ATT.net product
Developed engagement and advertising products for AT&T’s main email portal (ATT.net), which aggregates all email traffic for AT&T users. Products included development of advertising, content management, third-party integrations, content promotions and other strategies and tactics to grow the portal value beyond $45 million per annum in 2018. The current iteration of the site is located at currently.yahoo.att.com.
Piksel Digital Enterprise and Hive OTT Products
Improved the online video platform (OVP) and Hive OTT products.These products are the cornerstone of large enterprise streaming for AT&T / US Courts, Delta Airlines, NHK and NHK World (Japan), Lifeway, BBVA, Volkswagen, Relais & Chateaux, Biomerieux and a host of faith based products.
AT&T U-verse TVE Platform
Building the AT&T platform involved a multiple application approach to cover a TVE (Television Everywhere) approach. TVE allowed subscribers to use a single-sign on (SSO) to access live channels and on-demand content across a variety of devices, including a web application (uverse.com), iOS, Android, Xbox One, Amazon Fire TV, smart TV, Samsung Gear S1/2 and Apple watches. IAB display advertising units, and VAST interstitial ads were added in pre-, and mid- and post-roll through supply side partners, including Freewheel and Google.Other work involved creating content onboarding tools for metadata and transcoded assets, reporting systems, DevOps management tools for code management in AWS, and disaster recovery development for operations management.
M-GO (Fandango Now / Vudu) OTT Platform
Dreamworks Animation and Technicolor financed the development of a functional transaction video on-demand (TVOD) or Pay-Per-View (PPV) system. Developing this platform involved the management of 300 engineers, product, project and operations staff to deploy multiple environments to support development, quality assurance, load testing, pre-production content management, and content management. The primary target for the service was web, Android phone and tablet, and smart TV users. Integrations for payments involved utilizing Cybersource. JSON catalog and search and recommendations data was leveraged through SOLR (catalog) and Digitalsmiths (search and recommendations). The product was eventually acquired by NBCUniversal (Comcast), which integrated the successful movie ticketing system, Fandango, with the on-demand offering of M-GO. Fandango Now eventually morphed into Vudu, which currently is part of a Comcast / NBCUniversal offering that includes Xfinity, Flex, Xumo, and Peacock.
Vudu (formerly FandangoNow and M-GO)
Former Technicolor CEO, Fred Rose, on M-GO launch in 2013
DMI SoundDNA Player and Technology
DMI Music is a full service music creative and technology company that offers the soundDNA system. soundDNA distributes music to networked music players with SD cards to play back content from programmed playlists and dynamically available ads and promos in individual locations for large retail, commercial, media and entertainment, and quick service restaurants. I managed the design and build of the new soundDNA player hardware and software, and the distribution system. soundDNA was used in several thousand locations, including Kohl’s, Fossil, Build-A-Bear, Subway, Baja Fresh, Sbarro, and other retail establishments. Creating the design of the player involved using newer SD technology, which allowed for the swapping of the entire playlist and assets through exchanging SD cards. The entire operating system (OS) was also housed on the SD card. The normal updates through connecting to a server through store-and-forward commands was supplemented by a robust, automated scripting process. Through dynamically programmed playlists, individual stores could receive different promotional and advertising content to the level of a store-by-store distribution. Alfresco CMS and Sugar CRM were integrated into an MPS distribution core that allowed for the store-and-forward process to occur.
Spyglass Entertainment and Level 1 Entertainment IT Services
As part of Vchange LLC, I provided services for two film production companies. These services included installing and troubleshooting components of a PBX / CMX telephone system for the Spyglass offices, and troubleshooting and updating PCs, Blackberries and other devices in the office. Some of significant malware and worms were distributed at a time when Norton, Sophos and other anti-viral companies were struggling to understand how to provide updates. The most significant of these attacks forced the team working on these services to reinstall Windows OSes on all the PCs in the office based on a Microsoft defect in the operating system. Encoding and transcoding work for film video clips was also a part of the service, including clips for Seabiscuit and other major film productions.
Spyglass Entertainment
Spyglass Media Group
Level1 Entertainment
Power Yoga – 2005 – 2012
Power Yoga is a Santa Monica based yoga studio that offers classes in two locations in Santa Monica, classes at various locations around the world, and training sessions in Mexico. The Santa Monica studio was outfitted with fixed cameras (camcorders) in 2007 that allowed for capture of classes in a production room. The capture setup involved using a Matrox card and splitting inputs from HDMI sources to allow for a live feed and a VOD feed to be created on a Mac system. Audio was managed for these captures through a Mackie mixing board to ensure levels were solid. Live webcasting and VOD creation were handled by Windows Media Servier and QuickTime server. Vchange managed a colocation and distributed to a CDN for larger events (Edgecast). Certain live events were done with a larger broadcast setup that included professional Sony cameras and Prosumer models depending the event. The VOD assets were uploaded to poweryoga.com where they were curated in a CMS database by the admin. I developed the product plan and architecture, hired the developers and installed and maintained the video setup for this project. The development of the poweryoga.com streaming site complemented e-commerce efforts to monetize content. Developing a payment system allowed for donations to be accepted for content and subscriptions to be developed for users to access additional content.
