StreamingMedia.com is looking to hire someone who is interested in being the conference chair for the Streaming Media Europe show taking place October 15-17th in London. With all of the other shows I am working on in the U.S. and the growth of our business overall, I won’t be able to chair the European show this year.

We are looking for a part-time person who is willing to work with me on the program but will primarily take the lead in organizing the session topics, selecting speakers and being the conference chair on-site during the three days of the show. You must be located in or near the UK and must have experience in planning conferences and/or have a good working knowledge of the online video industry.

This is part-time work that can be done over many months and other than a few specific deadlines, is the kind of work someone who is organized could accomplish quickly. This is also a tremendous opportunity for the right person who wants to have a real impact on the European online video market and wants to use this event to help establish themselves as a thought leader in the industry. You get to decide how the industry is educated and brand yourself as someone who is tied directly into the space.

If you are interested, please contact me ASAP with your resume and an outline of your experience in the industry as it pertains to conference planning. We will be scheduling some in-person meetings next month in London to talk to those who may be interested. 

Back in September, I posted a list of CDN providers for video delivery and since that post, more providers continue to enter the market. Today, I am tracking over 30 providers for online video delivery (which can now easily be found at www.cdnlist.com) be it via streaming, progressive download, P2P or hybrid solutions.

The last time I made a list like this I got all sorts of angry comments
from many of the companies on the list about me unfairly comparing
their company to another company. No where in this post am I comparing
any company, product, revenue, size, geographic reach, formats
supported etc…. This is simply a list of the providers I am tracking
in the market who offer video delivery services.

Every provider has
different strengths and weakness all based on many different needs of a
specific customer. And before I get a million questions about why
Amazon is not on this list, Amazon’s S3 offering does not count as a CDN in my eyes. Also, this list is based on my interpretation of what a "CDN" is. Many people have different takes and opinions on what makes a CDN and these days, the term "CDN" is very broad.

Maybe you think differently than I do on what classifies a CDN and would have a different list than I do. But based on what I think a CDN for video is, in alphabetical order these are the delivery networks I track in the industry

• Advection.NET (stream, download)
• Akamai (stream, download)
• AT&T (stream, download)
• BitGravity (stream, download)
• BitTorrent (P2P)
• CacheFly (download)
• CacheLogic Changed name to Velocix (stream, download, P2P)
• ChinaCache (stream, download)
• CDNetworks (stream, download)
• Digital Fountain (stream – launching Q1 2008)
• EdgeCast (stream, download)
• Grid Networks (P2P)
• Highwinds (stream, download)
• Ignite Technologies (P2P, download)
• Internap (stream, download)
• Itiva (P2P)
• Level 3 (stream, download)
• Limelight Networks (stream, download)
• Mirror Image (stream, download)
• Move Networks (streaming via HTTP)
• NaviSite (stream, download)
• Octoshape (P2P)
• Pando Networks (P2P)
• Panther Express (download)
• PEER1 (download)
• Rawflow (P2P)
• Rinera (don’t know)
• Solid State Networks (P2P)
• Swarmcast (streaming via HTTP)
• VeriSign (stream, P2P)
• Voxel.net (stream, download)

A quick round-up of some of the latest hiring’s in the online video industry:

• DeWayne Nelon, former CEO at Ortiva Wireless is now the CEO at Avot Media.

• Paul Alfieri, formerly from Motorola is now the head of Worldwide Corporate Communications for Limelight Networks.

• Rick Holtman, formerly from the ROO Group, is now the VP of sales for NeuLion.

• G Gooder, formerly from The FeedRoom is now the Director of Business Development at Brightcove.

• Duane Sulo, formerly from Mirror Image is now the Director of East Coast sales for EdgeCast.

• Steve Chung, former VP of Business Development at CDNetworks, has now been promoted to the CSO and EVP of Global Markets.

If you are looking for a new position, have taken a new job or are a company that has a job opening, let me know. In many cases I will highlight it here on the blog – free of charge.

Thanks to the generous folks over at Microsoft, they have provided me with nine copies of Expression Studio that I can give away on the blog. The Expression Studio bundle includes Expression Web, Expression Blend, Expression Media and Expression Design and retails for $599. Expression Studio also includes a license for Expression Encoder and anyone can currently download a 180 day trail of the encoder here.

This drawing is now over. Dustin Reyes, Brett Stime and Jeff Parr won the drawing.

I will be giving these away in batches of three at a time and would like to give them away to those who will really use them as part of their daily job. To qualify to win a copy you must leave one comment in this post with a suggestion for Microsoft on how they can improve any aspect of Expression, Silverlight or Windows Media. Have you seen a feature you’d like included? Is there something missing that you think should be in the next version? Leave a comment with a working
e-mail address. I will pick three users a week from today using a random number picker website and
ship them out to the winners at no cost.

