Name: Accelerator Kickstart Day: Learning from 2025, Priorities for 2026
Uploaded: 2026-02-25T15:00:44.632Z
Duration: 1 h 19 min 52 s
Description: Accelerator Kickstart Day: Learning from 2025, Priorities for 2026

Transcript for "Accelerator Kickstart Day: Learning from 2025, Priorities for 2026": It's been an incredibly exciting day. Keynote speakers, pitches, panels, the the vibe, the energy that's in the room today has just been extraordinary. A gathering of a truly international crowd coming from all over the world. Kixar day twenty twenty five has been a really incredible experience. I think there are multiple projects that we'd be interested in. Obviously, AI. AI. AI. AI. And it's an important time to be getting involved in that area. This is cutting edge POCs, r and d type of projects where we really dig into some of the hard problems and see if we can solve them. Really, it's a place that enables us to come and to solve problems together. It's a fabulous community of technologists, amazing exposure to the champions and to each other. It just makes it a must to be engaged with. I love it. I keep coming back. I definitely got bitten by the r and d bug. Multiple broadcasters, multiple vendors in a noncompetitive environment where we're all trying to solve really complex problems. We believe in what the accelerators are doing, and we believe being part of something, solving new and interesting problems. The IBC Accelerator media innovation program really brings the entire ecosystem of the media entertainment world together. To develop develop solutions and better understanding to common complex industry problems. Bringing people together under the umbrella of an accelerator really gives us an opportunity to collaborate, to work together. You leave your your policies and your agendas at the door, and you just bring your ideas and your solutions. When you collaborate, perhaps you don't compete so much. It really gives you access to work with people who you otherwise may may never get a chance to work with. The combined brainpower of some of the bigger organizations, some of the start ups, all looking at from a slightly different angle actually is a huge amplifier. Things go a lot faster when we can all work together. And then we get the great opportunities to come to YBC, share what we've learned. And it's an opportunity for everyone to get into the same room. There's no value in in solving these things in silos. That's why collaboration is absolutely critical. And that's the secret formula here that we have. IBC Accelerator is a kind of a bridge between creativity and the industry and technology. We know that what we're building will help this generation and future generations to come to keep their careers going and keep media production alive. You want now to search for me to stop showing me? Yeah. Hi, everyone. Can you guys hear me? Can you hear me? Yes. Great. Hi. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. I'm Karen Boyd. I'm one of the project leads of the IBC accelerators. Thanks so much. With pretty bad audio. Oh, that's not good. Will you just give us one second to just figure out the audio issues? We want we want definitely for you to have good audio on this. Just a quick second. We are running a little bit late in the room, which is why there is a delay, we're gonna go through a couple slides. Audio's okay. Audio's okay. Yeah. We're all good. I recognize some names there. Rob Kunin. We gotta see you in person someday. I saw we got Sean Belugi. Nice to see you. I've seen brilliant. Brilliant. How's everybody doing? So I've seen we've got people from Manchester. We've got people from Madrid. We've got Finland where I saw there is a lot of snow. You guys are so funny. Rome, Amsterdam, Paris, Walid, welcome. So Walid was involved in one of our accelerations last year, the Ecoflow two project, and you're going to be seeing the Ecoflow three. We've got Oslo. We've got Riga. We've got London. We've got DC, Brussels. Fredrik, are you the muscles from Brussels? Would you say that? Okay. Cool. But, I mean, I'm gonna chat to you guys all day. But right. So we're live in the BBC. I'm literally standing right behind the TV gallery. We've got some exciting stuff coming for you. I wanted to run through a couple of things that you wouldn't have seen because you obviously weren't live with us at the BBC this morning. And just a couple of overview a couple of slides about the overview of the program and kind of where we are in the process if you're new to the program. So we have a we have an afternoon full of content. It's gonna start with our Hannah, my awesome tech, can you possibly bring up our agenda slide, please? There we go. So we've got an awesome afternoon of content ready to go. So we're gonna start with an introduction to our associate sponsors. Very excitingly, the IBC has announced a partnership with the EIT, the European Institute of Technology, as our innovation partners for 2026. We're very excited about this, and we think it's going to bring a whole another level of collaboration with our partners over at the EIT. So we're super excited about this. You're also gonna be hearing from Shore, who is also the sponsor of this awesome livestream. And don't worry. You're not only going to hear from me. I'm gonna be talking until we go live in the main room, and then we're going to have the feed directly from the BBC TV gallery. And I just want to take a second and acknowledge how really deeply, deeply cool in a very nerdy way, but in a deeply cool way it is that the in house production team at the Radio Theatre is going to be sending the feed to Goldcast. So that is really cool. I'm very excited about it, and we're really gonna try and show off the radio theater in all of its glories. Traitors was here a few weeks ago. The Clash has been on the stage. Bowie, Coldplay, you name it, they've been here. So we're obviously really excited about that. After we do the sponsor session, we're then going to be going into what we've called the learnings from '25 priorities for 2026. And what that is is going to be champions from last year's projects who are really going to talk about some of the things that they've learned and where they're building from here. So if you're kind of unsure about where this type of program fits within your strategy, this is gonna be a really good session for you to understand a bit more about how they take this tech and then they apply it in their organizations. So it's a really great session. We've got, I think, about thirty five minutes for that. Then there's a little technical bit that's going to happen on the livestream, but, essentially, we're gonna switch over to a different stream. As far as I know, there's nothing you have to do, but we will then be going into the quick fire pitches. And this is five minutes with 12 pitches, and they are just gonna go for it. You're gonna hear about the innovation, who the partners are, what they're planning to do, what the scope is, what they have as far as onboarded partners. And this is not only for the projects we have this year, but also for our well, hot off the press, our project of the year award winning team who are going to be moving forward into an incubator this year. And the difference between an acceleration incubator is that an incubator is really testing the tech that they have created in a real life scenario. So it's really taking the accelerations to the next level. This will be the third year that we will be having an incubator within the program. And, obviously, we're incredibly excited because not only did the AI Agents project win project of the year award, it also has won several other awards within the industry, including broadcast innovation awards. Wow. We've got someone from LA in the chat. Side note, it's very early for you. Thank you for joining, Ernest. So that's essentially what the run of show is today. I'm gonna try not to talk at you for the next twenty minutes while we're just waiting for proceedings to start in the radio theater. Obviously, this is tied to a live event, so we don't really have that much control on the livestream about what's going on. But, hopefully, you'll stay with us for the ride. Scott is here from Sky's. I've seen a couple of your colleagues out in the networking area, Scott. Sky have actually been one of the biggest supporters of our program. They're, you know, they're always with us. They're always contributing to the use cases. So really excited that you can join us. Are you guys having a viewing party? I heard a dirty rumor that there was a viewing party happening at Sky. Nice. This is a lot for me, guys. So right. Let's maybe run through some of the bits of the