Work through the five phases of a Webcast—planning, production, encoding, authoring, and distribution—with the expert who “wrote the book,” Steve Mack. To add to your real experience, the workshop itself is treated as a Webcast, with the goal to Webcast live from the workshop. This workshop covers production techniques and encoding hardware and software including the Windows Media Encoder and RealProducer. Workshop attendees are encouraged to participate in the Webcast production to get the full "live" rush.

This updated workshop is a crash course to help you evaluate and select the right delivery format for your content. Independent streaming media consultant Dale Sorenson will deliver direct comparisons of the latest streaming media formats and CODECs, including Flash, QuickTime/MPEG-4, RealMedia and Windows Media, and objectively evaluate and quantify the pros and cons of each format. A comparison of encoding applications will also be discussed to help you choose the tools to get the best-quality results for your project.

From concept to delivery this hands-on workshop allows you to walk through the details of starting an audio podcast: RSS, blogs, hardware, software, etc. Learn how to use some of Apple's tools and other devices to create our own podcast within the workshop. How do I syndicate my show? What hardware/software do I need? How can I get listeners? All these questions will be answered by Jose Castillo and Steve Mack who were podcasting long before it had a cool name.

Producing top-quality Web video involves multiple skills, including setting the scene (choosing your backgrounds, clothing, and positioning); lighting; shooting the video; scaling and preprocessing the video to the target resolution; and finally, encoding. This workshop illustrates each step with real-world examples and checklists for encoding into Flash and Windows Media formats. It will outline procedures for beginners and describe how producing for the Web differs from producing for broadcast, DVD, and other more traditional distribution outlets.

Rich media on the Web has become a key component in the way consumers and business users process information and is a new driver for revenues for online businesses. The keynote describes how Microsoftís application platform provides infrastructure and tools for effective Web delivery of rich content that includes audio and video.  It will also discuss how rich media experiences drive user satisfaction and create new business opportunities.

Digital entertainment offers the opportunity to engage consumers on a multitude of devices, creating new opportunities to market, sell, boost ratings and increase customer loyalty. Speed to market and the quality of the service delivered often define success. This session will discuss how content creators can best prepare today to take advantage of the opportunities created by the rapid growth of new media audiences. Learn which business models are most likely to work and why a cross-platform approach to the business of new media is essential.

Beyond impressions, what other criteria will publishers be held accountable for as video advertising matures? In addition to its ability to measure lift in awareness and other brand metrics, video advertising must also drive performance by its ability to generate leads and sales. Pre-roll vs. post-roll, ideal commercial length, and ad formats (interactive components, companion banners, etc.) are just a few of the applications that must still be studied for their relative effectiveness in driving performance for both brand and direct response advertisers. Learn how the further exploration of targeting with video is also necessary, including by the nature of the content (contextual/keyword), the audience profile (demographic/psychographic) and the ability to predict future performance based on past behavior (behavioral).

Finding the right vendor solution for your content management need not be a hassle with a little homework. This session will formulate sample requirements for your video content management needs that lead to an RFI or RFP. Along the way, the session will uncover some bundled extras that you may or may not want from a vendor and address some common vendor responses to an RFI that will help you navigate the services and manage your video workflow.

Today, more than 90% of Fortune 1000 companies use some form of live or on-demand streaming technology. Enterprise streaming is proving its value as a powerful, convenient, and affordable way to broaden learning opportunities, improve communications, and increase productivity. While the media highlights consumer-streaming applications, streaming in the enterprise is where the serious adoption began and where the business value is tangible. This session explores strategies that are important to streaming in the corporate environment.

With the recent offerings by BitTorrent, VeriSign, Joost and others, is legal P2P finally ready for primetime? This panel of content owners and technology experts will discuss whether P2P will finally revolutionize online video distribution. They will discuss whether the cost savings advantage with P2P is real, how P2P will translate into a competitive advantage, how P2P distribution may affect the networks and CDNs and what some of the potential problems are that P2P technology may face from the telco's. Come hear the debate on whether P2P is the answer to the fundamental capacity limitations for large-scale video audiences for today's Internet.

Whether your an organization that needs to deliver lots of video or are a smaller company that needs to deliver only a few videos, the going rate for these services can still be hard to figure out. What variables determine the final price? What is the going rate when you outsource encoding, delivery, and storage to a third party? This presentation will cover real pricing numbers from both large, globally focused content delivery networks as well as smaller regional service providers. Hear what the going rate is today for video delivery and learn what you should really be paying for these services.

