tools for their video needs. As these needs grow and more and more people within the enterprise demand the use of video, media departments push back because of their limited resources. Companies are started to see the need for enterprise architected rich media webcasting solutions that enable media departments to satisfy everyone without having to throw more people at the problem. And, at the same time be able to roll out the creation and benefits of video webcasting to as many employees as possible. We can continue to spread the word through case studies, demonstrations and trade show events that help educate people about their options.

"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 which designates and differentiates our industry. This has formed a critical focus for companies like IVT and provided access to the community and ecosystem of webcasting and streaming media. With the industry now fully recognized and growing, Streaming Media becomes the primary forum for communicating new ideas and products as well as learning about innovations and trends in the space not only for providers of tools but also for end customers. We saw this shift at the last conference where besides many vendors, many potential end-users of streaming media were attending to gain knowledge."



Nick Rockwell, EVP and CTO, Digital Technology, MTV Networks

“Nick is the primary reason MTV has been at the fore of online video.”—SM All-Star Nomination

Proudest achievements:
• Doing some of the first audio cybercasts in 1996, from various (still smoke-filled, in those days!) rock clubs.
• Webcasting the first Tibetan Freedom concert with the Beastie Boys and many great artists ... on a wing and a prayer.
• Launching Streamland.com, one of the first, if not the first, music video aggregation sites.
• Launching MTV Overdrive and 20-odd brand variants in 2004. It was a big step forward at the time.
• Launching our Urge music subscription service, now merged with Rhapsody, in 6 months.

Biggest change over the last 10 years:
“Overall the biggest change has been widespread broadband adoption. It just made streaming video real. Next biggest would be the success of Flash video—it just took everything over while Microsoft was napping. This would be the success of progressive download delivery—for a while there it seemed like it was irrelevant as a delivery technology. “