Accelerator program that you might not know. If you wouldn't mind bringing up the timeline, Hannah. Okay. So the thing to understand really is that the accelerator program is a year long engagement, even though practically what it shakes out as is a four or five month sprint over the summer. So where we are at the moment is we are, of course, in February, we're at kick start day. Behind the scenes to get to today, we will have been engaging with all of the project teams from, basically, from IBC in September, and we will have been developing ideas. So all of the pitches that you hear today, and I'll put a list up in a second, these have been in development in conversations with partners for months at this point, and it's really around coming together around some of the biggest challenges in our industry. So we had a very interesting discussion with Dizon earlier, and you their pitch is incredible. So just you wait. I think it's pitch number nine. And one of the challenges I think we face in the industry is that we're all maybe broadly trying to solve similar challenges, but we're all in our own little silos. Right? So we don't really wanna do this. We wanna bring you all together, and then, hopefully, we'll move forward in a in a joined up manner, let's say. And that's where we bring you guys to kick start days. So we've got the best ideas. We've got a base project team to lead the scope, roles, and responsibilities, and actually sort of the overall project management. And then from here, you will be invited to express your interest in these projects. So at Kickstart Day, everybody has a badge, and they go tap their badge on a table, and that's how we gather leads. On the livestream, our wonderful marketing lead, Alex, will be dropping a link into the chat after every single pitch, and you will be able to fill in a survey. You can do it multiple times. So if you think you're only wanting one project and then you see another, you can go back and do it again. And then you just tick the box of the pitch that you're interested in. And from there, we will email you to confirm that you wanna join the first base call. If you are signing up with a Gmail, please remember that we are obviously trying to make sure that how do I say this nicely? That we have real people joining projects. So we will be replying and asking you just to put in your company email. Obviously, if there are exceptions, if you're an independent or or, you know, however that shakes out for you, absolutely fine. Just make sure that you email us back and you kind of, you know, let us know that, in fact, you are a real human. We love real humans here. We also love AI agents. So just a bit of, you know, just a bit of a technical bounce there. So from there, you'll have kickstart date sorry. So you'll from kickstart date, you'll have the first base calls. Tomorrow, we will be consolidating all of this because we're moving really fast. So next week, the first base calls start taking place. This is an hour long call, and you'll have an opportunity to once again go through the pitches with the leads. And this is really your opportunity to throw all of the ideas onto the table. So if you're like, we are a vendor who does this, this, and this. We think we can contribute in this way, and this is what we want our role to be in the program. It's really important that you get some of these ideas onto the table as soon as you possibly can because, ultimately, the accelerations really is what you make of them. So if you know that you want to get ROI around a certain piece of tech or you need to get feedback on a use case, this is the perfect place to do it. So first phase calls are gonna happen in the next two weeks. And then from there and, usually, this sort of falls just before NAB Easter half term, which is a bit of a a cyclone for many many folks in our industry, so we try and not demand too much in April. But in the month leading up to that, we're going to put you on project calls and make sure that there is ample opportunity for you to understand your role and the responsibilities within the project, and that if you are gonna commit to the project, you know exactly what you're going to be doing. We don't generally do the observer status or we're just gonna sit on a project call. If you're gonna join a project, you obviously are contributing. And that brings us into sort of NAV territory where really we understand everybody is really busy around this time, so we just try and maintain momentum through March. And then inevitably in around May or April, May is when the project work starts in earnest. And one of the amazing things about the IBC accelerators is that this is a bunch of engineers. You guys love to break things, hack things, develop new tech, and that's exactly what we want to enable you to be able to do. So when you're thinking around how will this project work, think about any engineering project you've pretty much ever been involved in. We sit down. We figure out the scope. We figure out roles and responsibilities, and then we figure out how we're going to get there. This is obviously a little bit complicated because, obviously, we're over the summer months. So it's also really important to understand the resource that is required behind the scenes. So this is in a nutshell kind of how this is going to go. Does anyone have any questions about the timeline, the cycle, when you'll be expected to do what? Doesn't look like it. Right. Let's go on to the next slide, shall we? So there is a cost to being involved in the program, and we like to be very upfront about this. There are this isn't necessarily a huge money spinner for IVC, but we are still needing to cover our hard costs associated with the project, of which there are obviously quite a few. The first important thing to know is that you will have a pod within Hole 14. We have an entire zone dedicated to the accelerators. And often for some of the smaller companies, this is a really good introduction to exhibiting at IBC. So make sure, of course, that you understand these fees fully. We'll leave them on the screen for a second. We invite academia. We invite we invite charities to be involved. And you'll see as we go through some of the pitches, of course, there is loads of opportunity for loads of different players to be involved. Some of our most successful projects have involved academic partners, most notably the University of Strathclyde on our five g projects. They've been incredible. And so we really welcome those everybody in the industry because we do believe this is collaborative. So we'll figure out the fees with you guys just you know, it's an ongoing dialogue, but, unfortunately, you know, this is the reality of the program, and there is the participation fee. Maybe a quick note about the vernacular. So when we talk about champions, we're talking about the buyers of technology. These are going to be your broadcasters, your streamers. Sometimes academic partners, depending on what they're doing, they could also be champions. And then participants is what we call vendors. So champion, buyer, participant, vendor. Also, if you're a company that does all of those things, come and chat to us. We'll, yeah, we'll we'll help you figure it out. Okay. The pitches. This is the exciting part. So has anybody does anybody in the chat perhaps wanna call out? What are some of the pitches that you're excited about? So our pitch number two, Ecoflow, is now on its third year. Obviously, I'm just gonna talk loads about it because it was one of my projects, And I a really great group of people trying to understand the footprint of of streaming, of video delivery. In our first year, we did quite a lot around understanding the energy consumption around user devices. We also looked at the entire supply chain to try and understand, I guess, where the biggest impact was. And then last year, they built an incredible digital twin, which was filtering different confidence kinds of data into the model to essentially where we could reduce that. So this year, they have really built on that. They've been hosting workshops over the course of the last few months, which has been awesome, and they are coming back with a really, really strong use case. Anybody want to talk a little bit about any pitches that they're excited about? The Delta protocol number nine is being pitched by Dazen. You guys know how to say that? D a zed n, Dazen. I was chatting to some people in the radio theater, and I feel like the consensus is that we've all been calling Dazen for a very, very long time. AI for Live Media, Chris. Yes. So AI for Live Media is actually one of the really cool things about that project is we have ASTRO Malaysia