I say this every year, but I mean it more each time: This year’s Streaming Media Europe really is set to be the best ever, with great speakers and a brand-new venue. You can see the entire programme online–we’re still filling in a few speaker slots, but almost all of the panels and presentations are now slotted. The highlight sof the event are our keynotes; on Day 1 (18 October), we’ve got Ian Mecklenburgh from Virgin Media talking about “Streaming to the Connected Home,” while on Day 2 we feature YouTube Europe Engineering Director Oliver Heckmann offering a “Peek Inside YouTube”

The entire event is loaded with top-notch speakers, though, and as with last year, it’s not just one event. This year, it’s four: The Content Delivery Summit on 17 October follows up on last year’s successful event with another great mix of presentations and speakers, including the BBC’s Richard Cooper, Limelight Networks’ George Fraser, and Level 3 Communications’ Derek Gough. The real highlight, though, is the frank and sometimes surprising conversations that happen during the panel discussions; how often do you get to see Adobe, Microsoft, Wowza, RealNetworks, Flumotion, and Code Shop discuss and debate application trends?

18 October also features the first annual Connected Home event. Programmed by informitv‘s Dr. William Cooper, this event is a one-of-a-kind gathering of online, broadcast, CE, and infrastructure leaders including Google TV, Samsung, LG, BT, TalkTalk, and others, all exploring the challenges and opportunities brought about by over-the-top video and the increasingly connected home environment. “These major industries are headed on a collision course, but to succeed they will need to work together,” says Cooper. “It is unlikely that a single winner will end up owning the consumer, but understanding the roles and relationships of the various players will enable participants to position themselves in the connected value network.”

On 19 October, we’ll feature the second Online Video Strategies event, the only event aimed squarely at the ever-growing number of organisations for whom video is now a central part of their communications strategy, but for whom video is in no way their core business. As such, it’s filled not with blue sky pondering nor awash in “inside the video industry” debates. Rather, it’s designed to give attendees the knowledge and tools they need to start or improve their strategy as soon as they leave the event—even if they’re not  video experts when they walk in the door. The day begins with Pocket Video Power‘s Jules Watkins, who has produced reality shows like Pimp My Ride and MTV Cribs and will focus on “How To Make Online Videos that Don’t Suck—Without Breaking the Bank.” We’ll also have speakers from Red Bee Media, Kinura, AutoTrader, and more, all offering up practical knowledge to help attendees improve their video strategies as soon as they get back to their desks.

And, as usual, the day before the main event will be filled with terrific, in-depth workshops on “Delivering High-Quality Media Within the Enterprise on the Adobe Flash Platform,” “Next-Generation Microsoft Media Platform and Media Delivery with Sharepoint and Azure,” “Online Video Advertising–The Technology, the Science, and the Cash,” and “Encoding for Flash, Mobile, and HTML5.”

We’re also at a new venue this year: the Olympia Conference Centre in London, with the Content Delivery Summit and pre-conference workshops taking place at the nearby Hilton London Olympia.

So register for Streaming Media Europe and its connected events now, before the early bird deadline of September 16!

More from Streaming Media Europe Conference Development Director Katherine Allen on the FutureMedia 2008 conference held in London last week:

Social networking features, such as friends’ recommendations, will play a major part in the development of the BBC’s iPlayer, according to Anthony Rose, Controller of the BBC’s Vision and Online Media Group as he kicked off day 2 of the FutureMedia conference in London. “Last year the BBC chose what you watch; this year you decide what you watch; and next year your friends will choose what you watch” commented Rose, speaking just hours after iPlayer started simulcasting all the BBC’s channels and launched iPlayer Labs. As ever, though, iPlayer controversy wasn’t far away, as Telegraph TV’s Guy Ruddle argued forcefully that the publically-funded BBC should open up the iPlayer platform to content from other providers.

Patrick Walker, Google/You Tube’s director of video partnerships revealed that YouTube’s “click-to-buy” feature, which enables quick access to digital downloads or DVD purchase and launched in the US in October, will be rolled out in the UK in the “next few months”. The recently launched Monty Python channel has been one of the first beneficiaries, according to Walker, launching its click to buy link just last week and seeing Python DVD sales reach Amazon’s top 5.

A panel discussion on the impact of the credit crunch on digital media brought delegates back to earth, although there were seeds of hope even here. The consensus was that marketing spend would continue to migrate online. “If you’ve got to choose a media sector to be in, this is the best one, unequivocably” noted Simon Nicholls, MD of Ingenious Corporate Finance.

I’m quite a bit late in picking this up and taking notice of this, but in case you might have missed it too, comScore released a report last week that cites 27.4 million UK internet users viewed 3.5 billion videos online in the month of March 2008.  Of those totals, Google Sites (i.e., YouTube which accounts for 99% of Google’s video traffic) had 48% market share, with second place BBC sites far behind with only 1.2% market share.

What surprised me was that there was such a gap between YouTube and BBC sites (and of course any of the others) — This will be worth asking Claude London about at our event in October, as well as some of the other keynote speakers, including Dailymotion (oops, did I say that out loud?) which only grabbed 0.4% of the UK audience according to comScore figures.

Other notable findings in the report:

• 81.2% of the total UK internet audience viewed online video
• The combined UK online video viewing audience watched a total of 172 million hours of video content
• 20.5 million viewers watched nearly 1.7 billion videos on YouTube.com (47.3 videos per user)
• The average online video duration was 3 minutes

And of course with yesterday’s news that Kangaroo’s release could be delayed up to 6 months because of competitive review (coverage everywhere, but our media partner paidContent:UK has a nice summary here), this gives YouTube — or some of the even smaller players — even more time to grab more market share.

Tell us, from which sites and services do you consume your online (or mobile) video?