The next meetup of streaming media professionals will take place on Tuesday October 25th, starting at 6pm at www.barcadenewyork.com – 148 West 24th Street between 6th/7th in NYC. Come network, drink and play videos games for free thanks to sponsors Cedexis and Varnish)

Barcade has over 50 old school video games, 25 beers on tap and some great food. There is no RSVP needed or list at the door. Just show up with a business card and you are in! You will need a wristband to drink, so introduce yourself to me when you show up.

These meetups are a great way to network with others tied to the online video ecosystem. We get a great mix of attendees from companies including AOL, NFL, Showtime, Omnicom, NBC, NBA, Time, HBO, Viacom, CBS, Twitter, WPP, Google, Nielsen, Facebook, FOX, R/GA, Twitch, Riot Games, American Express, Comcast, wall street money managers, government agencies, VR production companies and vendors from all facets of the video ecosystem.

I’ll keep organizing these every month so if you want to be notified via email when the next one is taking place, send me an email and I’ll add you to the list.

Tastemade is a video network built for the mobile generation that enables people to come together to discover and share their passion for great food and travel. At the Streaming Media West show, [taking place November 1-2 in Huntington Beach, CA] Jay Holzer, Head of Production at Tastemade.com will outline how they went from using YouTube as their primary distribution source to building their own global video platform and applications, which connect with over 100M monthly users around the globe.

Register online using the code 200DR for a free “Discovery Pass” and get access to the keynotes, exhibit hall, discovery track sessions, and receptions at #smwest – at no cost – or get $200 off a full conference pass.

At the Streaming Media West show, [taking place November 1-2 in Huntington Beach, CA] Eric Zawolkow, Media Systems Engineer at Facebook and James Broberg, Founder and CEO of MetaCDN will present best practices around reliable live streaming of critical, high importance global events with multiple redundant signal pathways. Learn how to overcome challenging on-site environments like flakey internet, failing encoders, faulty cables and failing CDNs. Learn some best practice tips covering the gamut of on-site challenges (cameras, switchers, signal paths, ingest/uplink) to reliable end-user playback (transcoding/transmuxing, reliable playback engines, CDN selection). Find out how you can implement backups and redundancy at every possible level of your live workflow.

The presenters will also cover best practices (and caveats) around successful leveraging Facebook Live – Facebook’s native new entry into the live streaming category that is gaining enormous traction and engagement right now. Learn from their experiences (and the odd failure) to make sure your next event is a resounding success.

Register online using the code 200DR for a free “Discovery Pass” and get access to the keynotes, exhibit hall, discovery track sessions, and receptions at #smwest – at no cost – or get $200 off a full conference pass.

At the Streaming Media West show, [taking place November 1-2 in Huntington Beach, CA] we have a session that will discuss how analytics tools can be used to produce more engaging video content. Learn the metrics content owners use to identify if content is sufficiently engaging an audience and how insights gathered impacts content owners creation and acquisition strategies. The session will also cover what efforts are being made to personalize experiences, reviewing the tactics used to create segmented user groups and target individual users. Speakers will have an open discussion about the gaps that must be bridged on the technology side in order to do better content personalization, prediction and the positive impact for content publishers. Confirmed speakers include:

• Moderator: Diane Strutner, VP, Sales, Business Development, Nice People At Work (@NicePeopleAW)
  
• Jeremy Stern, Analytics Architect, WillowTree (@willowtreeapps)
  
• Mike Flynn, CTO, Studio71 (@Studio71US)
  
• Brian Selander, EVP, Whistle Sports Network (@WhistleSports)
  
• Christopher Roselli, President, Founder, HOLLYWOODLAND

Register online using the code 200DR for a free “Discovery Pass” and get access to the keynotes, exhibit hall, discovery track sessions, and receptions at #smwest – at no cost – or get $200 off a full conference pass.

Providing a good experience is key when providing millions of live video streams to tens of millions of viewers. At the Streaming Media West show, [taking place November 1-2 in Huntington Beach, CA] Bill Couch, Lead Web Engineer at Periscope and Pieter-Jan Speelmans, CTO and Co-Founder at OpenTelly will present how Twitter’s live broadcasting platform recently partnered with OpenTelly to improve its viewer experience through a series of technology migrations. This session dives into the technology needed to deliver an industry-leading live streaming experience on Periscope. Attendees will hear how Periscope improved the experience delivered to its viewers by migrating to HTML5 and low latency HLS.

Register online using the code 200DR for a free “Discovery Pass” and get access to the keynotes, exhibit hall, discovery track sessions, and receptions at #smwest – at no cost – or get $200 off a full conference pass.

The Humane Society of the United States is the nation’s largest and most effective animal protection organization. They have gained significant insights into live streaming by going live via Facebook, Periscope, and YouTube around the world. At the Streaming Media West show, [taking place November 1-2 in Huntington Beach, CA] Chad Sisneros will showcase valuable lessons about what to do and what not to do when it comes to live streaming. Hear how the Humane Society of the United States live events have reached millions, exposing their brand to new members, and allowing them to engage, converse, and convince these community members to take actions and support their cause.

Register online using the code 200DR for a free “Discovery Pass” and get access to the keynotes, exhibit hall, discovery track sessions, and receptions at #smwest – at no cost – or get $200 off a full conference pass.

Video content has seen significant improvement by the introduction of UHD video, high frame rate and high dynamic range. At the Streaming Media West show, [taking place November 1-2 in Huntington Beach, CA] Tarek Amara, Video Systems Engineer at Twitch will showcase the improvements these features add to the video watching experience. The presentation will also cover the video encoding techniques (encoding standards, bitrates and encoding parameters) used today to deliver high bitrate demanding video to the end consumer and challengers this process faces. Finally it will go through some recommendations for the encoding stage for both VOD and live streaming applications.

Register online using the code 200DR for a free “Discovery Pass” and get access to the keynotes, exhibit hall, discovery track sessions, and receptions at #smwest – at no cost – or get $200 off a full conference pass.