Chris Pfaff moderated the ‘Media VCs and Accelerators’ panel at Arctic15 Helsinki on Tuesday, June 1, 2021 with the following panelists:

• Melanie Schröder, director of finance and portfolio, APX
• Nico Lumma, managing partner, Next Media Accelerator
• Anne Jacobsen, CEO, Media City Bergen

Arctic15, the leading networking and matchmaking event for investors – including Index Ventures, Draper Esprit, and NEA – and start-ups in the Nordic region, was an ideal forum for this session, which discussed:

* media consolidation rapidly accelerating at a time when media tech is smashing legacy distribution models. Are we actually about to enter a new golden age of media investment in Europe?

* European broadcast and cable networks and telecom operators have created environments that enable media innovation to flourish. How do accelerators work with broadcasters and operators to create differentiated ventures?

* Strategic media investors are in a strong position today, it would seem, as many institutional VC firms shy away from media investments. How does APX approach early-stage media investment?

* Bergen is an unusual media hub, bolstered by TV-2 and its famous spin-outs, including VizRT and Vimond, among others. How has MCB broadened the outlook for the Norwegian media scene, in general, and can it sustain the track record of Norwegian media start-ups?

* Germany continues to produce leading media-tech ventures, from Soundcloud to hologate. What does the next year – coming out of the pandemic – look like for media investment in Germany?

* how do you help position start-ups in a media world that seems, quite often, to be dominated by Big Tech? Do the likes of Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, and Google appear to be roadblocks or islands of opportunity (either for investment or acquisition)?

Nico Lumma (upper left); Chris Pfaff (upper middle); Melanie Schröder (upper row, second from right); Anne Jacobsen (upper right)

Chris Pfaff moderated the Streaming Media East session ‘How to Succeed With a Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) Service’ on Wednesday, May 19, 2021, featuring some of the leading players in the D2C space, including:

• Ian Greenblatt, Managing Director, JD Power 
• Karl Meyer, Head of Media and Entertainment, Samsung Ads 
• Jon Goodstadt, Director, Ad Sales, Media & Entertainment, Roku 
• Louise La Grange, Launch Director and General Manager, BBC Select

You can watch the full panel at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7o40IY7dsQA&list=PLcSb1s2U3uyBDk4jY5_c5gdZ_zinvjVqR&index=23

Karl Meyer (upper left), Chris Pfaff (upper middle), Jon Goodstadt (upper right), Ian Greenblatt (middle left), Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen (middle middle)

Chris Pfaff moderated the Streaming Media East Connect session ‘Ad-Supported Streaming Takes Over?’ on Wednesday, May 19, 2021, featuring some of the content and technology leaders in the Free Ad-Supported TV (FAST) space, including:

• Damian Pelliccione, Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Revry
• Chris Yates, general manager, on-demand, Redbox
• Nick Colsey, VP, Business Development, Sony Electronics
• Srinivasan KA, Co-founder, Amagi
• Philippe Guelton, EVP of Online Networks & President of Crackle Plus at Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment

You can watch the full panel at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmxMh1u8BQ0

Chris Pfaff (upper middle); Srinivasan KA (upper right); Philippe Guelton (middle left); Nick Colsey (middle middle); Chris Yates (bottom left), Damian Pelliccione (bottom right)

Chris Pfaff produced and moderated a killer session – ‘Co-Watching: The Next Best Thing to Being There’ on the growing industry trend of co-watchig at TVOT LIVE! Spring 2021, on April 26, 2021. Industry leaders, including Jonny Williams, COO, Sceenic; Miheer Walavalkar, CEO, LiveLike, and Wim Sweldens, co-founder/chief architect, Kiswe, joined the session.

You can watch the full panel at: https://youtu.be/R2ly-X-dl5w

Chris Pfaff (upper left); Jonny Williams (upper right); Wim Sweldens (lower left), and Miheer Walavalkar, LiveLike (lower right)

MORE ABOUT ‘CO-WATCHING: THE NEXT BEST THING TO BEING THERE’

More than a decade after the “second screen” brought mobile users and TV content together, the co-watching era brings people together in a sync solution with live content. The live sports and entertainment industries have benefitted, during lockdown, from audiences not able to gather in sports venues, concert halls, festival venues, sports bars, or even in living rooms. This panel features some of the global leaders in the field of co-watching, who will discuss the technical and marketing challenges of launching and sustaining co-watching experiences.