on board. We've never had ASTRO before. Anybody who works in Western Europe, Europe, North America will know it's incredibly difficult to bring partners from Asia involved, so we're really excited to bring them in. And, also, of course, if you know Tata, Tata Consultancy Services who are part of that pitch, you know, they really do think in the future. So we're incredibly excited about AI for live media. And then crystal clear. Yes. Okay. So crystal clear has actually been one of the pitches I've managed. So it's like that thing where I'm like, well, I'm doing the livestream so I can talk about the the pitches that I'm I'm I'm managing. Right? It's biased. It's not. I swear. But crystal clear is actually really interesting. And this one touches on two points for me, actually, which I think is is really critical for the industry. So firstly, there is a human element involved in this, which Balaj and Andrew Dunn from from BBC will tell you more about. Fraunhofer is also confirmed to be part of that. And the other element of it is that we're finally looking at something within the MAM environment. So potentially postproduction, we could potentially put this in in the production element, but I think we're kind of looking in that MAM part of the supply chain. And we just don't have a lot of projects in this area. We don't get a lot of pitches in this area. And so the idea of putting in some kind of intelligibility metric within a MAM environment is really exciting. So stay tuned for that one because I think it's going to be big. Ecoflow three, I've I've already waxed lyrically about Ecoflow. What can I say? And you know what? Ecoflow, I feel like, you know, sustainability over the last few years, I think it's kind of taken a bit of a backseat. So this one is very close to my heart, obviously, not only because it's my project, but also because, of course, you know, they're still trying to make our industry more sustainable, trying to understand the footprint of streaming within the broader context of, you know, power consumption. There's a lot of really good teams. And humans not robots, ACIDO. I mean, like, I can't give a big enough shout out to ACIDO. They really do go above and beyond for their input into this. We also have ITV who are pitching this. Tim Davis from the ITV from the ITV from ITV. And then Ian Nock from the IET. So the IET, obviously, is one of IBC's owners. You know, they're regularly involved in the projects that we have. Yeah. Pretty exciting. So I think we're just about there. We're going to hand or we're gonna switch over to the livestream for the feed sorry, the livestream for the actual venue, and you'll be able to see a couple of shots of the radio theater, and everybody's coming in. The room is starting to fill up, and I'm gonna stop talking. So if you guys need anything, put things in the chat. Otherwise, it's been really great chatting with you all. And, yeah, we're really excited to see the feedback. Just a reminder, we're gonna be putting a survey link into the chat. And from there, we will make sure that we are inviting you to the first base call. So you need to have your email. You need to have your the projects that you're interested in. And, again, you can fill it in more than once. So just make sure that you're doing that, and you will eventually get involved. And if you've got any questions about the process from here on out, I will be here to answer them but in the chat. Right. So we'll see you shortly. Welcome back. Who is we? The ATA. Yeah. Welcome back to the IBCX media innovation program kick start day twenty twenty six. Is that what it is? That's it. Yes. My name is Mickey Collyn. I'm one of the innovation leads along with my colleague, Mark Smith. We are now live on air around the world for our first ever livestream for the IBC Accelerator kick start day. So please turn to whatever camera you see and give a big hello to the rest of the world. Yep. Where we are? That's it. Lights out. Let's see this beautiful international audience. We are having our livestream hosted by our amazing colleague, Karen Boyd, up in the booth. So big round of applause for Karen Boyd. And we're so excited to be presenting to you live on stage and live around the world. So what's gonna happen in part two? This is gonna be a really another action action packed program for part two. As you can see, we've got the agenda up here that was that's good. Oh, they're welcome. That's good. Now we're now we're queued up, the livestream audience. What we're gonna be doing is having a starting off with a spotlight session from a couple of our sponsors, namely Shore and EIT and also HP AMD, AMD HP. And then we're going to be getting into a champions roundtable. We're gonna be talking into some close personal showbiz friends, including, the award winning John Roberts from ITN, Paula from EBU, and Alex from NBCUniversal, and Rich Welsh from SMPTE, who is gracious as his presence today. Thank you so much, Rich. We'll be also gonna then we're gonna go straight into the champions roundtable is gonna be really important because you're gonna be hearing from the champions who have been involved in the accelerators for quite a long time, but also some new champions who are getting really, really stuck in. And it's gonna really set the tone and set the scene for the 12 pitches that are gonna be happening right here at this podium. So you're gonna see each speaker come up. Each project's gonna have a couple speakers, mostly made up of champions and sometimes some participants joining them. They will be doing a quick fire, five slides in five minutes. Sometimes it's a six or seven slide, but they have five minutes to present the challenge, the objectives, the innovation, the how the collaboration's gonna be working out, and the big messages back to the industry. If they go over the five minutes, the sprinklers go off, the alarms go off. The BBC has to be evacuated. So jokey jokes. I should just leave now. Yeah. Exactly. So we're gonna have some fun with it, and, you will see some countdown timers. We we were threatening to put the BBC holding slide of the chrome Technicolor with the child holding the teddy bear, but but that we screen my test. Yeah. Screen test. Yes. Thank you. But, yeah, so we're gonna have those 12 quick fire pitches. Then immediately after that, each of the 12 projects, we're gonna meet everyone back into the BBC cafe. Each of the 12 projects has their own table where you're going to be able to tap your badge if you're interested. That does not mean you're committing to the project, but what it does mean is that you're now gonna be invited to what we call a first base call happening next week, and each of the calls happening over the next two weeks. I beg your pardon. And that's the chance for you to meet the champions, ask the questions up close. Mark and myself and Karen, respectively, will be facilitating all 12 of those calls Okay. Probably after Mobile World Congress too. But if you are watching this on the livestream, and Karen will remind you, you are able to, you know, watch all these pitches. There's gonna be a survey form where you can tick off the projects that you're interested, and you'll be invited to the first space call as well too. So it really we wanted to this this event to be as inclusive as possible, as international as possible, putting putting the eye back into IBC. Isn't that right, Mark? This is it. Yeah. So I all I'm gonna add to that actually is that, you know, it's really important that you you're here today. If you're interested in projects, you tap that table, and that's the really the key thing. And then we follow-up with the first base call. So that's the process to get involved with any of the things that you hear today. Mhmm. Meantime, we better get on because Let's crack on. That clock is ticking, and you told me to stay on time. That's right. Stan, don't don't mess it up, Mark. Pleasure. Right. We're gonna introduce our partners and our sponsors right now. So I'd like to welcome to the stage Annette Schafer. Is Annette here somewhere? There she is. Welcome, Annette Schafer. Annette is welcome. Come sit down. Any seat at all, Annette? Where would you like to go? Annette is the CEO of the I EIT, Culture and Creativity Organization, which is partly EU, part of the EU, partly EU funded. Is that correct? Maybe you could explain a little bit about your organization and why we're here today, Annette. Yes. Thank you very much, Mark, and the team for having us. Yes. I'm here really to educate the sector of audiovisual what we do, and I think it's quite interesting for all of here. First of all, I need to probably to explain what is DAT. DAT is the European Institute