10th HbbTV Symposium and Awards

Biography: 

Vincent Grivet, is a graduate from Ecole Polytechnique (Paris France) and Paris Tech Telecom. He worked for eighteen years for the international activities of the Orange Group, including a time as Chief Executive Officer of Wanadoo, Orange’s internet services unit in Belgium. In 2006, he was a co-founder of Maxtel, an entrepreneurial Wireless Broadband start-up which obtained significant spectrum rights in a competitive bid. He currently works for the TDF Group, where he is in charge of Broadcast Development and Innovation.

Biography

Iva Dohnálková works as Business Development Manager of HbbTV at TV Nova. Iva is engaged in the development of HbbTV from the point of view of Product, Marketing and Business (Sale). Prior to joining Nova, Iva worked at FTV Prima, where she was also in charge of HbbTV development and won 2 international HbbTV AWARDS 2019. Iva also has experience in TV research and online marketing.

Biography:

Julian Clover is a Media and Technology journalist based in Cambridge, UK. He is the editor of Broadband TV News, an online business-to-business publication and is a presenter on Cambridge 105 Radio. An accomplished conference moderator, Julian is a regular chairman at Cable Congress, ANGA COM and the Broadband TV News Business Breakfasts. He has also chaired election hustings for the 2017 and 2019 General Elections and the 2019 European Election.On radio, Julian presents Cambridge Breakfast on Cambridge 105 Radio (with Lucy Milazzo) as well as anchoring the station’s coverage of local and national elections, the Cambridge Folk Festival, Remembrance Sunday and Midnight Mass.

Biography

Jan was born in Prague and graduated from the University of Pittsburgh. He joined TV Nova as a Sales Director in 2011 and has been CEO since 2019 together with Klára Brachtlová. Prior to Nova Group, he headed BigMedia, worked in media companies of the WPP Group, for example in MindShare and the Prague and Moscow branches of JWT.

Paul Gray leads the home devices research, spanning television sets, smart home, consumer electronics, and domestic appliances. His main research area is TV sets, focusing on the European region, broadcast technology, smart TV, and new TV features. Paul is also heavily engaged in researching the development of the Ultra HD ecosystem.

He joined Omdia, formerly IHS Markit, more than 10 years ago. With more than 30 years’ experience in the TV set supply chain working for NXP and Philips in semiconductors and displays, Paul continues to research the TV set business. He has also worked on wearable and media devices and has tracked and forecast the smart TV business from its very beginning. Paul has been cited by, among others, the Financial Times, Korea Times, Korea Daily, Nikkei, and Le Monde. He has also offered expert viewpoints in online, radio, and television programming. Paul holds a degree in electrical engineering and a diploma in industrial studies.

Biography

Tereza is the co-founder and Managing Director of Nielsen Admosphere – now 100% subsidiary of the global research company Nielsen. She graduated from the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at Charles University in Prague in the field of Informatics – Data Engineering. She has been working in the field of media and market research since 1991. She co-established MEDIARESEARCH (now Nielsen Admosphere) in 2001. She is responsible for business strategy development of Nielsen Admosphere.

Biography

Tomas is a Chief Analyst at Nielsen Admosphere research agency. He graduated from the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics at Charles University in Prague. He has been working in the area of media and market research since 2006 and he has been the member of the international Data Science team at Nielsen since 2014. At Nielsen Admosphere, he is responsible for statistical activities in the area of methodology and algorithm for audience measurement and other projects not only in the Czech Republic, but also in other countries.

Biography

For the last two years she has been working as hbbtv manager at tv Prima, in charge of connecting the product and sales team. She has been in the online advertising environment for more than 15 years and also started in Prima in 2014 as an executive in the sales team.

Biography

As the director of online technology at FTV Prima, Hung is responsible for the product, project and development teams delivering digital projects and innovations across platforms. He has worked at the company since 2020 and previously gained experience in companies Deloitte and Uber.

Biography:

Martin Faehnrich graduated in 1985 in telecommunication electronics (‘Nachrichtentechnik’). He started his career in CCTV business, developing video processing real-time systems for professional large-scale CCTV systems.

He joined Panasonic in 1999 and became quickly leader of the TV video signal processing team, working very closely with Japan. In 2002 he was appointed to set-up a section for standardisation at the European TV-development centre in Germany (PLDC).

Since 2008 he is manager standardisation. He and his team are in charge of Panasonic’s AV related standardisation activities in Europe. He is also member of several top-level activities at various industry associations, including HbbTV Steering Group.

