Social media streaming is exploding right now for businesses of all sizes. Learn about the tools needed to deliver a professional production to take advantage of the interactivity and massive subscriber base of Facebook Live, YouTube and other social services. We'll walk you through encoding setups for a budget of any size to include dedicated audio, pro HD cameras, API integration and multi-streaming.

Attend this session for your chance to win: Epiphan Webcaster social media streaming device ($299.95 value)

Today's CDN platforms are upgrading and building out infrastructure to reach increasingly larger numbers of consumers' mobile devices and SmartTVs across North America, Europe and Asia, and extending their reach to the rest of the world. IBM Cloud Object Storage can provide CDN long tail and origin storage with the advantages of its patented object storage: nearly infinite scalability, 10+ nines of reliability and availability, and the lowest total cost of ownership of any storage platform available today. This presentation will provide all stakeholders in the digital supply chain with usable information about your options for CDN storage.

Roku is the creator of a popular way to stream entertainment to the TV and offers a unique platform for developers to distribute content. In this session, Roku will provide an overview its tools available to publishers, how to make the most of them and what monetization strategy is right for your content. Some topics covered will be new enhancements to Roku Direct Publisher, advertising tools and capabilities and some updated features and content discovery tools available to publishers.

In recent months, Pay TV carriers and streaming providers like Hulu and YouTube have introduced "skinny bundles" in an effort to prevent cord-cutters and/or attract younger, price conscious consumers. But many of these offerings don't provide much real choice or only leave providers with slim margins due to high carriage fees. This panel of video industry experts will discuss the latest research on consumer channel priorities and pricing analysis and provide perspectives on what types of bundles consumers want to watch.

In this special session, Dan Rayburn presents a hands-on comparison showcasing the leading streaming devices, and OTT content platforms. Devices from Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Roku, and Sony are compared, along with every major OTT service including new live offerings from Hulu, AT&T and others. You also see a demo of the latest 4K and HDR offerings and learn how to stream content from phones and tablets and display it on your TV.

You've carefully compressed. You've strategically transcoded. But that still doesn't guarantee the best streaming video experience for your viewers. Get best practices from behind the scenes and make sure your media delivers around the world without interruptions, without degradation, and without fail.

Attend this session for your chance to win: An iPad Mini with a custom skin ($460 value)

Instantaneously delivering high quality video worldwide to every screen typically leads to complex publishing workflows – but it doesn’t have to. In this session, we’ll discuss how to create scalable processes that streamline operations without sacrificing the video quality your audiences want and expect. We’ll also use real-world examples to show how companies are tackling critical workflow challenges.

Attend this session for your chance to win: GoPro Hero5 Black 4K Action camera ($400 value)

The advent of online video has brought unprecedented opportunities to educational institutions. Educators can now teach, connect and engage with their students at any time and any place using flipped classrooms, online courses and live streaming. What are the real-life use cases, technologies and best practices for video in education? Further, where might it be going from here? Learn directly from experts in the education field with these how-to presentations.

Streaming directly to social media has exploded. Everyone is looking to enhance their content and expand what they produce on these platforms without a large budget or production team. LiveU’s VP of Engineering, Dan Pisarski will conduct a lively presentation where he looks at the ins and outs of live streaming to social media – and how to get broadcast quality productions out of cloud-based streaming solutions. How are brands and production companies producing content and syndicating online? Which software and service offerings are available to produce everything in the cloud? How can we expect the live production to evolve further? What does the live streaming workflow look like today and how can content creators prepare for the future?

Piracy monitoring systems must evolve from sending DMCA whackamole notices to real-time watermark detection. However, pirate content originates from multiple sources using different watermarking technologies. Using new audio/video watermark detection techniques, learn how torrent and cyberlocker monitoring providers can streamline piracy monitoring workflow to curtail the supply of unauthorized content.

Attend this session for your chance to win: DWA-branded mugs

As 360-degree video proves itself as one of today’s most immersive video technologies, transporting viewers into the middle of the action, this presentation will provide you with all the insights you need to get started with 360 video content creation. Join The Associated Press to learn about 360 video creation basics, from story boarding to post production. Hear about the resources you need to start a 360 video team, and the necessary editorial workflows that need to be incorporated as you get started with 360 video. The presentation will also look at the technologies you can use to get the most out of 360, including sharing their experiences from the field where they have put a lot of the kit through its paces. The AP will also provide insight into the challenges that lie ahead, from the technological (such as 360 sound) to crossing the divide between 360 and true VR.