If any company is interested in getting exposure for their video
related product on my blog and is willing to give away the product, contact me.
I will post pictures of the product, link to the company website and potentially write a product review or link to other reviews on the web. It’s
great exposure on a blog that does over 300,000 page views a month.

Considering I am in the online video industry, some may say I am crazy for not wanting to follow the bandwagon that wants to shout from the top of their lungs that TV is all but dead. Yes, I get the impact online video is having on traditional broadcasters on many fronts, but when folks like the NY Times publish articles proclaiming that "TV is becoming obsolete", then the industry is setting everyone’s expectations incorrectly. TV is anything but obsolete.

Online video is having a huge impact on the way content is created, marketed and consumed, but distributing video online is not replacing traditional broadcast programming. I know some are under the impression that one day your computer will become your TV, but that’s not going to happen and we all know the Internet can’t even support those kind of numbers when it comes to viewers all watching a show at the same time. For all the talk of the writers strike and some of the data that has been put out saying that more people have gone online for videos, that does not change the fact that most of the content on TV is not available on the Internet.

I have over 60 season passes in TiVo. Going through all of them yesterday, more than 90% of the shows I watch are not available online anywhere. And the ones that are, like content from CBS and NBC, do not show up right after they are broadcast and typically take days if not longer to appear on the web. And in the case of something like 60 Minutes, one story alone is chopped up into 10 different video segments on their website and encoded at a pretty low bitrate. And sports, well forget that. No NFL games are available on-demand the next day online and while the MLB games are, it requires a subscription.

The demise of the TV is overrated and many in the industry keep saying the same thing as if they have to say it just to be cool. I keep hearing people in our space says things like "I don’t even need a TV anymore, I’ll just watch all my video online". Or, "there was nothing on TV last night so I went online to watch video". Nothing on TV? I don’t know about you but I have hundreds of channels and can always find something to watch. I don’t have hundreds of channels on the web of professionally produced content. It reminds me of the time when people in the industry had to use the word "convergence" or "broadband" in every single sentence they used as they were convinced that others would think that since they used those words they must "get it".

No one is throwing out their TV. And those who don’t watch TV, probably never really did to begin with, as opposed to people who want to use them as an example and say that online video is the reason. The TV is not going anywhere and way too often in our society people want to talk about one thing replacing another, instead of being a compliment to it. The TV did not replace the radio. Internet video is not going to replace the TV. P2P delivery is not going to replace all CDN delivery. These things are all complements to one another. We should see the TV for what it is, just another way to get different kinds of content for various viewing experiences.

As expected, CacheLogic has officially closed a fourth round of funding totaling $25 million and has now raised just over $50 million to date. The company will be making some announcements shortly about some new large customer wins and will be focusing on a new marketing effort designed to showcase their P2P offering in a new light. They have also recently won a contract to work with the BBC to help with the expected traffic surge when the BBC’s iPlayer comes out of beta.

It looks like P2P technology still has the most traction outside of the U.S. for now.

I’ve been a little slow in blogging as of late as I’m hard at work on finalizing the advance program for the Streaming Media East show taking place in May. We will have 36 sessions at the show and the first third are now confirmed with moderators.

This year I have decided to use the blog to post the conference agenda before the advance program is even printed so everyone can see the kinds of topics and subjects that are going to be discussed and the kind of demos that will be shown. Please keep in mind, this is just the first 1/3 of the program, there is a lot more to come.

If you see a session in particular you are interested in possibly speaking on you can send in a speaking request, but since the deadline passed more than two weeks ago, those who sent in speaking requests on time get first priority.

Effective Business Models For Short-form Video Marketing
Some advertisers see user-generated video sites as a free way to distribute their message, however this has rapidly evolved into a significant paid business, where sites charge based on video placement and search keywords. Learn the relative ROI of going to a major site (i.e. YouTube) vs. a smaller site (i.e. Metacafe) vs. a plethora of tiny sites. Learn what methods are successful for getting viewers and the importance of content vs. placement. This panel will discuss and show video examples of effective business models for both advertisers and publishers.

LifeCasting: How Fast and How Real Can We Get?
How did lifecasting videos get so hot? In the early days of television, live was the second choice, because of potential pitfalls, cost of production and a host of other problems. And yet, in the world of Internet video, lifecasting – using Internet video to share moments of our lives or to broadcast events and happenings – is the new hot thing. With platforms like Kyte.tv, Zannel, Mogulus, Stickcam and many others now available on the market, lots of new options and opportunities exist. Come see some of the hot and upcoming mobile lifecasting options in action and discuss is lifecasting will be become just a fad or the next big thing.