Jerimiah Hamon, chief scientist of Firstlight Media, one of the leading data science figures in the OTT industry, conducted a one-on-one fireside chat with Chris Pfaff – ‘Your Data or Your Gut?’ – at the TVOT Live! Spring 2021 edition on April 27, 2021. Hamon discussed his views on what data science brings to the business of building an effective and engaging OTT offering. How predictive analytics can deliver a superior experience.

You can watch the full panel at: https://youtu.be/STpbnjxNsVE

Chris Pfaff (left) and Jerimiah Hamon (right)

ABOUT ‘YOUR DATA OR YOUR GUT?’

Media and entertainment executives have a long history of “knowing” what sells, but nowadays are gut feelings enough of a foundation for a winning business strategy? As more and more choices vie for consumers’ attention and loyalty, can the content industry really leave subscribers’ viewing choices to chance?  Jerimiah Hamon, Chief Scientist at Firstlight Media, is a computational mathematician with a background in military intelligence, healthcare and medical research, and now consumer behavior and entertainment. He is expert at correlating and automating the links between stimuli and viewer responses to enable more precise targeting of video content. In this wide ranging conversation with  Chris Pfaff, CEO of Chris Pfaff Tech Media, Jerimiah will lift the veil that surrounds data science, explaining: the top misconceptions executives have about data; the pillars of a successful data strategy; and the advanced psychographics that are making data more accurate than ever.

Chris Pfaff produced and moderated a supersession at the Spring (NAB-themed) Media Meet & Greet event ‘OTT Platforms for All Sizes: Not All Content Wears the Same’ on April 22, 2021, presented by Broadband TV News, and sponsored by Amagi Corporation. Avner Ronen, from Samsung Electroics; Tony Huidor, from Cinedigm; Paul Edwards, from ViacomCBS’ Pluto TV, and Sriivasan KA, from Amagi, discussed the explosion of free ad-supported television (FAST) and the growth of niche content channels in this 42-minute session. Kudos to Janet Greco and the Dealroom team for a great event.

You can watch the full session at: https://dealroomarchivedsessions.s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/46556092/269e189d-45f5-40f7-9c01-4470b75320e1/archive.mp4.

Paul Edwards, ViacomCBS’ Pluto TV: (upper left); Tony Huidor, Cinedigm (upper middle); Avner Ronen, Samsung Electronics (upper right); Srinivasan KA, Amagi (bottom left), Chris Pfaff, Chris Pfaff Tech Media LLC (bottom right)

The virtual theatre universe was rocked on Saturday, February 6, 2021, when AliBi, Technodramatist’s “reality-bending livestream theater experience,” brought together an audience of more than 90 people on Zoom, while streaming live from the Gene Frankel Theatre in downtown Manhattan. The adaption of Tristen Tzara’s Dadaist play ‘Handkerchief of Clouds’ immersed the audience in a love triangle. A private investigator uses augmented reality, motion capture and voice recognition software to solve the homicide of one of the lovers, while suspects attept to dance their way out of trouble. The performance mixed live effects with live music and dance in a brilliant, original production. Created by Lorne Svarc, artistic director for Technodramatists, and directed by Brian Rardin, the show feature Grammy Award-winning experimental musician Johnny Butler with choregrapher duo AnA Collaborations. Butler stars with Alex Jenkins and Nick Anselmo and features Anne Bates as Alison Bi. Lead technologist Yashwanth Irragatappu, virtual and physical set designer Yichan Wang, lead designer Min Kawk and technical director Hy Braverman delivered a seamless live and virtual production. Long before any theatre productions returned to New York stages, Technodramatists made a mark on 2021 with ‘AliBi.’

The European media community’s inaugural pre-holiday Meet & Greet event, held on December 17, 2020 on the Deal Room Events platform was a milestone for how networking events in 2021 should look: well-moderated discussion and connections between colleagues – many of whom have never met before – all in a robust virtual platform.

The event, produced by Janet Greco, leveraged Deal Room’s renowned networking features for connecting with individuals who fill out profiles in advance. With a proscribed time limit of 20 minutes per meeting – now conducted by video chat – the Deal Room platform has been successfully implemented by various event producers, most notably Arctic15, the leading Nordic venture investment event. Media Meet & Greet brought together more than 70 individuals – broadcasters, technology vendors, OTT producers, and consultants – who conducted meetings, and attended talks on the ‘Future of Work’ by John Howkins, ‘Navigating Innovation in Lockdown,’ with Vanessa Vigar, and ‘The Rise of Hyperlocal,’ with Andrew Stirling.