Biography

As Associate Director of Products and Services at the DTG, Ranjeet manages the infrastructure and technical integrity of development and testing operations, ensuring delivery to specification, deadline, and budget. She has worked on the launch of three major UK platforms – Freesat, Freeview HD and Freeview Play including management of the at800 logo conformance regime to support the roll-out of 4G (LTE) services in the UK.

She ensures that the Test Centre maintains its ISO 17025 accreditation, delivers conformance regimes for TV platforms, supports manufacturers in demonstrating that conformance, and oversees all development and testing activities. She has introduced a number of new products and testing services, and the most recent addition is the DTG DVB-I Test Suite. She organizes UHD Plugfests and facilitates the following industry working groups:

• DTG Interactive Services Working Group
• DTG Targeted Advertising Task Group
• DTG DTT Platform Test Group
• Co-chair of UltraHD Forum Interoperability Working Group

Biography:

Jason Patton joins us representing Verance headquartered in San Diego, California. He is the Senior Vice President of Sales & Marketing for Verance and in his role he represents his company in partnerships with television broadcasters and television manufacturers.  He is also a member of the DVB Steering Board.

Verance is bringing to life the ADB2 watermarking solution to solve the set-top box problem for two-way interactive experiences in regions including France, Germany, the Netherlands and the Nordic region.

For both interactive experiences as well as Targeted Advertising, Application Discovery Over Broadband Phase 2 (or ADB2 for short) extends the reach of HbbTV services to 100% of televisions.

Biography:

Andrea leads Advertising Technical Operations, Product Development and Data Science units at Publitalia ’80, Mediaset Group’s sales house.

With a degree in Media Engineering from Politecnico in Turin, he started his professional career in tech consultancy and then moved into Advertising joining Yahoo Advertising Technology team in Paris. While acting as a Sales Engineer on Yahoo Advertising offering, he gained a strong experience on several markets and in Yahoo global projects such as the Ad Server, Analytics platforms and Big data. In 2017 he joined the AdTech Department of Publitalia ’80 developing the technical stack of the first Connected TV advertising offering in Italy.

He is in charge of the launch and growth of products and services enabling addressable advertising and targeting solutions on OTT, CTV, Digital Audio and Digital Out of Home.

Biography

Ashley has been working in video technologies in both enterprise and consumer spaces for a decade. His work with leading broadcasters – namely Sky Deutschland, Sony and Channel 4 – paired with companies such as UBS and Bayer Pharmaceuticals, has provided him with vast experience delivering content. He has worked in numerous areas of the industry, from satellite transmission to broadcast and delivery over IP, all of which benefit architecting solutions and providing products as part of Simplestream. As a Technical Director, his key focus is driving innovation in the OTT industry while enabling customers to increase reach and engagement.

Biography

Timuçin Bilgör is a President at BUBA Ventures based in İstanbul. Boğaziçi Univesity Business Angles Ventures, Turkey’s first university-based angel investment network founded by Timuçin Bilgör. Digitiwise is one of his investment companies based in Finland which operates in Addressable Tv Advertisement Technology and Media House.

Mr. Bilgör is also a university lecturer at Boğaziçi University and he manages BUBA Ventures founds in Technology, Medicine, and Agriculture.

Biography

Eduard has more than 25 years’ experience across television audience measurement.

After a few years as a researcher and university professor of Statistics and IT, he has spent his career as founder and managing the development of the most widely used television audience analysis software in the world, Instar Analytics.

For the last 10 years he has specialized in Big Data and Data Fusion projects working with the main Pay TV & OTT platforms.

Eduard lives in Barcelona, is happily married, father of 6 children and a crazy lover of cycling.

Biography

Moritz has 30 years experience across the entire eco-system of linear,  print and digital advertising, always at the forefront of tech innovation as CEO of either listed multi-national or regional advertising sales or Tech companies. Moritz lead many business to the next stage making them and their products world class.

Moritz lived and worked in China, India, Singapore, Switzerland and USA. Today he is based in the UK.

He has two children and founded 3 years ago Reformer Pilates company, including the invention of a new patented Reformer machine.

Biography

FRANK HEINEBERG works for CBC / RTL Deutschland, as VP Standards and Innovations. He has already been active in other functions, such as head of Audio/Video Engineering, at CBC / RTL since 1991. Frank is working on various new technology distribution projects and represents RTL in standardization bodies. He is also member of the HbbTV Steering Group.