Best Practices in Enterprise Streaming for Communications and Learning
Use of online video in the enterprise has evolved well beyond the special occasion of rudimentary talking head videos that characterized early adoption. Today, innovative organizations take a holistic view of all their online communications, seeking to extract as much value as possible from any infrastructure that involves video. Whether webcasting executive briefings across the globe, or capturing and archiving rich media presentations for training, marketing, sales, and compliance, a growing number of organizations are capitalizing on the ability of Web 2.0 technologies. This session will show firsthand examples from Fortune 500 organizations of best practices in integrated online video for communications and learning.

CDN Pricing: The Going Rate For Video Delivery
With more CDN players in the market than ever before, trying to figure out what you should pay for delivering video can still be quite complex. This presentation will offer real pricing numbers from large, globally focused content delivery networks and show you the average going rate when you outsource delivery to a third party. The session will also cover some of the variables that determine the final price, how you should accurately compare the delivery services of one CDN to another and gives you a list of providers in the market today.

Monetizing And Aggregating Niche Video Content
This panel will discuss the new ways content owners and site developers are aggregating content and distributing it on the 2.0 web. We will give examples of ways to develop niche vertical sites without having to hire tons of new personnel and discuss how to reach audiences on social networking sites like Facebook. Learn about some of the new emerging platforms for niche video distribution and learn best practices of ways to increase your changes of making money with your content.

Focus Group: Young People’s Attitudes Towards Online Video
This special session, a panel of high school and college students will discuss their online video consumption habits. Learn what types of online video content they like, what sites they get their content from, the devices they are playing it back on and how they interact with video advertising. Find out what their perspective is on pay media, portable content and what they think the future holds for the next generation of viewers on the web. Bring your own questions for a lively Q&A session with the students at the end of the session.

Live Broadcasting Over Mobile And WiFi Networks
While big media tests the waters of mobile broadcasting, many web video producers are already out there doing it live from the street, with a cell phone. Others are joining in and experimenting with two-way broadcasts via streaming video over cellphone networks and via WiFi, wherever they are. Viewers can chat while the broadcast is going on and affect and sometimes even direct the coverage of the content being produced. Come to this session to hear Steve Garfield talk with other pioneers in the live broadcasting space about their experiences on the forefront of this new technology for sharing their stories over the web.

The H.264 Convergence
Over the past year, more and more streaming media players are utilizing H.264 and providing support for the technology. Adobe’s recent support for H.264 in their Flash player has sparked industry discussions amongst major broadcasters and online video producers about the role H.264 will play. This session will explain why H.264 is getting so much exposure, what recent announcements have put it into the spotlight and whether it can really be the one codec that the industry can all converge on. Attendees will also see real-world examples of sites and services that are utilizing H.264 today.

User-Generated Video in Education
The online video revolution has been embraced by students, teachers, instructors and researchers, many of whom are producing video for class assignments, teaching purposes and other uses. Learn what kind of content is being produced, where is it being posted and how user-generated content fits into the overall strategy of educational institutions. This panel of experienced educational media professionals will discuss the many ways your school, college or university can maximize the value of your user-generated video, and how you can assist faculty and students in making it better.

How Old Media Is Embracing Online Video and New Media
Led by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, this session will discuss how converging media technologies are redefining traditional distribution methods; how interactive and on-demand services are changing and how entertainment and news video is being consumed. Come hear from some of the leading publishers, broadcasters and advertisers about the impact that video and new media is having upon their business models.

Codec Comparison: VP6, H.264 and Windows Media
Choosing the right codec involves lots of factors, including quality, player install base, costs, and server related features. This session will compare the video quality of the big three codecs; VP6, H.264 and Windows Media. It will also include a comparison of the primary H.264 codecs including Apple, Sorenson, Main Concept and Dicas. The session will present attendees with the latest published penetration figures for the H.264 compatible Flash 9 player and Microsoft’s Silverlight player and provide usage statistics among major broadcasters and corporations. Attendees will also learn how to compare relevant server and player related features, and costs associated with adapting and using each platform.

Delivering Media For Microsoft Silverlight With Windows Server 2008
This session will cover how to take advantage of the new Silverlight media serving features in Windows Server 2008. Attendees will learn about the new capabilities of IIS7 Media Pack including bit-rate throttling and playlist options for progressive download content. The session will also demonstrate the enhanced capabilities in Windows Media Services 2008, including scalability doubling and appliance-like cache/proxy deployment for edge networks specific to streaming.