for Technology and Innovation. It was funded fifteen years ago by the EU for what? Hopefully, to drive innovation technology in Europe. There are already eight or seven knowledge and innovation communities out there. They started fifteen years ago and over time. And we are the eighth that is focusing on culture heritage and the creative industries. And when we talk about creative industries, we are focusing at the moment at audiovisual, that's from here, gaming, fashion and architecture and cultural heritage, as I said. And all of these kicks are set up in the same way. We have around about six, seven offices across Europe. We are headquartered in Cologne, and we're distributing funding for the creative sectors on behalf of PAT. So we have this press release here in my hands, which is actually going out in about half an hour, which is announcing. So IBC unveils a strategic partnership with EIT Culture and Creativity to drive the next generation of innovation. So that means, essentially, we're gonna be doing a number of initiatives, which actually started with the first one yesterday. We had a high level c level roundtable here where we talked about some of the really key priorities and strategies for the industry, and I think you'll see a write up on that fairly soon. But importantly, we're going to be driving some initiatives that are focused on the accelerators at first, and then we'll unveil some other things that we'll be doing toward the show this year. That's right, Annette, isn't it? Yes. Acceleration is a good topic because we are have funded this is smaller medium enterprises and drove them to MVPs, POCs. And now we would like them to accelerate. Also, will in the next funding round that will start May or June, we will issue larger tickets, bigger calls. And also that also will help them to maybe feed inward come getting into the accelerator programs of the IBC. So I think, importantly, from our point of view, you're gonna help us a little bit with kind of some experts and a sort of a community of experts that might be able to feed into the accelerator program, that might be able to do some mentoring around whether a technology expertise that we could tap into. Academia is a huge part of your community, isn't it? This this is part of our community. We have around 70 partners in Europe. All of the KICs are organized the same way. They have a non for profit organization that is our partners, and there are 70 universities across Europe from Porto and Portugal up to Umea in Sweden. So we are very international. We are very research focused. We're also in for the long term. So we're not looking for quick funding of projects and get them out. We really would like them to accelerate and grow. And I think that's where we can add some value also into your accelerator programs with the expertise from the primary research, I would say. But also, I think we're looking for more partners and collaboration in the IBC community. So we need also more experts from the industries that work with us so that we find the right projects that we fund. So I think it goes both sides because we have a lot of expertise, as I in the academic research, but we need more industry focused research as well. Yeah. Fantastic. And I I know we've been talking a lot about we talked this morning about start ups in the the future tech zone. And and remember, my colleague, Roman, is out there. Go listen to him. Go speak to him because we're gonna be developing a sort of start up zone within IBC, aren't we? Working collaboratively with your innovation ecosystem and others. And, hopefully, that will provide a sort of feeder mechanism into the accelerators and other other projects that we do. So we had in our first calls, we had up to 500 respondents. So I think there's a huge environment there for start ups and scale ups, but we really need to bring them to market readiness and also that they grow. I think that our funding should not stop when we have funded these projects. And I think that's a great collaboration as well that we bring also the start ups and our partners to the IBC. And, also, we would like to have a site visit then at the IBC in Amsterdam. Great. So this come and speak to Annette. Talk a little bit about, you know, what where you have a need for kind of to to get engaged with your ecosystem because I think it's it's gonna be key. And, we're gonna be announcing some further things, I'm sure, as we get toward IBC. But look out for this press release, which is coming this afternoon. Yeah. We're really looking for great collaboration. That's what we try to embrace here, collaboration between innovation, technology, the industries, and across Europe in the moment, but we have also projects in Israel in the future. We are also looking in the moment to some expansion in North Africa. We're not limited, but at the moment, we are focusing mainly on Europe. Where does it sit just just for clarification, where does it sit in the structure of kind of EU funding for technology for the ecosystem? It is actually under it's not under Horizon Europe because a lot of people are already asking me about it. It's a fund that is dedicated to the European Institute of Technology Innovation that's headquartered in Budapest. And but the funding is coming from the DGA, which is part of the commission. But we will also will apply for other funding on the Horizon Europe program and also FB10, which is the new funding 2028 onwards. And there are also some other dedicated fundings available for the creative sector. One of them is Agora, which is contains EUR 1,500,000,000.0 for the creative sectors. And I really urge you to look into these kind of programs because what we I hear from the commission and also talking to the EU of the creative industries not calling on this or not participating in this course, and there's a lot of untapped opportunity there for funding. Fantastic. Well, thank you very much. I mean, I'd like to see the day where we have the start up zone, we have the accelerator zone, and then the incubator about how do we take these brilliant, brilliant ideas and proof of concepts to market, right? I mean, that's the key thing. And grow them. That's right. So together, hopefully, this will be the the partnership that can power that. Thank you very much. Annette, thank you so much. Thank you for joining us. Thank you to Natalie down here as well. Natalie, stand up. For the people in UK, Natalie, last bridge, please stand up. It's representing us currently in The UK. So if you have any questions or would like to meet up, then please reach out to Natalie as well. Fantastic, Annette. Thank you very much for joining us and for the support. Thank you. Much appreciated. Thank you. Thank you. Wonderful. We're very, very excited about that partnership. And we'd like to also introduce our our our sponsors, our associate sponsors of the program, which are absolutely integral to us delivering this program and and with the great support and resources and, importantly, kit great kit we get from you guys. We'd like to welcome first of all, if I could welcome Barbara Marshall from a from HP. Yeah. I won't end. So Barbara's from HP, but there is this partnership, which is AMD and HP that work together that are part of the that your partners, and you work together. But the I think there's some AMD. Put your hands up. Anybody here from AMD? There we go at the back there. Is that James? Yeah. James unit at the back there. So thank you, James. Also, Barbara's here to represent you guys as well. I am. I'm wearing two hats. Thank you. And it's also a great, pleasure to welcome Scott Sullivan. Here he is. Scott from Shaw. Thanks, Mark. You should have. Scott is, the VP of strategy. Is that right? Innovation strategy. Yeah. That sounds good. Is that alright? Take that one. Yeah. I'm just you've got your badge on up. Yeah. Vice president of strategy and innovation. There we go. Yeah. So Scott and I were were talking last night about, how our backgrounds are very similar in music and things, wasn't it? In the early days, we were both, in that kind of artist relations and that space where we kind of were innovation by by getting artists to try things out. Right? Yes. That was what it was all about in the music business in the nineties. But today, Shaw is kind of a world leader, isn't it? And Yeah. You've been there thirty years. Is that right? No. No. I've been there thirty almost thirty five years. Yes. Started when mister Shaw was still running the company. Shure is a 100 years old. 100 years old. Yeah. Don't know if you mentioned it, but a 100 years old last year. Yes. Thank you. Beat us by fifteen years. Fuck. Yeah. Been been different just different