The 2009 Streaming Media All-Stars
Ezra Davidson (Ezra passed away on New Year's Day 2009, and is missed by all of us who knew him and worked with him. A memorial site has been set up here.)
Job titles:
• Founder/CEO, CyberAxis
• Co-Founder/EVP of Business Development, SyncCast
• Founder, Stratum3 Consulting
Proudest achievements:
• SyncCast consistently delivered some of the largest volumes of live streamed music in late 2000 and early 2001
• Creating new business models around electronic content sales, consistently pushing the envelope with DRM and CDN technology
• Led the charge in launching the Xbox Live Video Marketplace
• Orchestrated the sale of SyncCast to Technicolor/Thomson in August 2007
• Ezra was a passionate communicator and was working on two books when he passed away on Jan. 1, 2009
Ezra had two children—Jessica, who is graduating from Cal State Fullerton, and Ezra Matthew. A 529 college fund has been set up for Matthew; for details go to http://memorialwebsites.legacy.com/ezra/homepage.aspx.
John Edwards, CEO, Move Networks
Previous job titles:
• Chairman and CEO, I-Link
• EVP, Novell
• President, Coresoft
• President, Digital Research
Proudest achievement:
• My 30-year marriage to my wife, Shawna
Next big thing:
"TV everywhere, any time"
Biggest trend in online video:
"Millennials (GenY) and Tweens are adopting Internet television in place of cable, and cell phones in place of telcos."
Biggest challenge facing the industry:
"Our industry doesn’t know what it is going to be when it grows up. This amounts to rights aggregation and monetization strategies that work for all participants in the value chain."
Rob Green, Board Member and Managing Director, Abacast
Previous job titles:
• SVP, Business Development and Strategy, Nine Systems
• Senior Director, Digital Media Strategies, Akamai
• Group Business Development Manager, Microsoft
Proudest achievements:
• Conceiving and building the CDN certification program for Microsoft
• Drove and managed several of Microsoft’s investments in the space
• Being part of the executive team that sold Nine Systems to Akamai
• Helping Abacast flourish from a board level
• All of the great relationships, both professional and personal, I’ve developed over the years—I really enjoy the people in the industry
Biggest trend in online video:
"I don’t know that there’s 'one' thing, but for sure the underlying trend of main stream content providers rapidly increasing their online offerings, in a variety of different models, is very exciting. It seemed like we were just about to get to this point 6+ years ago but I guess it took a little longer than expected!"
Biggest challenge facing the industry:
"Confusion. We exist in small and technical world, with our own vocabulary, and it is very difficult for investors, content providers et al to understand who is doing what and why and what really works and what doesn’t."
Eric Hards, Lead Multimedia Engineer, Lockheed Martin
Previous job titles:
• Web Program Manager, Lockheed Martin
• Creative Design Lead, Lockheed Martin
• Creative Director and General Manager, 3i Graphics
• Creative Director, Chroma Copy
• Multimedia Director, Avtex Multimedia
Proudest achievements:
• The design, development and implementation of the first enterprisewide production webcasting system within Lockheed Martin. Also, the development of the first enterprisewide streaming video channel within Lockheed Martin.
Next big thing:
"Development of a federated enterprise webcasting/streaming infrastructure that can be shared by all of Lockheed Martin’s business unites."
Biggest trend in online video:
"Bigger and better. The delivery of HD quality, real-time streams from the major networks will most certainly push the corporate environment to move to larger bandwidth for the delivery of high quality, larger video to the desktop. In 2005 at the Intranets conference I stated that we will start to see the melding of the PC and the TV. We are almost there. Within the next few years TVs will have PCs and PCs will be TVs. We will have one appliance for both. Then the interactive apps, that we are just now seeing on BlueRay products, that combine live video and internet connectivity will move us into a whole new direction of what we call entertainment."
Biggest challenge facing the industry:
"From the commercial side it is definitely the monetization of the video products. From the corporate side I believe that there are still too many decision makers that believe video is a waste of employee’s time and it is not needed. I remember the same arguments when corporations were deciding if employees needed Internet access at their desks. We know how lost that one. Video will be the same way, but it will take the same time for it to mature in the corporate world."
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