Biography:

Emily took up the post of Head of Technology in the DVB Project Office in January 2020 having spent more than 20 years in the digital television industry. She has worked with several DVB Members across a variety of roles, including with Thomson Video Networks (now Harmonic), TeamCast (now ENENSYS Technologies) and SmarDTV/Neotion.

Emily has strong expertise in the traditional broadcast world along with a solid grounding in emerging technologies from the broadband world. As Head of Technology, Emily leads on all technical and standardisation matters within DVB, represents the organisation around the world at conferences and tradeshows and supports DVB’s modules and working groups.

Biography

Fabio Guarnaccia is strategic marketing manager in RTI. Editor in chief of “Link. Ideas for television” and part of the HbbTV steering group.

Biography

After 25+ years divided among Research&Innovation, Operations and Sales&Business Development, Oliver is today SVP – Executive Sales Director – Global Media, in charge at Group level of scouting new market opportunities, creating brand awareness, leading sales and business development as well as innovating the Company’s offering, through new technologies and their disruptive application. In the Media sector specifically, he is involved in Omnichannel Video Distribution and Monetization, introducing OTT and NextGen Hybrid TV with both ATSC3.0 and HbbTV, Addressable TV Advertising, AI/ML-based Video Augmentation and Accessibility Enhancement, Multimodal UX Design, VR/AR, Big Data and Advanced Analytics, and the application of these KETs to Monetization, Audience Segmentation, UX Personalization and User Engagement.

Biography

Dr. Louay Bassbouss is a researcher and Senior Project Manager R&D in the Future Applications and Media (FAME) business unit at the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems (FOKUS). He works on future web applications, multimedia technologies and standards, media streaming over 5G, and technologies that enable Metaverse experiences across different devices and platforms. Louay actively participates in various standardization groups in W3C, HbbTV and CTA. He is the co-chair of the W3C Second Screen Working and Community Groups and actively contributes to various testing activities in HbbTV and CTA WAVE. Louay is also a lecturer at the Technical University of Berlin (TU Berlin) in the field of open distributed systems and advanced web technologies.

Biography

Jon Piesing played a major role facilitating the convergence of the original French and German initiatives which together become HbbTV. He is vice-Chair of the HbbTV Association and Chair of the Specification Group. He is Chair of the Technical Module of the DVB project and a member of the Steering Board there.  He is a member of the Steering Committee of the CTA Web Application Video Ecosystem (WAVE) project and acting as project manager of their device testing developments. He has been a leading figure in the development of specifications for integration of TV and interactivity for more than twenty years. This has included being the chairman of groups in DVB, the Open IPTV Forum and the UK DTG. Jon is now Director, Standardisation for TP Vision (who manufacture Philips TVs for Europe and a number of other territories). He has previously held senior positions related to standardisation in several different units of Philips.

Biography:

Juha Joki has over 20 years’ worth of experience in DVB and HbbTV technologies. Currently he is in charge of DVB broadcast products and testing and certification services for DVB and HbbTV at Sofia Digital. He has also overseen the HbbTV DASH DRM and DVB-I Reference application projects at Sofia Digital, and is currently working with DVB-I, Operator App and CI+ 2.0 related projects. His latest responsibility is helping to develop the Finnish HbbTV Platform conformance testing portal.”

Biography

Mika Kanerva has 20 years of experience in Digital Television and special knowledge about TV technologies and creation of added-value services for television. He has unique global experience about digitalization of the TV, development of new TV / OTT services and delivering solutions for HbbTV, Smart TV environment and other video enabled applications over the Internet and broadcast.

He has been closely involved in TV standards development and industry collaboration especially at Nordic region, Europe and South-East Asia where he provided insight for the television digitalization process from analog TV switch-off to DVB-T2 and Connected TV with other online video applications and services launch based to well-known technologies and standards including HbbTV Operator Apps and DVB-I specifications.
He  graduated in 2008 as Master of Computer Science at the University of Tampere, Finland. He has been one of the founders and key persons in Sofia Digital since 2000 and currently working in the company as Chief Operating Officer.

Biography

Graduated from the University of Sannio, he has been involved in web and media application development and design on the end-to-end (E2E) chain since 2010. He has acquired skills in development with different technologies and on different devices, even with limited performance. In addition, he designs and develops applications in distributed and highly scalable systems. Experience in:

• managing software projects with a short time to market;
• application development, with different technologies and for platforms such as smartTV HbbTV, Satellite decoder, IPTV decoder, Sky Q decoder, Vodafone TV Box, Roku player.
• design and development of platforms on cloud systems for realtime data analysis and media content management, platforms for process management and resource optimization with AI techniques.