incarnations. So a hundred years, we haven't been been the same from microphones and headsets and just solutions, whether it was phonograph needles or solutions during the war, World War two. And then just into conferencing systems, but really known for our microphones and live sound reinforcement. Right? Yeah. That has definitely been where we've most recently have done the best work. But now with Array microphones and digital and some of the stuff that we actually got involved with Microphones. Yeah. With this group last year, which we're just so glad to be back here. It was it was quite the first year that we had. Yeah. We are so grateful for your your support, and and I think it's just important here today to talk a little bit about why you came to this program, what got you excited about it, and some of the things that you've been involved in, Barbara, for the last couple of years, and Scott for the last year. And and what have you seen and what successes? I mean, lots of questions in one there. Okay. Ladies first. Okay. So AMD has been a partner, I think, of yours for for many years, and they approached us, two years ago. So this will be the third year that HP has done this with AMD. For those that don't know, HP, often referred to as Hewlett Packard, we make the workstations that the editors, the broadcast graphics folk, the visual effects people, the animation animators use to create content and to to broadcast the content. So AMD is obviously an important part of HP. We make the computers using their chips. And the reason we're involved in this organization my role is I lead the media and entertainment strategy for HP. Media and entertainment is very dear to my heart. It's an important part of the HP business. You're ex BBC, Barbara. I am. I have to say from a personal point of view, this is a wonderful experience. I worked for the BBC last century. It's kind of crazy to say that, isn't it? So mad. It's amazing. I would I was wondering, why does this feel so much smaller than it used to? The ceiling's been the floor's been raised. Has it? Yeah. That that's why all the freezes are at sort of waist height. They used to be at head height because we would have been know that. Anyway, so I digress. Exactly. I digress. So why are we involved in this this program? Because for several reasons. One is I truly believe that companies like HP and AMD have a responsibility to the community. We're not just vendors. Or if we're we're vendors, but we need to be part of the community, not just sort of up in our ivory towers. So I feel passionately about supporting the industry where our customers meet. I think the second thing is it's hugely beneficial for us to see what matters to our customers. You know, what are you you mentioned pain points earlier, this morning. That's in our DNA. Like, what are the pain points that we can help solve? So we learn a great deal just from seeing these projects and understanding what the challenges are that people wanna focus on. And then the third thing, obviously, there is an element of self promotion because we provide the machines, the workstations to the projects. Any projects that need local compute, then HP, AMG will provide those machines for the duration of the project. And it's just great to get those machines in people's hands. The teams just love getting their hands on the kit as well, so it's a really great additional benefit for the projects. And, Scott, yeah, yeah, you've as you said, you've you've you've a number of microphones. You've yet to get those back from last year, I think. Expected that. Similar to what Barbara was saying, the CEO, Chris Schiavink, several years ago, really felt that we needed to have a separate group that was actually just focusing on innovation. She put me in charge of of a small group to to go ahead and do that and work with both in house engineering as well as outside. And that actually has driven some really, really good results, and especially after we we got introduced to to this team, Mark, and everybody in this room. Microphones plug into things. It could be embedded, like, in all the devices that we're wearing, but are more microphones now on the planet than ever before. So as we go from our conversions and and from analog microphones to digital, how to do that, where to where to plug in, and how to collaborate with other companies like HP and Google and all the broadcast companies. How do we do that, and how do we do that effectively? And so participating in in the the two accelerator programs was an honor of ours. And I think having the first digital microphone for broadcasting being introduced by us at the show, which was similar to the platform that we introduced in conferencing in 2016, was just perfect timing. And it really actually allowed us not just to talk about it from a broadcast standpoint, which has been great, and I'm really looking forward to this afternoon. But, also, how do we take those things and go outside of broadcasting? Because what what the what I believe is happening here sets the tone for other applications and markets. Yeah. Because you're so we're we're you're so advanced right now in what you're doing and how you're collaborating that I'm just glad that we're involved with it, and we're actually going at the speed you're trying to catch up with the speed you're going at, which is fantastic. And you you've had some real successes, and return on kind of your involvement here, haven't you? And you've seen some tangible. Yeah. Well, two two individuals, I'm sure, that are here that came up to that participated in the award winning accelerator program. We talked about that at CES. We had a a special technology room because the CEO also made me in charge of outbound licensing. And outbound licensing of technology and the innovation of technology goes kinda hand in hand, which is really good. And that was quite an event we had at CES. And Tore Bai, who's on the team, along with Brent Chumar, actually really built a a really good story, compelling story for a lot of companies that were looking at going, well, it's not necessarily exactly like broadcast broadcast activities, but for these AI agents, I think they're gonna stick around. So it's it's Fantastic. Well, we've we've gotta crack on because we've got a tight schedule this afternoon. But, really, thank you so much. Very much. Really appreciate all the support. And Barbara and James Unit from AMD are here if you wanna catch up with them. And, Scott, you you and your team are here to if anybody wants to talk to you. Peter James, if he's here, if he can just stand up. I think I'd I'd really like Peter if you can stand up. He's the affiliate in UK. He's the reason why we're actually That's absolutely right. Peter actually in London. Good with Peter. Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you so much, guys. Thank you, really. Thank you. Love you, guys. Thank you so much. Thank you, Scott. Yeah. Cheers. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you, Barbara. We meet in person for the first time. This is amazing. And, Scott, we can hug him. We can hug him out too. Thank you, guys. Thank you, Mark. We're gonna crack right on because we are live on air. Alright. Alright. Go get more coffee, people. This is gonna be a long afternoon. I'm just kidding. Okay. We're gonna crack on with our, very, very special champions roundtable. So without further ado, I'd love to bring to the stage the wonderful, the beautiful Paula Sena from the European EBU, European Broadcasting Union, the award winning John Roberts from CTO of ITN, Alex Bastard, the vice president of innovation from NBCUniversal, and the one and only Rich Welsh, the president of SMPTE amongst many hats that this lovely guy wears. So big round of applause, please. Please. Thank you, Megan. Thank you so much. Hello, everybody. Hello. Hello. Hello. So let's talk from a champion's perspective. We've just heard from our our lovely partners, and thank you so much to everybody that was able to kinda come up and share their thoughts. So some of you have been in the accelerators for a while, and some of you are kind of, like, easing into it, easing back into it. But let's kind of do a little cast our mind back from the last maybe twelve, eighteen months or so. Like, what what's been kind of, like, the things that have really you've seen change happen? Happen? Maybe, Alex, we're we're making eye contact. Let's I'm looking I'm gonna go to you first. I'm go to you my friend. I I think there's been kinda two astronomical things. One is enterprise adoption has now become a real thing. It's not can we do this thing? It's how do we do this thing? And there's been what I consider micro innovations. So