Sonic Foundry / STV – 2000 – 2001
Sonic Foundry started as a software company that wrote the popular Acid music editing software for the PC. Using ActiveX structures, the software was incredibly malleable, being able to create a multitude of tracks with which to mix music. Sonic Foundry continued building on this same architecture with the launch of the Video Vegas product. Vegas was a code name that was so popular that it became the software name for the product. Sonic Foundry was looking for a services company and decided to purchase two companies in the early 2000s, STV, a Santa Monica based services firm, and International Image, a video processing firm for studio level encoding, transcoding and pre-processing. These two entities happened to be based within a few buildings of each other. STV had garnered a host of different clients through originally creating DVD displays for larger retailers, like Best Buy. Editing the displays required creating small DVD presentations that looped. As STV grew, it acquired clients that needed encoding, transcoding, streaming hosting and webcasting. I was part of a group of project managers and sales engineers who helped to promote and develop products and services initially for STV, and later for Sonic Foundry. I managed a project management team that would work directly with clients like Hollywood.com, iFilm, and others to help them navigate the encoding and transcoding needs that their firms needed in order to present video on their websites. An encoding operation that ran 24/7 was set up to handle video and audio encoding. This operation handled the capture and encoding of libraries of audio cassette tapes that would have been lost otherwise. Later, I helped to manage webcasts including for CBS/Viacom, including for The Young and Restless, and for events with Florence Henderson and other personalities who were involved with promoting CBS properties. Sony was also a major encoding clients. I worked with a team of engineers to prepare encoding platforms in the Sony offices in Culver City to help them build out their large scale encoding setups. Sonic Foundry’s Vegas Video product was integral in the encoding setup since it could be used as a non-linear editing package to trim video and normalize audio, add titles and subtitles and captions, and to transcode video into streaming formats, like Real Media, Windows Media or QuickTime at the time, or to prepare raw MOVs or AVIs for archival purposes or for use in higher resolution editorial sessions. A number of trailers were also created in this way for clients, like Hollywood.com, that needed a means of creating unique content for their online properties. The education of clients in streaming technologies and the process and workflow related to digitization or capture was integral to the close client relationships built through these teams. Sonic Foundry has undergone numerous changes, including selling the Vegas product to Sony and eventually to MAGIX, where it is currently still developed — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegas_Pro.
XGames – 2001 – 2002
These projects included the Summer X-Games in Philadelphia in 2001, and the Winter X-Games in Apsen, Colorado in 2002. As part of Motorola / Liberty Media’s venture, Aerocast, we established a video streaming caching setup in the Comcast headquarters in Philadelphia, and in local headends to allow for a walled garden approach to streaming. The streaming videos were recorded by ESPN and then transcoded by an encoding operation in the Spectrum, the old Philadelphia 76ers’ arena, by a team of Aerocast staff that I managed. Each asset was then uploaded to an origin server, curated by Aerocast and ESPN staff, and then placed into the Aerocast front-end for presentation. At the time, desktop streaming was the only option for users. This Aerocast application became the base for the ESPN-360 product, and later ESPN products that engaged users on specific events.
ESPN (formerly ESPN3 and ESPN360)
ABC News – 1992-1993
At ABC News, I worked in the Paris bureau, which shared a space in the Tour CIT, close to the Tour Marparnasse in the south of Paris. ABC also shared facilities with its Japanese partner, NHK. This opportunity started as an internship, which involved researching interesting news stories from the news wires, AFP and AP and others, working on logistics with journalists and other staff in Europe, and training in on-air production and post-production work, including working on stories for World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, Nightline with Ted Koppel, and Morning News shows depending on the need. The internship extended into learning about satellite uplink, linear editing, and production practices. The main leads in the office included Pat Thompson, the ABC producer, and Jim Bittermann, the on-air reporter. Later work involved production assistant work on 20/20 stories with Barbara Walters, and research and translation work with Vivien Ducat and others for the 20th Century Project, an end of millennium project documenting events of the century in planning for the millennium. Interesting stories and projects included Somalia, Bosnia, Russia (Yeltsin), World War I – Verdun and unexploded ordnance, DUI driving in France, and others.
ABC News
ABC News – World News Tonight
The World Bank – 1994
In The World Bank there are different divisions that are specific to a region or a cause. I was fortunate to have worked in a few of these divisions during my time at the bank. The Rainforest Division handled affairs related to rainforest preservation. While focused on the Amazon, other regions in Congo, Borneo and other rainforests around the world were a part of the remit of this group. I helped prepare missions for staff who were working to deliver resources to communities in and near the Brazilian rainforest. In the Francophone Africa Division, I worked with French speaking countries in Africa. These countries included, Gabon, Benin, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central Africa Republic, and parts of Nigeria. These missions focused on basic infrastructure primarily, including water resource development, electricity, and other utilities. In the Mining Division, I worked with different countries in Asia primarily that needed assistance with missions and projects. These countries included Takijistan, Uzbekistan, Khazakhstan and other developing countries that were emerging from the Soviet block. In my roles, I acted as an assistant in preparing mission documents, assisting with travel arrangements, and translating documents into English from Spanish and French to aid in preparing bank documents, including mission proposals, and update documents.
World Bank – Rainforest Division
World Bank – Francophone Africa Division
World Bank – Western and Central Africa