In recent years, his work has focused on the definition of solutions for the delivery of digital advertising in the media environment.

Biography

Jörn Krieger has been working as a freelance journalist, specialised in digital media, broadcast technology, convergence and new markets, since 1992. His articles are published by German and international industry publications such as Broadband TV News, InfoDigital, Digitalmagazin, Cable!vision Europe and Medien Bulletin. Jörn also takes up University lectureships, conducts workshops and seminars and hosts panel discussions at industry events such as Deutsche TV-Plattform Symposium, ANGA COM, Medientage München and IFA Berlin.

Biography

Rainer Biehn has been employed at bmt since 1995 and has been Technical Manager and Deputy Managing Director since 1999, responsible for the coordination and implementation of technical projects and products. After completing his studies in electrical engineering with a focus on communications engineering, he initially worked at the Institut für Rundfunktechnik (IRT) on the simulation of error protection mechanisms for digital radio DAB. In addition to project coordination, he is also regularly involved in the implementation of our products and has carried out the design and construction of the bmt’s DVB playout.

Biography:

Paul has spent his entire 30 years career in the television industry in a variety of engineering, marketing, strategy and business leadership roles. Whilst at Philips, Paul initially worked in analogue TV before driving the transition to digital. Paul has spent the last 8 years as CEO leading the transformation of Ocean Blue Software (OBS) from a traditional software licencing business to the pioneer in the application of open/shared source broadcast software. Paul was instrumental in the founding of both DTVKit and The Open Red Button Project (ORB) and is a governing board member of DTVKit.

Biography

Dan is Sales Director-CDN Video Streaming at MainStreaming, Italy. He has over 15 years in the Sales IT industry, for past 4 years he has specialized in CDN Edge Video Streaming. He has enabled  broadcasters, media and enterprise companies to deliver video with the best Quality of Experience to their audience, globally. MainStreaming’s innovative Edge CDN solution delivers live and on-demand video, integrating all operative phases for ingest, encoding, management and distribution.

Biography

Mathieu was part of the founding team for Netgem UK in 2015, an entrepreneurial spirited fully owned subsidiary of well established tech streaming specialist Netgem.

Head of Product Delivery since 2018, Mathieu is on a mission to develop Netgem TV, a B2C game-changing TV service combining Freeview Play with major content partners (Youtube, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, NOW TV etc), adding ML recommendations and a lot of features to deliver a fully personalized TV service available in retail or via a D2C subs contract-free membership model.
While winning many industry awards with Netgem TV, Mathieu created a Customer Success team with a portfolio of more than 15 AltNets and ISPs across UK and Ireland such as TalkTalk and Community Fibre.

Biography

Dr Bob Campbell is Director of Engineering at Eurofins Digital Testing, a leading digital media and device testing specialist. Bob is responsible for the team that delivers Eurofins Digital Testing Products, including the CI+ Test Tool, Ligada HbbTV test harness and HbbTV test suites used around the world, and new product development such as Arreios for ATSC 3.0. Bob is also responsible for Eurofins participation in a wide range of standards organisations including Chair of the HbbTV Improving Interoperability Task Force and Chair of the ATSC Conformance Implementation Team.

Biography:

Alex Russell is Controller of Technical Partnerships at Digital UK where he has worked for 8 years and originally created the conformance regime for the Freeview Play platform.

Alex is responsible for the technical side of the relationships Digital UK hold with TV manufacturers and application providers in the UK.

Biography

• Born in 1978, I have joined tivù in September 2014 as Project Manager in charge of HbbTV, web and Mobile applications design, development and performance                               evaluation.
• From March 2020 I’m responsible for tivù Certification Regime, from technical specification drafting to device certification and relationship with Set-Top-Box and TV manufacturer.
• Member of the HbbTV Steering Group since November 2021
• During the last years I gained a solid knowledge of HbbTV specifications and principles, working on the field together with broadcasters, manufacturers and developers on the design, implementation and integration of the tivùon broadcaster app and its Operator App POCs for STB and TV.
• Before joining tivù, I was founder and CEO of Stereomood.com, a music startup that proved the appeal of mood-based listening before Spotify, with over 20 million users worldwide.