people who are journalists in newsrooms, building custom GPTs, having that moment of, hey. I've got this idea. How do we make this a real thing? Yeah. And then scaling those across an enterprise, which is obviously the hardest part that we all face. I think across that year and, you know, last year, was a participant in the accelerator. And John had been texting me like, you gotta join. You gotta come involved. And I was like, okay. Let me let me take a look because I I joined. Say to John Roberts. It's a theme in my life. Participant last year, learned a lot, really was engaging, and then obviously this year moving into a champion role. The thing I think that has been most pivotal for certainly my organization and and probably this space is the idea that a sole contributor, in this case OpenCLORE, can disrupt a whole major industry. Yeah. And and for the developers that welcome my team who've been doing this twenty five, thirty years are now extremely excited once again to go and execute at speed and deliver faster and better timelines. The one other thing I think that's been remarkable is we have a lot of domain expertise in all of our companies that can do things really well. And this vibe coding, this Claude code, all of these things that are coming up are allowing us to build POCs with people who know what they want, but don't have to wait for a developer to shape even if it's just a UI, so you can begin that internal pitch of, is there any value in this product? And if yes, now we put into production with real developers. Right. So you've, like, you've been in the thick of it at NBCUniversal. And, obviously, we've we we we make a joke. We swap we say hello in our airplanes as we're flying back and forth as an American living in The UK and as a as a Brit living abroad. But it's like, know, what you're seeing on the inside, especially with the dynamically changing and interesting landscape in America and and the way content's produced and news is produced is kinda keeping you on your toes. And I know that you're gonna explore that more in the incubator, which we're gonna hear a little bit more about in just a second there too. Paula, hi. I'm just gonna come to you next. Hi, Paula. Ciao, Mookie. Okay. That's how we we have to greet each other every call. This is my new name and last name. Ciao, Paula. Ciao. So hello, Paula. Hello. That's what I like to say. So what's the last year been like for you? What it what it from an EBA's perspective, have been kind of big changes that you've seen? Yes. I I think that 2025 marks a turning point towards the digital sovereignty. And also, they need for a coordinate action to ensure that the digital foundations are secure, are respectful of the European values. And I don't know, maybe you have seen it, but in July 2025, we released a public statement. And it was a kind of an open call to European industry, to cloud and AI service provider, to policymakers, research institution, just to strengthen, to accelerate the effort to make cloud and digital sovereign. And as a view, we are still working on these topics, maybe through a dog partnership, because they are becoming very, very relevant. Yeah. But I mean, so much of this room, we lean into the EBU for some of the standards that you're making in the guidance. You know, how are you are you finding the last year like so much change happening in Yes. Those And I think there was also another big huge change or huge shift. It's called the DMF, Dynamic Media Facility. And one of the accelerator last year was about the DMF. And DMF is a kind of, let's say, concept to transition media production from fixed hardware to flexible software based workflows, running a virtualized container, and then you need just a general purpose compute. So I've seen in twenty twenty five implementation of the MF. And also one of the last thing we have just done as a view is the open source project called XML MxL, sorry, media exchange layer that is just one of the bricks fundamental to build the MF. Yeah. So, I mean, thank you for all that work that you've been my colleagues. Handed in the room. It's a big, big list, and I know that we can kind of have deeper dives into the work that EBU have done for so, so many years too. But hello, John Roberts. Hi, Amy. Congratulations again. You know, so let's obviously, 2025, a lot happened for you. So maybe kind of rewinding slightly from, like, eighteen months. And so from an you know, not only an ITM perspective, but thinking about don't think about your holiday Yeah. No. That you never had. I knew you'd There's there's so much. And that's a chance for it that you and you could pick any one Yeah. Technological thread and spend an hour talking about how how how much things are moving. I think zooming out, I think, for me, 2025 felt like digital transformation became a really tangible thing in the day to day work of the business. So we've been talking about it for years, of course. We've been laying the foundations, whether that's IP or kind of pivoting to software, whichever strand of that you want to pull on. What's changed, I think, is the day to day you know, we're a production company. So from a production company perspective, the day to day life of a production cycle feels like it is fundamentally shifting into something else. You know, we don't have digital workflows on the side of our broadcast workflows anymore. We're just seeing this huge convergence. I think to Alex's point, what's really exciting about that for me is it genuinely feels and once I get onto AI, I won't stop, so I'll I'll try and keep this reciting more generic for now. It feels like a moment where innovation is becoming distributed in a way that's been difficult before beyond technology teams. It's becoming more central to strategy than ever before. We had more nontechnical people at IBC than ever last year, strategy, finance, creatives, we're having more conversations about technology and QPRs and departmental strategy than ever before. So that's a wonderful opportunity for us as technologists. It's also overwhelming, I think. Right. How how on earth do we service the fact that not just our broadcast partners, but but our finance team think that we can revolutionize how they work and so do the comms team. And so and they're right. But that's a big task. So for me, it feels like a really fundamental shift Yeah. In the expectations and opportunities that we can provide the business. Yeah. And ITN's a lot of had ITN, as a broadcaster, has had a lot of transformation over the last couple of years in student including, like, physical transformation with the studios and the upgrades you're getting. So when when you are looking at accelerators and and r and d that you need to do, like, how much how much, how much do you balance of, you know, the learnings that you get from the r and d into your day to day? And and you talked about budgets. Like, how do you approach It's a really good question. Those budgets. So you're right. Last year, in many ways, as much as when we talk on events like this, we're we're talking about the the shiny innovation pieces and the fun stuff. You know? A lot of our work last year was very traditionally building a studio, building newsrooms, onboarding new programs. The things that we've been doing for an awful long time. The sweet spot for me is where we get those two things to play nicely together. Right? So where we get to run an innovation program like the accelerator, and then you see that feeding straight back into something that maybe looks more familiar. So finding the time to balance those things, I think, is a challenge for all of us, but there's no doubt to me how valuable getting that slight it's getting to engage your brain in a slightly different way, getting to engage our teams, some of whom are here today with with colleagues across the industry. We can see not just the advantages of last year, but this is our fourth year of accelerator. There's been a consistent theme around control room technology, and I could point to countless examples of where we've delivered that in real world scenarios in the last year. I noticed when you pointed to the team, they ducked like the cold play kisses. I just spotted them for the first time. They did. Yeah. I don't know what they're doing over there, but they're hiding over there too. Thanks so much, John. And I know we can, talk for hours, but I wanna shift over to Rich. Hello, Rich. Hello. Welcome as a champion. I was yes. So as president of Sinti and, obviously, you know, you are so well versed at the entire ecosystem, you know, across our media technology industry, and, you know, the broadcasting space, and you've seen so much happen over