About Us
IpTVe Editor, Producer/DP
Gilbert B. Hammer, an Internet TV pioneer in his own right, has been working with streaming media since its inception and is a video Producer/DP for the past 20 years. Gilbert studied film and video production at The University of Bridgeport in addition to the Rockport Film & Television Workshops, where he studied under feature film directors such as, Rob Draper, ACS
Gilbert has worked as a free-lance Producer/DP for companies like, Avon, General Foods, IBM, Mercury Marine and Virtus creating VNR's and other product segments. In the mid nineties, Gilbert was part of the team that established streaming media at Morgan Stanley and broadcast content to internal and external websites on a daily basis. After leaving in 2000, Gilbert was charged with building the streaming media and video production department for Yahoo! in their New York City office, this as part of their Broadcast.com division. Among his accomplishments while at Yahoo!
- Worked with Yahoo! FinanceVision, the first ITV platform created which fed real-time video content about the financial markets from both New York City Stock exchanges each day.
- Was Co-Creator of the Giants of Advertising series which features the best known names in the advertising world.
- Implemented use of Vyvx TV-1 Fiber circuits [MPEG-2, 3Mbps] to receive feeds from client studios and remote locations worldwide. Later, added field based laptop capture using Firewire - WM Encoder for faster cycle time to web
I am passionate about new techniques for story telling and shared experiences with people, especially making those serendipitous connections that otherwise would never have occurred except for the use of a Blog, Facebook, etc.., you get the idea.
Gilbert is currently the Production Manager at a streaming media company that services the financial vertical.
Producer/Director/Interviewer
Mr. Smith began his career in London working in the theater as an actor, writer and director. Following on from his theater work, Adrian developed projects for the BBC and became more involved with documentary filmmaking (including segments for the BBCs acclaimed Panorama series).
Mr. Smith moved to the USA in 1988 and formed Tricycle Productions, a team of like-minded writers, directors and production staff producing work on a variety of subjects including: environmental issues, indigenous rights, healthcare and the global impact of technology. Projects included work for the BBC, the Smithsonian, PBS, the United Nations and numerous non-profits and NGOs.
During this time Mr. Smith continued his love of dramatic projects and directed a series of short films that played on the international film festival circuit winning awards at the London, Chicago and Venice film festivals.
In 2000 Mr. Smith joined Yahoo! Inc. to champion the use of video in distance-learning modules and to create unique training and learning products. Mr. Smith continued his career at Yahoo! by becoming Senior Producer of Media Production for the Yahoo! marketing department where he produces work for Yahoo! advertising and marketing campaigns. Projects also include a series of Yahoo! funded documentaries on the consumer and social impact of the internet and related technologies.
Contributor
Tony's passion is to continue to assist enabling the viral consumption, and pervasiveness of live and on demand media over IP enabled networks. Tony began his career as an audio engineer for live concert events, and local clubs in 1988, and worked with a multitude of media and entertainment acts, and large community events.
In 1994, he took a pioneering role at Real Networks which grew into consulting and sales engineering roles before managing corporate presentations for investor relations and executive speaking engagements. After Real Networks, Tony took a business development role at Infolibria, in 2000 enabling and maintaining partnerships, and impacting technology roadmap initiatives for one of the first carrier class content delivery platforms for digital media.
Tony accepted a pioneering sales role at Accordent in 2003, and was instrumental in making Accordent visible within the Streaming Media community; and most recently spearhead Business Development at ViewCast Corporation during a major growth phase of the company bolstering OEM, and volume sales within the digital capture vertical between 2005 and 2008.
Since the CDN marketing is emerging, it's no surprise that Tony is now an Account Director at Level3 Communications, one of the largest telecommunications, and Internet Backbone companies in the world.
Specialties: Social Media concepts and production, Digital Media encoding and production, Streaming Video delivery, Web Service architecture and integration, Audio Production, Marketing and Communications, Market Research, Product Research, Sales Operations, Partner and Channel Management.
Writer/Interviewer
Levi Shapiro oversees Los Angeles operations for Telephia, the dominant player in mobile-related market research. In this role, he has created partnerships and products for leading movie studios, television networks, game publishers and record labels. He has also helped develop innovative new products including the industry's first-ever Mobile Television Diary.
Previously, Mr. Shapiro was Founder and Chief Executive Officer of two mobile video companies, Two Minute Television and Snack Mobile. Two Minute Television created short-form TV series with episodes averaging 4 million TV viewers, carriage on 110 major websites and distribution on wireless carriers in North America, Asia and Europe. Snack Mobile is a software company enabling a completely new category of mobile media - combining a hybrid of casual mobile gaming and live-action video.
Prior to that, Mr. Shapiro helped re-launch a multi-million dollar line of online digital services across Europe for IBM, growing revenue by over 20% in a previously flat segment. Mr. Shapiro is completely fluent in Japanese and Italian and spent the early part of his career in Tokyo and Beijing, working for Toyota Motor Corporation. He is a frequent speaker at industry conferences including NAB, CTIA, IIR, IQPC, Digital Hollywood, iHollywood, Terrapin, MoMeMo. Levi Shapiro is also Assistant Editor of Video Age International, where he covers the mobile and new media platforms. He graduate of Tulane University and received an MA from Cornell and MBA from MIT.