Biography:

Xavi Redon is leading the Spanish broadcasters HbbTV platform LOVEStv (HbbTV Jury Award in 2018) and also the TDT Híbrida certification process in Spain. Since Digital TV appeared, has been working for the TV evolution in Spain, developing and promoting technologies such as hybrid TV, Ultra High Definition, HD, MHP and DTT. He has a bachelor’s degree in Telecommunications Engineering at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, a Postgraduate degree in Telecommunications Management at Institut Català de la Tecnologia and a Master in Marketing and Sales in EAE Business School

Biography

I have worked in the TV industry for over 30 years, firstly in broadcasting (terrestrial, cable and satellite), then network operator and currently as a CE manufacturer. I have both business and engineering degrees and use all this experience to work on both the commercial and technical aspects of our industry. I am currently Director of Innovation and R&D for LG Electronics, responsible for TV platforms across all of Europe. I participate in many standardisation activities and am currently a Steering Board member of HbbTV.

Biography

Pedro Valiente Echezarreta is the International Business Development Manager at Kineton, responsible for driving the growth of Kineton’s Media Entertainment business in the EMEA region.

Prior to this has managed device testing and certification for the Italian conformance regime and has supported the TV and STB manufacturer in their product development process in order to comply to Italian specification, including HbbTV.

Involved in the migration from MHP to HbbTV in Italy. Education includes an M.A. in engineering and executive course in project management.

Pedro is currently vice president of the “UHD FORUM Italia” board, and active member of HbbTV MEWG and other HbbTV and DVB groups and has been member of the HbbTV Steering Board for four years.

Biography

An entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience unlocking commercial value in the media industry, co-founder Raj Patel is creating innovative new low cost data, DRM and Addressable Advertising products for global audiences.

Collaborating with leading technology companies, he has established himself as an active participant on both sides of the Atlantic in ATSC and HbbTV and maintains a strong interest in new DVB developments.

Partnerships with CE manufacturers have enabled operators like HD+ to implement HbbTV Operator Applications in Germany, Ghana and Italy for the first time. In the US, Raj has helped Pearl TV, A3SA and Run3TV to deliver interactive products with over 180 services, across 30 markets and with 20 broadcasters.

Biography

Passionate about technology, Nello joined Kineton since its foundation. He started his journey creating the Kineton’s HbbTV development framework. He has become Head of Development of Media Applications. The passion for technology and innovation in development processes has led Kineton to become a leader in thedevelopment of media applications.

Nello follows the entire development process, from the collection of requirements through to maintenance, he is in charge of various media projects, being always in close contact with the customer in the pursuit of continuous improvement.

Biography

For over 30 years, Mary Ann Halford has been actively building businesses in the media and entertainment industry in the US and internationally. She has worked as both an operator and a consultant.

As a consultant, she is currently a Partner at Altman Solon, the world’s largest TMT strategy consultancy.   At AS, she helps media and entertainment companies in both the US and internationally develop and implement new business models, optimize business performance and architect new content and distribution strategies.  In addition, she works extensively with private equity firms investing in the industry.

Biography

Klaus Merkel is Senior Engineer at the rbb distribution department. He joined rbb in April 2021 and actively contributes to the further development of the HbbTV standard and its practical application in operational market environments. From 1991-2021 Klaus had been employed at IRT where he was engaged in various working groups for the definition and market introduction of open and interoperable platforms for digital television and SmartTVs.

Biography

Dr. Thomas Stockhammer joined Qualcomm in 2014 as the Director Technical Standards. In his different roles, he coauthored more than 200 research publications, more than 200 patents and 1000s of standards contributions. He is the active and has leadership and rapporteur positions in 3GPP, DVB, MPEG, IETF, ATSC, CTA, ETSI, Metaverse Standards Forum and the DASH-Industry Forum in multimedia communication, TV-distribution, 5G broadcast, content delivery protocols, immersive media representation, adaptive streaming, XR and the Metaverse. Among others, he leads the MPEG-I Scene Description efforts, is Chair of the DASH-IF Technical working group, rapporteur of 3GPP Video and XR activities as well as chairman of the DVB over 5G activity. He also received several awards for work on DASH and enTV, namely the INCITS Technical Excellence Award 2013, the 3GPP Excellence award 2017, the CTA Technology & Standards Achievement Award 2019 and an Emmy Inventor Award for in 2022. He is regular speaker and Program Committee Member at events such as IBC, DVB World, Mile High Video, MWS or BroadThinking