61 HAPPENING Making Waves
“When people from our company have been to conferences we have noted a lot of them have lost quality in terms of the presentations and the attendees. A presentation might come from a broadcaster or an operator, but that doesn’t automatically make them the best person to listen to. They may be presenting slides that are two or three years old. We’ve been quite annoyed at some of the conferences we have been to, and sometimes you have to say, let’s just do things ourselves. “Scandinavia is a small market, so it’s easy to get around and meet people, but they’re also doing so much good work within the field. When I see what broadcasters and operators are doing here, compared to what they’re doing in Germany or France or the UK, I really feel like they are lifespans apart and that one group is working ten years behind schedule and not thinking about what is going on.” Anand notes that the difference between Scandinavia and the rest of the world also has a lot to do with the technological infrastructure. Developments may be hindered in some countries by the market itself. They may not have end users with the buying power or device availability or robust enough networks to take their streaming services to the next level. MUTUAL SOLUTIONS Anand had been talking to Norwegian broadcasters about a problem they all shared. One of them had migrated to Norigin’s cloud service – at considerable expense. “We thought it was a great project, but the sad part is that there are four major cable operators in Norway who all use the same 250 HD channels and all of them will be spending that same amount, or more, when they set up their own platforms.” Though happy to get the business, Anand saw a tremendous waste of time and effort with all the operators essentially duplicating work to host the same set of channels. Mentioning it to two of the big companies resulted in a conversation in which both said it was technically feasible, but there were some legal barriers. “I said to them, ‘If I can lock you all up in a room, could you try to make this happen?’ And they said, ‘Of course we would. It’s common sense.’ And that was the birth of the idea for the Northern Waves conference.”
and hear talks, but to participate, network and make themselves available to the other delegates. There were 15 speakers, across 13 different agenda items. Three different moderators, with different areas of expertise, hosted the event. The event had a total of 120 attendees, including Norigin staff. It was a steep learning curve for Norigin, which had no experience in putting on conferences. But Anand is feeling confident about rolling out Northern Waves to other cities in Scandinavia. He sees it developing to a quarterly event with a much more narrow focus – dinner and a talk with deep networking. “It was probably, even if I say so myself, the best conference I have ever been to.” FEED plans to be at upcoming Northern Waves events, if only to answer the question: where will Scandinavian excellence go next?
come to some agreement. The idea grew from there, with other issues, like the competition between codecs, also joining the agenda, as well as an education stream. The Northern Waves conference came together very quickly, with the time from conception to execution just over two months. It was a conference truly by the industry for the industry, with participants designing the topics and setting the agenda. “There are the serial conference speakers, who show the same slides and give the same talks. But we think it needs to be more relevant as technology becomes redundant every day.” Northern Waves was divided into two sections with TV streaming technology in the morning and new advertising tech in the afternoon. Anand made sure that attendees and speakers were committed for the duration of the show. It was important not just for people to show up
BY THE INDUSTRY FOR THE INDUSTRY
Anand decided to host a dinner party where the companies could discuss and
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