The IBC2023 Accelerators programme has got underway in earnest, following the annual ‘Kickstart’ day on Feb 8th. The event saw a select group of industry leaders come together to hear the ‘longlist’ of pitches for inclusion in the 2023 Accelerator programme, prefaced with introductory presentations and culminating in the Awards presentation for best Accelerator project of 2022.
Organisations attending included representatives from Amazon Web Services, BBC, DAZN, Warner Bros. Discovery, Dolby, Sony Pictures Entertainment, SKY, BAFTA/ Albert and Microsoft among many others. The event was sponsored by Zixi.
IBC2023 Accelerators Kickstarter Day: Champion’s Roundtable
A particular highlight of the morning’s scene-setting was a 2022 Champion’s Roundtable, where a top-tier group of previous Accelerator Champions came together to discuss the wider impact and value of the programme, as well as look towards the future. Participants included Clive Santamaria, Chief Architect, ITV, Marco dias Silva, Vodafone Group 5G & Edge Computing Ecosystem Development, Caroline Ewerton, DAZN, VP Technical Product Management and Krystel Richards, CNN/Warner Bros Discovery, Broadcast IT Engineer.
Caroline Ewerton, DAZN, VP Technical Product Management kicked the panel off with a warm summary of the value of collaboration among industry peers, especially in areas of rapidly evolving technology and innovation, such as interactive experiences and the metaverse. She also heralded the positive values of coming together to exchange ideas and experiences in the non-competitive environment provided by the Accelerators Kickstarter Day.
Marco dias Silva, Vodafone Group 5G & Edge Computing Ecosystem Development agreed wholeheartedly, not only highlighting the value of open industry collaboration, but also the quality and engagement of everyone involved that increases meaningful and valuable outputs.
Krystel Richards, CNN/Warner Bros Discovery, Broadcast IT Engineer summarised the attitude of the room: “Go and do it, have the conversation, join in and actually learn by doing. Having a finite amount of time [for an Accelerator project] puts enough pressure on you to get stuff done and really get stuck in without fear of failure. I think you can take the learnings from the whole process and not necessarily the end product.”
IBC2023 Accelerators Kickstarter Day: The pitches are made
Another highlight of the day was the 2023 Accelerator Kickstart pitches, which saw 15 pitch presentations made to the room, which could then be followed up on by both champions and participants. Of the 15, eight will be chosen to be taken forward into development, culminating in the presentation of each project at IBC2023 in September.
The longlist of pitches were:
1 Authenticated Data Standard, pitched by Andrew Holland, Fabric
2 Powered by Green Ads, pitched by Francois Polarczyk, Accedo
3 Increasing Fan Engagement at Location Based Events, pitched by Amber French, Catalyst Entertainment
4 Let’s Make Media Gallery Agnostic, pitched by Aaron Nuytemans, Tinkerlist
5 Synthetic Humans for the Metaverse, pitched by Roberto Iacoviello, RAI
6 IMF to Streaming Origin, pitched by Ruud van der Linden, Infuse Video Inc
7 Broadcast of Interactive Animated Content to Children’s Hospitals over 5G, pitched by Rafi Nizam, Chief Creative Officer, Entertainment Executive
8 MetaRex. Metadata Resource Express, pitched by Bruce Devlin, Mr MFX Ltd
9 Volumetric Video for Broadcast and XR: Generation and Post-Production, pitched by Nico Moreno de Palma, Volograms
10 5G in Performing Arts, pitched by Prof Robert Stewart, University of Strathclyde
11 Real Time Interactive Streaming Personalised Live Sports, pitched by Sylvio Jelovicich, Red5 Pro
12 Automated Translation into Visual Languages, presented by Virtual Interpreters, pitched by Michale Davey, Robotica Learning Ltd
13 Immersive Storytelling and Real Time Sports in XR Broadcast Powered by Edge Computing, pitched by Luke Levene, Metaverse Combat Federation
14 Elastic Media Supply Chain, pitched by Dave Simon, Diversified
15 Connect and Product Anywhere, pitched by Andy Beale, Jonathan Hale, Warner Brothers Discovery and Ian Wagdin, BBC.
The pitches will now be reviewed and whittled them down into eight final projects over the coming weeks.
IBC2023 Accelerators Kickstarter Day: 2022 Awards and the road ahead
Finally the presentations wrapped with the 2022 Accelerator Project of the Year Award winner announcement, which was awarded to the ‘5G Remote Production in the Middle of Nowhere Project’. The Honourable Mention was awarded to the ‘Volumetric Video for Broadcasting, Metaverse Production and RT3D Assets’ project.
The project was championed by BBC, BT Sport, BT Media & Broadcast, RTÈ, TV2, Olympic Broadcasting Services, Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, University of Strathclyde, Scotland 5G Centre,
Participants of the winning project included AMD, Microsoft, Net Insight, and Neutral Wireless, Zixi, HAIVISION, Singular.Live, Nulink, AWS, and Vislink.
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