IBC 2024, the biggest broadcast technology event in Europe kicks off in about a week from now. While preparing for the event, I stopped for a moment to reflect how we, SPX Graphics, fit in the industry and how we see it progressing. See, nothing stops the progress.
4 years!
SPX turns 4 in just a few days, wohoo 🥳
It feels unreal, that a small baby-project of yours truly, has put on the big boy pants and is collaborating with industry leading organizations, businesses and individuals across the world. I would be happy just to share that we are working with our local, arms-reach broadcasters and customers, but it makes me even happier to drop names such as EBU, Zoom, LiveU, Cuez by Tinkerlist, Coralbay.tv, LiveOS, Analog Way, Tellyo, Loopic, Dramatify and a wider network of broadcasters and vendors via the IBC Accelerator program we are also a part of. There will be a full team from SPX participating IBC, assisting our partners to demonstrate integrated, HTML based, custom graphics to their customers and peers.
Industry changing = business changing
The past pandemic forced companies to organize their workflows differently. They had to look past their trusted inner circle of partners and vendors and get answers to questions they never had before.
Work had to be done remotely and tools had to work via internet. Browser based tools were found and started become familiar and make more sense by the day. Often these web-apps introduced new ideas, were more collaborative, productive, flexible and nimble than the closed, local, rigid systems from before.
And this change sent ripples across industries. New software brought new practicies, new opportunities, new business models. Money could be budgeted and allocated differently. Best practises were re-written.
Openness = collaboration
Web is a collection of documents, written in a specified file format. This simple fact changed the world. As the core structure is openly documented, anybody can utilize it however they see fit, and create tools and business around it.
We at SPX Graphics believe, the same thing will happen with graphics in the media production industry.
No. Let's rephrase that! We at SPX Graphics have noticed the same thing has already started to happen with HTML graphics in the media production industry. Open nature of web technologies pushes innovation envelope and enables collaboration across organizations towards common goals.
EBU (European Broadcasting Union) has started a HTML working group, in which SPX Graphics is a member of. The goal is to create an open HTML graphics specification to enable modularity and increase compatibility and as such ease adoption and reuse of HTML graphics and as such make graphics more cost effective.
We work with our partners and customers to make HTML graphics better for everybody. Because...
...no one can make an impact alone.
IBC Accelerators
A school book example of collaboration is the IBC Accelerators innovation challenge, which has eight projects from different production areas. Each project consist of several broadcasters and vendors, collaborating around an idea. SPX is part of the Evolution of the Control Room -project and more specifically the HTML based graphics track. The goal of the track is to introduce modularity to graphics production and enable cross vendor graphics workflows from creation to playout.
Other participants include BBC, TV2 Danmark, YLE, EBU, Channel 4, Technological University of the Shannon, TRANSMIXR, Trinity College Dublin, HSLU Lucerne University, ITN, Al Jazeera Media Networks, XReco, Vodafone Group, SVT, Tinkerlist, Nxt Edition, Loopic, Cuepilot and Erizos.TV
Come and say hi 👋
Going to IBC? Come to the Accelerator Zone (3.A23) at the end of Hall 3.
Naturally we are part of the IBC Accelerators demos and presentations, but we also have new versions of our SPX Graphics Controller software, both for on-prem and SaaS, our Zoom App, the HTML Graphics Marketplace and its also good to discuss face-to-face about options for custom integrations or Creative Services.
And for sharing some of those war stories 😉
Writer Tuomo Kulomaa is the founder and CTO of SPX Graphics