IBC 2010 – the world’s media meeting place

“IBC has always been driven by much more than pure technological innovation,” said Michael Crimp, the event’s CEO. “It is about sharing knowledge and experience, about using the technology to achieve creative and commercial success, and about forming partnerships to reach these goals. Those ideas are now the bedrock of the industry as it moves forward.”

As well as significantly increased exhibitor numbers and space (this year sees the addition of Hall 13), the IBC2010 exhibition includes a number of new initiatives, including the Connected World. This brings together exhibits on IP-based delivery platforms – including online and mobile television and digital out of home – with demonstrations and debates on the new devices available to consumers. Audiences are now consuming content in different ways, at different times and in different locations and creators and deliverers of media need to change to meet this revolution.

The conference tackles three fundamental streams of debate: technology advances, creative innovation and the business of broadcasting, together with other sessions which increase the appeal of IBC. Anchoring the conference programme are a number of keynote speakers, including the chair of the BBC Trust Sir Michael Lyons, Manolo Romero, the head of Olympic Broadcast Services, and Texas Instruments senior vice president Kent Nowak.

Another innovation this year is a formal training programme, the IBC Digital Media Training Workshops, developed and delivered by Future Media Concepts. This is part of a rolling initiative to develop IBC to reflect the structural changes in the world of electronic media.

“We continue to consult with all our stakeholders, and together we develop targets for the future,” Crimp explained. “Using IBC’s strong position in the industry worldwide as a basis for tackling the skills crisis was one of those agreed business development focuses, and the new IBC Digital Media Training Workshop is just a first step.

“The same consultation exercise asked us to look at consumer technology, not because IBC needs to move in that direction but because we all need to be aware of the end user – what the audience wants. So the Connected World is a response to that,” he added. “We were also asked to look at drawing in more CEOs and board level executives, who are increasingly the decision makers. The conference this year has been designed to appeal to them, and there are initiatives planned in this direction for the very near future.

“IBC is run by the industry for the industry,” Crimp concluded. “That gives us a very strong sense of what the current pressures are and where we are heading. Combine that with a responsive and agile organisation, and IBC is unrivalled in its ability to tackle, in a practical and engaging way, the key issues of the moment.”