Chris Pfaff moderated The Pub, a convivial session that discussed ‘Streaming or Screaming.’ The event was capped with a live appearance from Los Angeles by noted rock composer, singer and multi-instrumentalist Carl Restivo (Grammy nominated songwriter for ‘Go All The Way’ from the ‘Twilight’ soundtrack, musical director for Tom Morello, Perry Farrell), who performed three solo guitar numbers that he felt were appropriate: Chuck Berry’s ‘Roll Over Beethoven,’ as the event was on the composer’s 250th birthday; ‘Have a Cigar’ by Pink Floyd, as a statement on the music industry, and ‘So Lonely’ by the Police (as we have all been locked down for nearly a year). Over the span of just a few hours, the event was a hopeful, and enlightening, way to end the year and look forward to further such gatherings that smash time and distance and bring connection to an industry that has undergone seismic shifts in an unprecedented year.

You can check out the next events at: www.broadcastprojects.com/media-meet-greet. You can register for the ‘Barcelona Sunrise’ event – from February 15-25 – at: https://ti.to/media-meet-greet/media-meet-greet-barcelona-sunrise-2021

Executive producer of ‘Media Meet & Greet,’ Janet Greco, welcomes the audience

Chris Pfaff (upper left) moderates the ‘Streaming or Screaming?’ discussion in The Pub, one of the virtual discussion rooms in the Media Meet & Greet session for the European media industry on December 17, 2020. Joining the session were Vanessa Vigar (upper row, 2nd from left); Andrew Stirling (upper row, 2nd from left); Lee Morin (upper row, far right); Trygve Refvem (middle row, far left); Janet Greco (middle row, 2nd from left); Tracy Swedlow (middle row, 2nd from right); Gilberto Flores (middle row, far right); David Short (bottom row, far left); Benjamin Schwarz (bottom row, 2nd from left); Laura Riggs (bottom row, 2nd from right), Uwe Kühhirt, from Fraunhofer (bottom row, far right)

Carl Restivo (bottom) sings live from LA to end the Media Meet & Greet event; Janet Greco (upper left) and Chris Pfaff (upper right) rock out

Quickstream™, a leading provider of software-defined, cloud-based solutions for live video, announced on October 28, 2020 the release of its Quickstream Cloud product, the first one-click video cloud exchange for the broadcast industry. The Quickstream Cloud solution is the first live video cloud solution designed for the delivery of broadcast-quality feeds globally to any partner in 15 minutes. It is the first inexpensive live cloud video solution of its kind, and is as easy to use as a shared document.

On a live webinar on launch day, Michal Suchon, founder/CEO of Quickstream, conducted a live demo of Quickstream Cloud features, and engaged in a panel discussion, moderated by Chris Pfaff, that also featured:

•   Dr. Eric Petajan, principal systems engineer, Video, CV, AI, AT&T
•   Wojtek Bialek, broadcast manager, Da Vinci GmbH
•   John Hammond, producer, Property TV (pTV)

Quickstream Cloud acts as a unique live global video exchange network, enabling effective live video contribution in the cloud. As a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering, customers can sign up, connect with Quickstream Cloud and exchange live content in an instant, on-demand fashion. The product builds on the company’s flagship product, Quickstream Node gateway, which enables broadcasters to design flexible IP workflows and bridge between video infrastructures. Quickstream Node is the most complete IP video signal distribution product on the market, capable of transporting high quality, high-resolution audio/video feeds with minimal latency. Full encoding, decoding, and transcoding support for the OTT market is currently in beta.

You can view the full Quickstream Cloud introduction webinar at:

Michal Suchon, founder/CEO of Quickstream, introduces Quickstream Cloud, and how to create and share a channel

Wojtek Bialek, from Da Vinci GmbH, discusses his use of Quickstream

Dr. Eric Petajan, from AT&T, discusses 5G and the cloud

John Hammond discusses the opportunity for TV producers using the cloud

Chris Pfaff moderates the New York-Krakow-London gathering

Kadri Ugand, GameFounders co-founder and founding partner at Go Beyond Capital, held a 20-minute fireside chat session with Chris Pfaff on Monday, October 19, 2020, the first day of the inaugural Arctic15 Online event. Kadri is one of the leading figures in the global gaming industry, and has developed a keen eye toward growing start-up teams, having invested in 71 studios across 26 countries. She discussed how she applies her expertise to purpose-driven, mindful companies based on environmental, social, governance (ESG).

Kadri Ugand discussed her new fund, Go Beyond Capital, and discussed her investing thesis for GameFounders

Hanne Nuutinen (onscreen) and Laura Vänskä (above, 2nd from left) successfully stage managed and directed the first virtual Arctic15 event