We’re looking for Europe-based presenters for the following sessions at Streaming Media Europe, both on Wednesday 15 October:

Comparing Video Formats and Encoding Tools, 10.00-13.00: This updated workshop is a crash course to help you evaluate and select the right delivery format for your content. Attendees will see direct comparisons of the latest streaming media formats and codecs, including Flash, QuickTime/MPEG-4, RealMedia, and Windows Media, and objectively evaluate and quantify the pros and cons of each format. A comparison of encoding applications will also be discussed to help you choose the tools to get the best-quality results for your content.

Webcasting Essentials, 14.00-17.00: Work through the five phases of a webcast—planning, production, encoding, authoring, and distribution. To add to your real experience, the workshop itself is treated as a webcast, with the goal to webcast live from the workshop. This workshop covers production techniques and encoding hardware and software including the Windows Media Encoder and RealProducer. Workshop attendees are encouraged to participate in the webcast production to get the full “live” rush.

If you’re interested, please send an email to erics@streamingmedia.com along with a CV or list of your credentials. We’re looking for someone with solid presentation skills as well as hands-on experience in the subject areas. 

I’m thrilled to announce that along with expanding our online presence via this blog and the Streaming Media Global site, we’re finally going to have a print presence in the UK and Europe beginning in September, with the first printing of the UK and Europe Edition of Streaming Media magazine. (It’s a once-a-year publication for now, but we’ll examine the frequency after we see what response is.)

In addition to in-depth Q&As with each of the keynote speakers for the Streaming Media Europe show, the magazine will include a look at the content delivery space in Europe and the UK as well as hands-on articles about Flash Video, webcasting with Windows Media and Silverlight, and producing content for mobile devices.

This is great news for our UK and Europe readers who, until now, have only had access to the digital version of Streaming Media magazine. And it’s free to qualified readers in the UK and Europe. You can subscribe here, and if you do so before the end of July, you’ll be entered into a random drawing to win a new 3G iPhone.

Just a quick post to note that Kate Burns informed us today that she’s leaving her post as Managing Director UK at Dailymotion for the newly created position of vice-president and managing director at social media site Bebo. You can read more about it in this Guardian story. Congratulations to Kate!

So what of her scheduled keynote at Streaming Media Europe? We’re working on a replacement right now; in the meantime, check back later this week for another keynote speaker announcement.

We’re looking for a company in London to video all of the keynote and sessions at Streaming Media Europe. We don’t need hosting, since we’ll be delivering the videos on demand after the show is over using our Brightcove account—see the Streaming Media East videos on the Streaming Media Global home page for an example. We just need an experienced company to shoot, edit, and encode the sessions and keynote speeches. If you’re interested, please contact me at erics@streamingmedia.com for specs.

Welcome to the Streaming Media Europe Conference 2008 Blog…

While you’re probably thinking that the last thing any of us needs is yet another blog, at least we can promise you that this one has a limited life span — and direct applicability to our upcoming event. We’ve started this blog as a place to focus on what’s happening within or affecting Europe in the world of streaming media as we plan, organise and prepare for our annual Streaming Media Conference, taking place this year on 16-17 October 2008 (with pre-conference workshops on 15 October) at Novotel London West, UK.

Basically, we wanted to start a dialogue with you for gathering and bouncing off ideas, comments, and thoughts as we start building off of our Advance Programme and getting details finalised for the conference.

But first things first — Introductions! “We” are Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen and Eileen Broch. Eric is based in the States and is editor of Streaming Media Global, and Eileen is based in London, where she is investment director for Ambient Sound Investments, non-executive director (board member) technology & innovation for The National Archives, and likes to stay on top of all high-tech, including streaming of course. Between the two of us, we hope we can cover what’s of interest to you and address all of your areas of interest across multiple time zones. For example, we look forward to giving you sneak peeks and early notices about our session announcements, speaker confirmations and other events related to the show.

More importantly, however, we want to hear ideas and comments — either positive or otherwise — from you regarding what you’d like to have covered at the conference, which speakers you want to hear from, and what you think are the most pressing topics to raise and address.

We look forward to getting to know you over these coming months and, of course, seeing you at the show. (Matter of fact, you can register right now here in order to save your spot right away). Watch this space, as there’s much more to come!