Delivering content that is adapted to a multitude of content, devices and network conditions is a challenge. While adaptive bitrate is often explored from a compression standpoint, the ABR logic within your video player makes important decisions that can make or break QoS. Striking a balance between the achieving the highest resolution without causing stalls is a complex task, and the optimal solution can vary greatly depending on audience, bitrates and stream types. This how-to examines the ins and outs of ABR logic. We review the basics of how web and mobile players handle ABR before diving in to the different ways these algorithms are built. Lastly, we offer practical advice on how to optimize QoS with just a few tweaks of your player.

Learn how to develop a cost-efficient, practical and scalable viewership growth strategy through new streaming television platforms (OTT/ConnectedTV) across all leading platforms such as Roku, Amazon FireTV, AndroidTV, AppleTV, SmartTVs, Gaming Consoles and Social Networks. Receive insights from the fastest OTT/ConnectedTV developers, explore best practices, learn how to avoid costly detours and delays, and secret tricks on how to boost viewership growth without spending money.

Attend this session for your chance to win: Amazon FireTV Box ($90 value) plus a $5,000 OTT/Connected TV ad campaign

Delivering OTT video is a complex process involving many challenges such as new standards, varied end-user devices, and changing video production and delivery formats. To deliver high quality OTT content, Broadcasters and Video Service Providers need enterprise class, end-to-end QC and monitoring tools. Using the right tools for live and VOD workflows at ingest and origin server will help assure superior QoS and QoE in the most efficient manner. In this session, we will discuss how this can be achieved.

Giveaway at the this session: Car mobile device holder

360 and VR video are one of the major topics in the industry this year. This panel will discuss which platforms content provider are targeting, i.e. Web, Smartphones, or VR head-sets. In particular the panel will discuss which projections, streaming formats, and rendering techniques are used to stream content today. It will also discuss how new codecs like HEVC, VP9 or AV1, or new streaming standards like Omnidirectional Media Application Format (OMAF) of MPEG will enable better quality and new use cases.

Viz Story allows media companies to quickly create compelling video stories with full real-time, state of the art 3D graphics and easily distribute them online and to social media.

Attend this session for your chance to win: 20 Vizrt portable power chargers (approximate value $40) and 20 Vizrt water bottles (approximate value $25)

How can I build an end-to-end interactive live streaming solution that is lightweight, cost-effective, easy to scale and robust? Creating low latency, live streaming applications for apps and plugin-free HTML5 is hard. Learn how to combine WebRTC, RTMP and low-latency HLS with nanoStream’s H5Live player to create your own ultra-low latency interactive solution for encoding, streaming and playback. Join our session to get a complete picture!

Attend this session for your chance to win: Free setup and usage of nanoStream hosted server on your own private instance or free consulting and testing of nanoStream Cloud for one month including WebRTC+H5Live.

Should you buy or build the video player of your video service? It's a key question every video service should answer when planning for a future full of video content, interaction and consumer engagement. As the video player is a critical part of the viewer experience, it is often seen as a key asset of the video service, resulting in a decision to build it in-house. But what is the true cost of building an in-house video player solution? And why do some video publishers, telco’s and broadcasters opt for buying a video solution in the interests of development and maintenance cost, scalability and quality of experience? During this session Pieter-Jan Speelmans will explore pros and cons of both options and will discuss with you how you can maximize your strategic investment.

Attend this session for your chance to win: A bag of Chokotoff Cote d'Or ($15 value)

Today very little Premium Video traffic is viewed primarily using IP delivery technologies. Primarily because users aren’t as satisfied with the quality of the delivery when compared to traditional Broadcast delivery. In this session we will discuss how close this “Quality” gap and even have IP delivery surpass the quality levels associated with Broadcast.

Attend this session for your chance to win: Deluxe 9 Piece Wine Tool Set ($20 value)

Digital ad rates are insufficient to support quality production, so how will TV online be monetized? Learn from a panel of media executives on how to survive the shift from 30-second ad spots and thrive with ad-blocking consumers. The session will discuss effective ways to measure engagement besides reach and viewing time and how to monetize content distributed across multiple platforms. We'll also touch on the impact of social media networks on online TV and emerging methods for viewer engagement and loyalty. Come debate where the market is headed for subscription and pay per view monetization of online video.