the years. You're gonna know every single person in this room likely. And if you don't know Rich Welsh, leave now. But, no, don't leave. Then you can meet him you can meet him later. It's okay. You can meet him later. What was 2025 like for you in as far as, like, from an engineering point of view and what you've seen in the wider wider wide lens? The wider wide lens. That's a really wide lens. I think yeah. Exactly. As John said, he like, don't say the dreaded AI words because that Two valves. Must be down a mad rat hole. But, like, you know, I think we can all agree it's been a bit of a chaotic time in the world in general. And I think all of the technology kind of the ways in which we've innovated in the past are not working. Now we have to change how we do things. I think one of the things I like about all the accelerators I've been involved with, and I think it's becoming more and more important that we do this, is the collaboration component is really a strong part of that. I think, you know, if you think about innovation in and and the accelerator, again, reflects this need to do things very quickly because technology is moving so fast. You've got to innovate at the same pace, basically. Otherwise, you will get left behind. And by the time you've figured out how to deal with some new element of technology, it's been and gone, and there's some new thing. AI is the worst for that. I mean, you're out of date instantly. If you do a presentation on AI, it will be out of date as you're giving it. Some new model would have come out and Luckily, this is I don't have some PowerPoint. Yeah. But but the collaboration alongside that sort of sprint mentality Yeah. Is is really strong. And and I think what you you're doing there is you're combining that kind of agile innovation process with, actually a creative process. And the the beauty of, you know, creating with a group of people, especially in the you know, that's what SMPTE is all about. We have our community, and that's how we develop standards. Yep. You know? And, again, like, just from a SMPTE point of view, like, doing standards is totally different now because we can't do it the old way. It's like, you would just never would be able to keep up with what's happening. But yeah. So if you can innovate in this kind of creative process with these teams that get brought together, I think the beauty of doing it through the accelerator is that it's a group of people, as you've said, that, you know, we would not normally get to work together, and it's often competitors as well. Yeah. Or, you know, in your day jobs, your competitors. But now in the in the accelerator bubble, I suppose, you you're you're all collaborating. So I think it's actually a really good model for innovation generally. I think it gives you the opportunity to see how you can do that and and sort of in a safe environment. So, yeah, I I I think given that, like, the whole world is so kind of chaotic and technology is going, like, faster and faster and faster, the the accelerator for me is a really good touch point Yeah. For how we deal with that environment. And and, like, we have John Ellerton and Polly in the room, you know, representing or or UK SMPTE? UK. Big up. Yeah. Big up. SMPTE UK. UK. There he is waving. You know? But from just, like, one more touchpoint with you, Rich, around, you know, from, obviously, SMPTE being one of the owners of IBC and, again, a longtime champion, What are there are you're hearing voices from your members. Like, what what kind of things are it you know, what kind of rapid change are are your members looking for? What kind of what kind of voices are you not what kind of voice are you hearing in your head, Rich, because I'm not sure I wanna know that I'm really. But, yes, right After karaoke last night, you never know. But, yeah, what what what's the kind of word on the street for M and I think the there's, again, a desire for kind of, like, some like, leadership. And I think, again, like, IBC commands one of those positions in the industry. It sort of weighs a flag high and clear about where we're going. Yeah. It it is a time of quite a lot of disruption and change, and the media industry in general has been going through a pretty difficult period because, you know, for more than just the last year, but, like, the last five years has been difficult for a lot of different reasons. And it's not gonna get easier. We we see all sorts of, like, warning signs about challenges. I mean, just to say it, like, on the AI front, people are really worried now about their their personal brand and value and likeness, and that's a massive thing. We're seeing actors saying, well, we're not gonna get scammed because we don't wanna be you know, we don't want our likeness stolen. You know, you've got actors going on strike. Don't replace us with AI. And then meanwhile, you've got other you know, in other areas, people are just churning out AI content constantly. So I think what's important for SMPTE members and what we what we hear from them is that they want to understand in that kind of chaotic world what where are we going? Where should we be going? Right. And what does everyone wanna do? It's because, again, it's a community thing. Right? Yeah. If you're trying to figure that out on your own, it's it's impossible, and you're never gonna get it right. But as a community, we can absolutely drive in the right direction. And I think, you know, for all of my slightly doomish, like, oh, it's all chaos. You know, I think, actually, we are coming out the other side of that. I think we're getting to grips with the the new sort of technology ecosystem that we all inhabit. And I think that as an industry, we actually occupy a very important place in the world because, essentially, the whole world views the rest of the world through the lens that the media industry provides, and that's an unbelievably important function. And we have a huge responsibility to everyone on the planet to do that properly, responsibly. But if we're in, like, chaos ourselves because of what, you know, what's going on, that's Yeah. That's not gonna work. No. So I like that we can all drive forward, and IBC does that. SMPTE does that. Yeah. And this program does that. And it's it's been so great to work with you, Rich, over the years, and you've got a pitch coming up. I think pitch number 10, which we're gonna get to in just a moment. But let's look into we're gonna wrap up as as we kinda wrap up this power champion chat. Like, let's let's get into 2026. What are the big challenges, Paula, for that you're that you want to you think are coming up that you want to avoid, and what are you kinda most excited about going into this year? So I think, as I say, the sovereign AI, sovereign cloud, AI governance, regulation, compliance to the regulation, skill gap on different fronts. So it's something to think about. AgenTiKai, maybe there will be the needs of a kind of standardization and many more. And what I've seen so far on the IBC Accelerator for 2026 is some of them are already covering these challenges. And, again, most of them are very are very relevant for what the DPU and DPU members are doing. Right. So you can keep your eye on all the time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. You never have to And then a DPU will become a champion of Vain Accelerator, like, in the past years. Exactly. And you've gotta pitch, I think, three around frame three with Rai. Very closely with Chao Roberto from Rai. His first name was also Chao. Middle name Roberto, last name Chao. You know, you guys work so well together, and I love your partnership. I love it. Love it. Love it. Similar to Donna Morag and Alex. You know? You guys Yep. Really, really, really appreciating what you what what each individual company and what you guys are bringing to the table from that regional perspective and from that kind of that international flavor. Yeah. You know, what are you looking forward to this year then as far as, you know, getting ready for your pitch? Did I put you on the spot, Paula? I'm sorry. I think it's going to be an amazing journey also this year with amazing people. And we would work a lot to deliver this proof of concept in four, five months. So it's really a super, super, super sprint. And what else? You have a look at determination in your eyes. Yes. Never question I am your already thinking what's going to be the next thing. Before starting. No. We look forward to your presentation, and and it's good to be thinking about all those those touch points that, you know, we will probably all cover in the next 12, the pitches that are gonna be happening too. But, John, know, welcome back. You know? And also with