We’re excited to announce the first annual European Streaming Media Readers’ Choice Award, for which nominations will be accepted beginning today. Modeled after the successful U.S. program, the European Readers’ Choice Awards will be the only awards program that honors the top efforts in the online video industry as decided by the people who actually use the products and services and watch the content.

The awards process begins with the collection of nominations in 12 categories:

• Transcoding Solution—Hardware, software, or cloud-based solution for encoding and transcoding content

• Online Video Platform—SaaS platforms that enable customizable publication, syndication, distribution, and monetisation of video on the web

• UGC Platform—User-generated content sites and services

• TV over IP Solution—Set-top box, over-the-top, and “catch-up” solutions for delivering television content online

• Reporting, Analytics—Services that offer metrics that, among other things, help content publishers better understand who’s watching, when they’re watching, where they’re watching, and for how long

• Streaming Services Provider—Provider of end-to-end streaming services, from capture and encoding to delivery and distribution

• Video Advert Platform—Technologies and services that allow for targeted ad insertion into online video content

• Webcast Platform—Hardware, software, and SaaS solutions for delivering live web events

• Delivery Network—Edge or peer-to-peer content delivery providers

• Music & Audio Delivery Solution—Music download services, internet radio, and music sharing

• Best Live Webcast of 2009—Most impressive and successful live web event

• Best Streaming Innovation of 2009—The “catch-all” category, for simply the coolest, most innovative streaming product, service, or event of the year.

Nominations may be submitted here beginning today through 29 June. The staff of Streaming Media will evaluate the nominations for appropriateness to category and then publish a list of nominees in each category on 6 July.

At that point, our readers will be able to vote for one nominee in each category, with the voting open until 21 August. We’ll publish the finalists—the top 3 vote-getters in each category—on 7 September, and then announce the winner in each category at Streaming Media Europe on 15 October, as well as on the website and in the Winter European edition of Streaming Media magazine.

So make your nominations soon, and look out for the list of nominees on 6 July!

We’ve extended the deadline for speaker proposals for this year’s Streaming Media Europe conference, to be held on 15 & 16 October (with pre-conference workshops on 14 October), again at the Novotel London West in Hammersmith. You now have until Friday, 8 May to submit proposals.

While we welcome all potential speakers, we’re especially interested in end users who can speak to the challenges, trends, and opportunities they are dealing with as they deploy online video and music strategies in both consumer-facing and internal communications. Submissions can be made directly here,  but be sure to read our guidelines first.

Once again, we’ll be having two tracks, one focusing on Technology & Content and one on Business & Strategy. We’ll likely have a total of about 20 sessions, as well as four keynotes. Stay tuned for more information about those keynotes, and we look forward to your speaker submissions.

Hard to believe, but it’s time to start planning for this year’s Streaming Media Europe conference, to be held on 15 & 16 October (with pre-conference workshops on 14 October), again at the Novotel London West in Hammersmith. A testament to the continued vitality of online video in the face of tough economic times, last year’s show bucked the trade show trend and saw an increase of more than 50% in attendees over the 2007 show: 768 visitors from 23 countries, and more than 70 speakers.

We’re now soliciting speaker proposals for the 2009 show. While we welcome all potential speakers, we’re especially interested in end users who can speak to the challenges, trends, and opportunities they are dealing with as they deploy online video and music strategies in both consumer-facing and internal communications. Submissions can be made directly here,  but be sure to read our guidelines first.

Once again, we’ll be having two tracks, one focusing on Technology & Content and one on Business & Strategy. We’ll likely have a total of about 20 sessions, as well as four keynotes. Stay tuned for more information about those keynotes, and we look forward to your speaker submissions.

With the global economic crisis still on the top of everyone’s minds, it’s a good time to take a look at one of the best-attended panels from last month’s Streaming Media Europe. James Enck moderated a discussion among a panel of financiers—Alain-Gabriel Courtines from Intel Capital, Taavet Hinrikus from Ambient Sound Investments, and Frederic Court from Advent Venture Partners—about what 2009 holds in store for venture capital and merger & acquisition activity in the online video space.

Videos from all of the breakout sessions at this year’s Streaming Media Europe are now available here. Unfortunately, we’re not able to present videos of the keynote sessions, but if you take a look at the player, you’ll see that all 18 sessions are now online for viewing; you can also embed links to individual session videos on your own sites if you wish. I’ll be highlighting and discussing individual session videos in future posts.

Also, speaker presentations from the sessions and several of the pre-conference workshops are now available on the Streaming Media Europe programme page. If a particular presentation you’re looking for isn’t there, please let me know, and I’ll do my best to track it down.

Thanks to everyone involved—speakers, sponsors, delegates, visitors—for making this year’s event a resounding success. We had 768 attendees, which is a whopping 54% increase over 2007; what’s more, those attendees represented 23 countries and a who’s who of prominent organisations across all market verticals. Attendees were present from the likes of Alcatel-Lucent, BT Media & Broadcast, GlaxoSmithKline, ITV, TV 2 Danmark,Télévision Suisse Romande, TV 4 Group Sweden, the University of Helsinki, and King Saud University. We also had 35 stands in the exhibit hall, which is nearly twice as many as last year. 

Soon, we’ll start planning for Streaming Media Europe 2009, so if you’ve got any comments or suggestions about how we can make next year’s show better, please note them in the comments section.

One of the highlights of Streaming Media Europe was presenting the first-ever Readers’ Choice Award for Regional (European) Content Delivery Network. The finalists were Global-MIX and Stream UK, both from the UK, and Jet Stream from the Netherlands. Showing the truly pan-European nature of the show, Jet Stream was the winner for its Streamzilla content delivery service. Congrats to Stef van der Ziel and everyone else at Jet Stream.

Next year, we’ll be presenting an entire awards program specifically focusing on the European market. Watch this space and the Streaming Media Global site for details to come!

Thanks to Stream UK and Global-MIX, we’ll be webcasting the closing session from Streaming Media Europe live from London at 16:15 GMT/4:15 p.m. EDT. The session, “What the Future Holds,” will feature Jake Ward from Broadview moderating and Mark Little from Ovum Research, and Dan Cryan from Screen Digest, two of the leading analysts of online video trends. 

They’ll be looking at what we should expect over the next few years in terms of technological advances, business challenges and opportunities, and audience demographics. Click here for the Windows Media webcast at 16:15 GMT/4:15 p.m. EDT.

Two terrific keynotes this morning. First, Alec Hendry went into great detail about MTV UK & Ireland’s workflow, both from capture to distribution and among MTV offices in different territories —  much of the content is entered by MTV’s New York offices and then when it’s approved for European distribution, it becomes available to the MTV UK offices, pending any edits that have to be made because of rights considerations (sometimes the music on the U.S. shows isn’t approved for use in the UK). He also talked about how the MTV Overdrive player allows the network to achieve two of its core objectives: “It lets the user control MTV, but lets MTV control the content.” 

Digby Lewis from Dailymotion talked about the company’s standing as the #2 video site in the world, just behind YouTube. “We don’t really view them as competitors, because they’re really in their own universe,” he said. Dailymotion’s strategy now is to focus not so much on user-generated content as on professional and semi-professional filmmakers and content producers. “It’s about more than just skateboarding dogs and copulating kangaroos,” he said. “That stuff might interest people for five minutes, but it’s not content that’s going to keep them engaged.” He also shared a statistic worth reflecting upon. “Video now is where the internet was a few years ago. 60% of users feel overwhelmed by all of the content, while 40% feel they’re able to cope.”