Video Processing Perspectives

Elemental is excited to find itself among the friends of the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony this year. For those not familiar with the annual Ig Nobel event, this is not your run of the mill awards ceremony.

The Ig Nobel prizes recognize scientific achievements that make people both laugh and think. According to the highly entertaining program bill, "The Igs are intended to spur public curiosity and interest in science and other fields of endeavor." In addition to the awarding of ten prizes for improbable scientific achievement that give one a moment of pause, the evening features Nobel Laureates, flying paper airplanes and a mini-opera in five acts.

The ceremony is put on by the Annals of Improbable Research, an organization dedicated to humorous dissemination of scientific discovery led by AIRhead in Chief @MarcAbrahams, and will be held at the Sanders Theatre at Harvard University on Thursday, September 29, 2011. Live streaming coverage begins at 7:30pm ET. Discussion on Twitter is already well underway.

Elemental was proud and humbled to bring home two Tom Holce Entrepreneurship Awards from the OEN award ceremony held last night at the Portland Hilton. We were honored first as the winner in the Working Capital Stage Company category and again when Elemental’s CEO, Sam Blackman, was recognized in the Individual Achievement category for his leadership in guiding the remarkable growth and success of the company he co-founded five years ago. 

In Sam's words, “we are proud of the growth our company has achieved over the past year and of the positive contribution we’ve made to our state’s economic development. At the same time, we believe our progress thus far is just the foundation and the real work of building a great firm is just beginning. We are more excited than ever by the opportunities we anticipate in the coming months and years, and it’s an honor to garner such strong support from the Oregon entrepreneurial community.”   

We’re winding down at IBC today. What a show! The multi-screen experience was the pervasive theme at the RAI this year. And Elemental’s booth was abuzz with excitement. Only a few short months since our initial launch in the EMEA region, the Elemental team is humbled by the attention we received at this year’s event.

What became clear to us throughout the show was the passion our customers have for their business and how Elemental’s solutions and support are a key ingredient in their successful evolution to multi-screen video delivery. Customers and prospects alike stopped by to discuss the opportunities they see in new media and the challenges they know Elemental is best positioned to help them address.  

But, most of all, we saw customers grateful to put a name to a face, thank us for our tireless support of their high profile projects, and give us further encouragement as we continue to put them at the center of all we do. The two-way, unfiltered, and passionate feedback experienced at IBC serves as a great motivator for us. So here’s to continued success: to our partners, to our customers, and to all things multi-screen.

IBC is quickly approaching and Elemental is preparing to exhibit and present at this key industry event, held each September in Amsterdam. We are bringing our complete product lineup to this year’s show to demonstrate the industry’s foremost adaptive bit rate multi-screen video delivery.

On the show floor, Elemental will provide an exclusive look at features and applications geared toward content programmers, solution providers and broadcasters. Demonstration highlights include live video streaming with ad insertion and programmable image overlay. We’re particularly excited to show attendees dynamically changing graphics in a live output stream – and integrating Twitter to do it!

Visitors to Elemental’s stand at IBC can live tweet using a variety of hashtags (#IBC11, #multiscreen, #elemental) and see Elemental Live burn that image into its output stream within mere seconds! Come see your live tweets at Elemental’s stand in a terrific demonstration of image overlay that can be used in real-world applications for video branding, tracking and spoiling.

This week, Elemental is attending and exhibiting at the College Sports Video Summit (CSVS) in Atlanta, Georgia. Sponsored by the Sports Video Group, CSVS is all about building the business of college sports video and it's where schools and universities learn how to increase the value of their college sports content. As SVG notes, more college sports content is being produced and distributed than ever before – and most schools have only just scratched the surface.

It was not so long ago that a college sports fan settled for watching a national game-of-the-week on television or tuned in to listen to a favorite team play on local radio. But with the proliferation of “pads, pods and tabs”, typical supporters don’t need to settle for these limited options any longer. College fans increasingly expect and demand expanded coverage of their school’s sporting events online and on mobile devices. Delivering video, both live and on-demand, is now a priority in the world of college sports and prominent networks and programmers turn to Elemental to make this happen in a high-quality and cost-effective manner.