Two of the top keynotes at this year’s National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) event will feature speakers from big tech: Google and Intel.
At NAB’s opening keynote on Monday morning, April 8, Lynn Comp, the general manager of Intel’s Visual Cloud Division, will begin the event by talking about media transformation. In particular, she will talk about “intelligent visual experiences” and the “visual cloud,” which refers to the implementation of visual computing applications that rely on cloud computing and ubiquitous broadband connectivity.
A building block for visual experiences
“Going forward, media becomes a building block for a set of intelligent visual experiences that go way beyond content streaming over your television,” said Comp in an email to FierceVideo. “We move from a world of passive consumption to something that is much more interactive and immersive. In addition to the traditional media processing and delivery, the agile flexible visual cloud encompasses workloads such as media analytics, immersive media, cloud gaming, cloud graphics, and more. With different consumer expectations, industry challenges and platform requirements - visual cloud can align the industry around a new model.”
Later on Monday morning, Comp will speak again on the main stage, where she’ll discuss the evolution of media and in particular, streaming video.
“Service providers, including CDNs and OTT companies are seeking to become truly innovative in their business models—whether that is by monthly subscriptions, ad-insertions, pay-per-view and free-to-play gaming with in-app purchasing, and so on,” Comp said via email. “Unfortunately, different business models drive different tradeoffs and determine whether the service providers will optimize for quality, or for streaming density, for example. I’ll be sharing how innovation in combining software and hardware is bringing new benchmarks in video processing, and we will have some exciting news in that area for the NAB audience.”
Google points up media tech
On Tuesday, April 9, on the NAB main stage, John Honeycutt, Google Cloud’s new vice president of telecommunications, media and entertainment, will be joined onstage by CBS Corporation CTO Philip Wiser for a discussion on how technology is used by media companies to reach their audiences.
Honeycutt just recently joined Google Cloud in January. Previously, he was CTO at Discovery, where he was responsible for the company’s entire technology stack. At Google Cloud, Honeycutt has been tasked to target the entertainment vertical. He will tap his experience and connections to reach out to film studios, distributors, and telecommunications operators. All of these organizations are moving more workloads to the public cloud, and Google Cloud wants to gain their business.
At NAB, Honeycutt will share how Google helps media companies create, distribute, and connect their stories with global audiences. “He'll speak to industry trends including audiences’ expectations, required fundamental shifts and cloud's transformational role in areas such as broadcast workflows ingestion,” said a Google spokesperson in an email to FierceVideo.