Consumer-generated video was a big story in 2006 and continues to be so in 2007. From the largest media companies to garage-bound startups, it seems that everyone is incorporating user-generated content and community into their business plans. But questions still remain: Will business models emerge to drive profitability? Will marketers embrace this new type of media? Is UGC all a bubble waiting to burst? Hear how these sites are tackling these questions while looking for ways to differentiate themselves in a crowded space. Tap into what's next on the horizon for sharing video content and new innovations in social media. Find out about the positives and negatives surrounding copyright issues and content ownership. Hear from this panel about business models and potential revenue streams related to user-generated video communities.

Podcasting has emerged from the realm of garage-bound hobbyists into the corporate arena to great success for both B2B and B2C applications. Major players such as IBM, GE, and Whirlpool use both internal and external podcasts to communicate directly with their audience via this immediate and intimate medium. The ROI for these initiatives is specific and plentiful: sales leads via audio collateral available 24/7, money saved instead of producing written materials, and the promotion of trust with your audience by providing programs that deliver value-added information when and where consumers want. Discover why blogs are an essential component of your corporate podcast strategy to build an interactive community versus a monologue, how the move to mobile means your audio content can/should be available via phones/PDAs, and how tools such as audio press releases, audio white papers, and audio case studies allow you to capture the "earlids" of a generation inundated and weary of visual stimuli.

This is for video professionals and developers who may be relatively new to Flash, or just getting into Flash video projects. Come get a solid overview of what's possible and the best approach to get started. The creation of a simple video player, progressive and streaming options, and source video optimization techniques will be covered. Attendees will walk away with the knowledge they need to confidently deploy simple, professional Flash video applications on the Web.

In the past year, the near-ubiquitous debate over patent trolls has evolved significantly. No longer focused primarily on the relative evils—or merits—of these patent holding companies, technology executives across all sectors have turned their attention to the business and legal strategies with which to confront the challenges that trolls present. In this discussion, you will learn how the growth of patent holding companies such as Acacia has made it necessary for target companies large and small to reexamine how their digital media projects are managed. You will also hear about the technical, economic, and legal implications associated with various strategic options and pragmatic suggestions tailored to corporate executives and patent holders, as well as in-house and outside counsel.

AppleTV, TiVo, Slingbox, and a host of other hardware and software products are starting to deliver new media content from the Web to TVs. Learn what latest devices are being used to deliver consumer content and find out how content creators big and small are utilizing these new tools. Also discussed will be how online content is being treated differently from traditional broadcast content and what potential business models are being created for the monetization of consumer content.

This presentation will help you choose the best-of-breed equipment for Webcasting and will provide you with a road map detailing the hardware needed to be successful. From hardware required for least expensive and bare-bones Webcasting to the hardware requirements for more advanced Webcasts involving multiple input feeds, PowerPoint slides and preprocessing, attendees will have a clear idea of what is needed to budget for when they go back to their organization. Attendees will also leave with a link to an Excel sheet that will contain a list of the hardware, its purpose/justification, approximate costs, and sourcing, as well as the PowerPoint and Visio diagrams of how it all works together.

Online video is becoming increasingly prevalent in higher education, but outside of distance education, adoption can be spotty. One speed bump is the lack of administrative, institutional, and faculty support. Too often administration lumps streaming media in with unrelated IT areas or perceives the cost to outweigh benefit. In this session, experienced media professionals in higher education will share tips for getting buy-in from administrators and faculty.

Unique content now trumps production values when it comes to online video. Media professionals still put too much emphasis on achieving "broadcast quality" for online video, when most Web and mobile consumers prefer gorging on anything but "broadcast content." One need not look further than YouTube to understand this phenomenon. See examples of online and mobile video content consumers prefer, what production values they will or won't tolerate, and how best to drive revenue from streamed content. Learn how you can make better use of your existing infrastructure to maximize production and minimize costs and share your own examples and experiences in this lively and interactive session.

This session will demonstrate the nuts and bolts of capturing, editing, and compressing 640x480 to 1024x768 video in the studio or on the road for rapid delivery. Learn how to capture desktop videos without requiring presenters to install and use special software, capture high-quality audio with minimal hardware, compress a 1024x768 video to a 300-500Mbs WMV file, and the options for squeezing video into portable devices while preserving the value of the content.

