Blogging from the CITI conf. at Columbia University.... Monday 5/23/05

Columbia University's CITI center (the Columbia Institute for
Tele-Information)

http://www.citi.columbia.edu/

Was the site of a day long conference IPTV.2: The Second Generation of TV
Over The Broadband Internet.

The description on the website detailed the event as follows:"After text and music it is the turn of video to be transmitted in volume over the Internet. Early efforts fared poorly, either for technological or economic reasons. But now, a new medium is merging and emerging. What are the implications? Just as TV was not simply radio with pictures or film over the air, the new medium is beginning to develop new content and business models. This will deeply affect existing media types, firms, and regulatory arrangements.

This conference, held at Columbia, will analyze these developments and
projections. It will bring together speakers from academia, media firms,
the tech and Internet community, and government. The regulatory dimension
will be discussed in an evening session, held at the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.

The conference is CITI¹s third event on the subject, with the first (1995) resulting in the publication ³Cyber TV², and the second, held in 2001, resulting in the book ³Internet Television.² Each anticipated the emerging trends and obstacles."

The day began with a spot on snapshot of IPTV, along with some candid
observations about IPTV.1 (2000) and how the obstacles of internet television made the success of so-called 'streaming media' unlikely even before 'black september.'

The first panel - which I participated in - was interesting, but I find it hard to judge from the stage, so i'll leave reviews of it to some other intrepid observer.
That said - there's plenty to report.

Out of the day long event - a number of observations worth blogging about -

David Burstein - of DSL Prime (http://www.dslprime.com/) was an engaging
voice, both hopeful and realistic about the challenges that face network
operators as the roll out new economic models. He is pushing hard for Verizon (who he says is building the best network on the planet) to adopt an open network philosophy - even if it makes life tougher for Terry Dennison, the EVP charged with building out Verizon's content offering.

Dennison - who arrived with a target painted on his back (as all reps of big networks do at events like this) spoke off the cuff for about 15 minutes about Verizon's dual mission of Customer Aspiration and Deployed Innovation.

While it may sound a bit like corporate double speak, Dennison made a good case for why Verizon can't afford to roll out a 'me too' network and expect to win any customers. Rather than simple engage in a price war, Dennison seemed prepared to engage in more of a niche war. He talked with conviction about delivering ultra-nitch content to unserved audience segments... and it may be that they can win consumers by providing the one single thing that customers 'aspire to'.

The panel was Moderated by Jonathan Knee, who is both Senior Managing
Director at Evercore, and Adjunct profession of Finance and Economics at
the Columbia Business School.

Next - fellow NATAS Governor Shelly Palmer ran an engaging discussion
about evolving business models for content providers. The panel (and the
day) had more information than could fit in to the time slots - giving audience members a fast-forward version of many of the thoughtful presentations.

Darcy Gerbarg - who organized the conf. for the Marconi Society, promised
that the powerpoints will be up on the web site, along with video segments. I'll point you to them when they're up.

On Shelly's panel -there was a spirited debate about file sharing - with Mitchell Reichgut taking the position that file sharing is a consumer behavior that can't be stopped. Robert Zitter, of HBO basically compared file sharing to drug dealers - with no patience for the file swappers or their Limewire theft of intellectual property. Just as Verizon was on the hot seat for Jonathan's panel, Andrew Moss of Microsoft was in the cross hairs during much of this conversation.

Readers of this blog know that I'm interested in the Xbox360- vs. PS movement toward the home media center functionality. After the panel, I talked with Andrew -- and asked him to sort out just what the plans were for the Xbox as and its MCE functionality. His answer was illuminating... basically that Microsoft didn't want to risk alienating gamers by putting too many home media bells and whistles in this release, and that while the platform could go that way - they're feeling their way with both MCE and Xbox as alternative paths into the living room. Interesting - and probably about right, given how early home media servers are, and how important and competitive the gamer environment is.

And finally - Ari Wallach of re:think media was on the last panel of the day - talking about politics and iptv. A few nuggets from him – including the fact that the BROADCAST: MACHINE release from ParticpatoryCulture is a product of the former Howard Dean internet team. This is interesting because Participatory culture's release is genuinely open source media sharing - and suggests that the Democrats (or some of them at least) believe that a truly open source media platform will help level the playing field in news and information.

I'm skipping tons of interesting material - lots of it driving toward one specific question, and then an answer that came at the end of the day.

Eli Noam - renowned media visionary and long term thinker - ended the day
by asking for a show of hands as to whether or not IPTV.2 would be more
than simply cable tv programs over a new pipe. The room's vote was a resounding YES. And one thing is clear - if IPTV.1 (2000) was a shot in
the dark - IPTV.2 is roaring down the tracks. No longer future think, it is clearly under construction today - and ready for prime time tomorrow.

More after I read my notes and process the whole thing in my head for a
Day or so...