IBC 2017 will be the 50th time the annual international broadcasting conference has come to order. IBC CEO Michael Crimp said a lot has changed in that time.
“The industry is a very different place to that of 1967, when we were excited about color pictures on our televisions. Today ‘the industry’ is a lot broader, with many new markets melding with the traditional broadcast sector including cloud, AR/VR, mobile, IoT, social networks and telecoms,” Crimp said.
This year’s conference is expected to draw 55,000 visitors and 1,700 exhibitors from around the world. Subtitled Truth, Trust and Transformation, IBC 2017 plans to cover aspects of the broadcast industry across five tracks.
Highlights throughout the show’s program include keynotes featuring Daniel Danker, product director for Facebook, and Brian Sullivan, president and COO of the Digital Consumer Group at Fox Networks Group. Rikard Steiber, president of Viveport and senior vice president of virtual reality at HTC, will also present a keynote outlining what’s new with virtual, augmented and mixed reality.
Other sessions include speakers from NBCUniversal, Discovery Communications, Liberty Global, Gracenote, Google, TiVo and Sky UK.
Beyond the sessions, IBC will break out a number of individual areas and summits focusing on different segments of the broadcast industry, including the Future Zone—focused on sci-fi-sounding tech like mixed reality, 3D audio and holographic projections—and the Future Reality Theater—focused on creative, business and technology sessions new technologies and opportunities.
The Platform Futures strand is dedicated to sport and the latest delivery and engagement technologies.
“It looks at how new technology is pushing boundaries for live sports coverage; the lucrative phenomenon of alternative sports formats like Mixed Martial Arts and Rugby 7s; and the unprecedented growth of eSports which boasts a market that is now pushing towards the half-billion dollar size,” Crimp said.
On the exhibition floor, Crimp said that IBC will feature the “biggest temporary structure we have ever built” for Content Everywhere, including a curated exhibition and a Hub Theatre.
New this year is the IBC Startup Forum, for which IBC partnered with Media Honeypot to assemble startup and scaleup businesses, investors and media houses around a Deal Room, networking areas, seminars and a pitching competition.
This year’s IP Showcase will be more focused on real-world scenarios and education sessions.
“IP is no longer ‘the future’—real-time IP for production, playout and contribution is a practical, flexible, efficient reality that is rapidly taking hold in mainstream broadcast operations,” Crimp said.
This year, the Audiences and Advertising Conference stream, held on Saturday, will feature speakers including Jeff Binder, CEO of Layer3 TV; Tom Pickett, CEO of Ellation; Orpheus Warr, CTO of C4; Adrian Drury, director of technology strategy and insight at Liberty Global; Christopher Mead, senior director of partnerships EMEA at Twitch; and Ashwin Navin, CEO of Samba TV.
In all, IBC 2017 will be a wide-ranging event and a chance to observe how much the broadcast industry has evolved over the past 50 years and where it may go in the next 50.