Enormous progress has been made over the past year in Internet-enabled video. But much of it has focused on user-generated formats and re-purposed entertainment programming. Relatively less emphasis has been put on how the Web will affect journalism. How will video factor into the historic transformation taking place at The New York Times, and what does this mean for the future of journalism?

While rapid progress is being made, hurdles remain to the widespread adoption of mobile streaming. How is the streaming industry developing and repurposing content for mobile streaming? What formats and tool sets are available? Are there emerging standards for the efficient creation and distribution of content? This panel of industry experts will explore the current state of mobile streaming and provide insights into future developments.

Meet the creative people who are inventing new forms of television. If the sitcom and miniseries were the unique genres of broadcast TV, what will our new online TV look like? Rocketboom? Ze Frank? YouTube’s home page? Diggnation? What kind of environment will this be for advertising? What will the appeal be to an audience to get them to come back again and again? What is the relationship of the audience to this new TV? This session provides a showcase for the talent making the first successful series of this new medium to share their shows, how and why they make them, and where they see television going.

Adding captions to your video can add value to your site, but what does it take to get it done? In this session, WGBH’s National Center for Accessible Media and AOL will discuss the issues content aggregators face when deciding to provide captions for their video, including mapping the workflow, making changes to the various user interfaces and determining where the captions will come from. In addition, the latest advances in how the major video players display captions will be discussed, including the new timed-text format from the W3C known as DFXP.

If you currently use videoconferencing and are looking for ways to extend the usage of video and reach a wider audience, consider the value of streaming your content. This round-table discussion will present how users have taken their videoconferencing systems and added streaming to get their messages out to more people in different ways. Attendees will understand the technologies used and the applications developed by users of video conferencing and streaming.

Broadband is rewriting the rules of how to succeed in video programming. No longer must the world live by the constraints of 30-, 60- and 120-minute time blocks. Now success can happen in 2 minutes or less. As a result, broadband is challenging conventional business and creative formulas for video. This panel of experts will discuss what kind of broadband video is working for their businesses along with the key outstanding issues for future success.

Getting great-looking live video has always been a challenge in streaming, combining vagaries of live production with hard real-time requirements. This session will go over general best practice- quality and reliable, including production, capture, and encoding. It will look at the new features of the new v11 versions of the Windows Media codecs, and how they can be applied to improve quality and performance for Windows Media for both computer and mobile device playback.

During the past decade, consumers have democratized their entertainment consumption platforms (TV, PC, mobile), spending equal amounts of time and money on services and entertainment across different platforms. While operators have adapted to this democratization by offering triple-play and bundled services, and advertisers have started employing multiplatform distribution processes, programmers face a major problem prioritizing their content development efforts. The bulk of revenues for major media companies still comes from traditional media, and, therefore, content development for new media can take a back seat. This panel will explore the steps that content creators and major media companies need to take to adapt to consumer behavior and the benefits they can get from diversifying their content offering across multiple platforms. The panelists will discuss current consumer demands and new content platforms, as well as new media efforts being taken by the major media companies.

With more than 50 user generated content sites available on the Web today, what tools are currently being offered and used by consumers for content generation? This special session will give you firsthand presentations from some of the leading companies offering tools in this niche vertical. Learn what tools consumers want, how they manage content today and what the future holds for making consumer-generated content even easier to create, upload, and deliver.

It’s been more than 10 years since streaming media technology was first used on the Internet, yet today, there is still no single standard format for video delivery. Multiple formats such as Windows Media, Flash, Real, and QuickTime compete more than ever, each trying to win over content creators. What is the true market penetration for each format? What do you need to know to choose the right format? This presentation will break through the marketing hype to inform, educate, and empower you to select the right format for your application and detail the advantages and disadvantages between the Flash and Windows Media formats.

As video advertising evolves in the coming months and years, technologies and business models will naturally extend beyond those in practice today. Sponsorships in the form of product placement and brand “overlays,” pre-roll teasers that encourage post-roll clicks (and other creative techniques), more effective use of in-banner video, creation of standards and best practices, identifying key performance metrics, establishing content syndication models, affiliate marketplaces, and other distribution and monetization strategies—these are just a few of the challenges and opportunities that face the online advertising industry in 2007 as it establishes a foundation for video advertising that will help shape the future of the broader consumer advertising industry.