the advancements of the work that you've mentioned over the last couple years, You know, I think it was the the gallery agnostic media production going into evolution of the control room, leveraging AI voice, XR, and Well done. And multi and And much No. No. HTML based mod modular graphics into Agent assistance. Agent AI agent assistance for live production. Your the work that you and your magnificent team that keeps growing every year and lots of new faces every year has now graduated to our incubator program. And with that comes a little bit more pressure, but I think the team that you've assembled, Avengers assemble, are ready for this. So what do you what do you what is the vision that you and your group are seeing for 2020? So if we step back at what the sort of macro challenges are, I think it tees at why we think that those projects have been so valuable. So the thing, particularly as content producers that we are wrestling with, which I think will be familiar to most, is this demand to now produce lots of different types of content, lots of different types of formats. I mean, a new format used to be a thing. Right? And now there's probably one already happened this morning. Right? A new shape, a new delivery standard. So that is the problem. And and the way we're so agility is the demand that's being placed on this is how do we create technology and people that are agile enough to be able to respond to this. The side that what's come with that, I think that is our biggest challenge, is complexity. We've ended up with enormously complex tech stack systems, user interfaces, teams. And so for me, the the kind of macro vision is how do we simplify a little bit and how do we empower people to operate more effectively in those spaces. Those projects, the last three years, have all kind of been around the same thing. For me, it goes back to a lot of the Alex and I used to be vision mixer directors a long time ago building desk macros. Very cute story about that. Desk macros and and timelines, and it was the same thing we were doing then that we're trying to do now, right, which is there are three things I think that make it easier for for our people to manage in this space. Doing a better job of integration Yeah. How do we get things to talk to each other more easily, automation in the right place, Right? So figuring out the right level of automation in the right place. And, crucially, what does the interface look like where where those tools meet our skilled people? And that started with a conversation about software defined production. It is now very much a conversation about AI. So for me, what I'm really excited about is I genuinely think AI might be the way through it. Through some of those really key challenges, the skills challenge, the enablement challenge, the simple the the how do we simplify things, That to me looks like the path through. Finally, I'd say sort of what it's allowed us to do is an accelerator allows us to do this is really value the cultural benefit of innovation. Mhmm. It's it's really fun. Rich, most of us got into these these jobs because we like solving complex problems with with smart, creative people. Right? And that's where the fun is. It's lovely when you're not designing a product, and accelerator gives you a bit more freedom around that. But I think for me this year, using AI to give more of that ability to more people, I think, is our only way through the Break it. Break it. Break it. Break it. And put it It's reenergized me. I'm pulling things again. Right? It's it's really cool. Did you wanna jump in there, Paula? Yes. I think also goes beyond that because, for example, I think it was last year, the the as you say, the devolution the control room with evolution of the The evolution of the control level, Yes. AI And all the the many other things. Yes. They showcase it, the deep dive into HTML HTML and modular graphics. So Of course. Because Yes. Was into EBU. Yeah. Yeah. With some of the people in that accelerator, we kept working on HTML graphics at ATABC twenty twenty five. We released OGraph. That is an open specific specification for HTML graphics. And just a few weeks a few weeks ago, we released also the the control API, the server API. So I think the connection you make during the accelerator lasting time, I think. Speaking of which, big up to Niels and Ryan. Well, there was Ryan McKenna, Neil Neil, I don't know if you're in the room, but well done. That was Yep. Those are the people. Yeah. But we're gonna, like, wrap up and get straight into these pitches soon. But, Alex, just kind of, like, your your big big what are you excited about for 2026 as an official champion? I know. Sound like you're too in Yeah. You're you're not getting out of this, by the way. I've sent your contract. The thing I'm most excited about, and and it feels real now, is what I'm coining as receipts, not road maps. By this time next year, we should have something to show that is tangible, actionable, and hopefully close to production ready. Yeah. Twelve months ago, I didn't feel that way. Now I'm like, we we can actually do this Yeah. And and part of this incubator pitch and working alongside John and Morag and the rest of the team is we can build this framework that can actually scale to production and Yeah. And solve some of those problems that we've all been trying to solve for fifteen years, which is fragmented systems, architecture. We now have the glue in the mesh to make that happen. Yeah. And your pitch this year is really focusing on the story and the integrity of the journalists and the integrity of the story. So we look forward to seeing that. And, hopefully, there's a lot of those solutions presented by September. Not this time next year, but by September. We got we got a shorter deadline than you think. So And, Rich, you got a really, really exciting pitch with a new champion rally hack at MIT and sure are involved in that one. So, I mean, I something I'm really excited about in general and my sort of day job without my CMT app on and with my CMT app, all my hats on, is world building. And and I think that's just a really big it's gonna be a big seismic shift in how we approach the use of AI. Yeah. It's gonna move us way beyond, you know, language models, say, one dimensional inference to truth three-dimensional inference. It's a it's a it's a big big area. The other thing is that we you know, as a cult culturally at the moment, there's a lot of worry about, like, AI slop and brain rot and all this kind of, like, you know, the Great bet. Worry about all this kind of content coming out that's just, like like, just dumbing everything down. And I think what actually people are gravitating towards, and actually my kids, I I see this a lot, is they want real world experiences. Mhmm. And so the what I'm excited about with the with Appleton, and I've seen it in in all of the actually, all of the pitches is what we're centering on here is real content doing real world experience. And so I'm excited for for this pitch because we're combining both things. We're combining, you know, world building and and virtual reality and presence with real world experiences and actually delivering something that isn't just more slot. And bringing music back in. And music, which I The music is broadcasted on television, people. We're at the BBC. People forget about that, I think, when you when you're thinking about IBC and things like that. There are theater. There's there's, you know, culture and arts. Is so important to our industry. A 100%. Major differentiator from from anything else that you can you can get. I mean, it's the the the perfect embodiment of real world. And music just reaches everyone. DJ Rich. Touches everyone. My DJing doesn't reach everyone. I have that wide of an audience. Oh, the It's a small a narrow band of people at underground parties, but it's fine. That's true. But if we've ever been at the beach bar, we know the jackets have come out. Will be how I can DJ globally. Exactly. Your dreams will come true by September. So, guys, thank you so much. Thank you, Alex. Thank you, Rich. Thank you, John. Thank you, Paula. This has been our champion roundtable. We're gonna exit stage left here and go straight over to our live presentation. So, without further ado, I'd like to invite Mark Smith back to the podium. We've got a bit more time. Oh, okay. Well, we can start the pitches in. Oh, should we dance? Do we do live bands? Something like that. Have you yeah. How's your day been? Yeah. It's been great. Yeah. Okay. Great. Okay. So we got a few minutes before we go to the livestream for the pitches. So Oh, I thought it started already. Yeah. Twenty five past. Oh, is the start