IBC2010 Conference Review
The IBC Conference has evolved over the years to become one of the leading venues worldwide for the discussion, dissection and debate about the current and future state of the industry. Featuring a global line-up of some of the most influential thinkers in their fields, the IBC2010 Conference took its already excellent reputation for thought-leadership on to the next level with a series of agenda-defining keynotes and thought-provoking sessions that drilled down in detail to the issues that truly matter to an industry undergoing extreme rates of change.
“Over recent years we have established four pillars in the conference – technology, content creation and innovation, the business of broadcasting and added value – and this year each stream demonstrated great success,” explained IBC Conference Chairman, Michael Lumley.
Opening the conference was a plenary session including a keynote from Sir Michael Lyons, chairman of the BBC Trust, looking at the future of public service broadcasting – if indeed it has a future in this fiercely competitive world. Under questioning from the session chairman, Raymond Snoddy, he admitted that the BBC might elect to forego a rise in its licence fee this year: a week later this was indeed confirmed, but IBC delegates heard it first!
Elsewhere Saturday 11 September’s inaugural IBC Sports Day was a huge success and saw sport broadcasting’s pivotal role as technology pioneer justly recognised. A keynote from this year’s International Honour for Excellence winner, Manolo Romero, charted the history of broadcasting the Olympic Games, as well as looking forward to the technologies that might be used in London 2012 and beyond. A second fascinating session looked at the challenges of covering this year’s FIFA World Cup in stereo 3D, and how far they had been met.
There were numerous detailed examinations on the rise of social networking and the implications of connected TV, and Monday 13 September’s Stereoscopic 3D Day saw the IBC Big Screen join the conference, with many sessions taking place in the Auditorium. The space and flexibility of the RAI’s and IBC’s resources meant issues could be illustrated in the most practical way possible. That meant, for instance, that a session about shooting live stereo 3D could actually arrange to shoot some genuine live 3D footage to illustrate its points, with three stereo 3D cameras covering a table tennis match on stage at one point!
Steve Schklair, stereographic 3D pioneer and CEO of 3ality Digital Systems was the man behind this session, and enthusiastically endorsed IBC’s policy of integrated practical demonstrations and generally high production values. “I like this conference,” he said. “First of all, this is an amazing facility. And I don’t like to use the word quality because that suggests the others aren’t quality – but IBC really is a quality conference.”
And finally, one of the big differentiators that IBC has from other shows is that its free Added Value Conference stream is as rigorously peer reviewed and full of compelling content as the rest of the Conference programme. All the way from the opening session looking at ‘The state of the media industry - are we over the worst?', to the closing EBU-organised ‘Don't touch these issues, they're too hot!', the free Added Value sessions helped contribute to making IBC2010 the place to find out what is going on at a deep level within the industry.
To view the IBC2010 Exhibition review, click here.
