Setting up ERTMediaLab: First in-house presentation

On the 25th of October, an in-house presentation was held to introduce ERT’s Sandbox “ERTMediaLab” to the management team of the company. The presentation was carried out by Mike Nugent (member of the EBU Technical Committee) and Chrysanthi Chountala (EBU Technical Liaison Officer to ERT). The concept of the project, the roadmap and the action plan were presented and discussed in order to communicate and share the values and goals of this initiative.

There was positive feedback from all participants, particularly from the corporate social responsibility department which will actively participate in the project with marketing and promotional actions.

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There it is! Swedish Radio kicks off their local Sandbox.

The first milestone for the Swedish Radio Sandbox

With some delay I land in beautiful Stockholm.

In the evening I present at the first Sandbox event of the Swedish Radio Sandbox. This takes place in the Culture House in the middle of the city. Linda and Malin, project managers from the local Sandbox, have furnished the room very cozily with seats, music, donuts and other delicacies. The atmosphere is right immediately.

Linda and Malin also give the word to Signal Signal, one of their first two startup collaborations. It is great to see these ladies drive and observe how fast their Sandbox is evolving. In addition to the two ongoing projects, several other startups are also present, so everything is there to make this fantastic start a big success story. Those very welcome extra people will certainly also grow with the upcoming events.

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Learnings about France Télévisions’s first Startup Accelerator

The Innovation division and the MediaLab (the innovation structure for the News department) designed and implemented an internal start-up accelerator, with the help of Cap Digital and in partnership with the start-up Newsbridge.

After a selection panel, Newsbridge was selected to follow this 4-month acceleration program including :

  • being hosted within the editorial team from 23rd October 2017 ;
  • a « sponsorship» by a manager from the News department ;
  • the co-construction of a solution for indexing the shootings thanks to artificial intelligence, and a semantic search engine ;
  • an experimentation phase ;
  • supporting the start-up in its growth;
  • co-financing the project to reward the startup’s commitment.

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Karel De Bondt on Intrapreneurship

In this interview we talk to Karel De Bondt, an expert on intrapreneurship at VRT Sandbox

Hi Karel, you are an expert on intrapreneurship at VRT Sandbox. When and how did you take on that role?

I’ve been working at VRT Sandbox pretty much since the beginning. I started with running the startup cases themselves. Afterwards, I began working on an intrapreneurshiptrack, and a track on innovative video workflows.

What does intrapreneurship mean exactly?

At VRT Sandbox, we offer the same support to startups as to internal inventors. These intrapreneursare people with creative ideas, that program software, but also hardware. We want to offer them the same platform as the external companies. This means we will set up a collaboration with production teams and help them grow. We will offer training for pitching, sales and business analysis, as well as business development and so much more

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Gregg Young on VR and AR

In this interview we talk to Gregg Young, VR and AR expert at VRT Sandbox. Gregg explains the difference between AR and VR, and reflects on the trends and achievements in both fields.

 

Introduction to AR and VR

Hello, Gregg! You are a VR/AR expert at VRT Sandbox. Since when and how did you get that role in VRT Sandbox?

I started working at VRT in the Immersia TV project, this is a European project under the Horizon 2020 fund. This 2-year project is all about 360-video, multicam 360-video and sending the 360 footage to different devices. Together with other colleagues at VRT we are representing this technology on the news floor and with other VRT brands. This is how I slowly became member of VRT Sandbox. Since then we started to do a lot of VR and AR projects at VRT Sandbox as well.

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From the ORF to Radiodays Europe: innovation in Vienna

Blogpost by Sarah Geeroms

I leave well in time to make it to Österreichischer Rundfunk (ORF) at 9:00AM. The Austrian public broadcaster is located outside the city center, but luckily, public transport in Vienna is well-organized. My contact person Karl, who is a member of the Technical Direction department, welcomes me upon my arrival. We meet at the online & TV center, that has about 1900 employees (out of almost 4000 in total). The radio station, where Karl was working for 20 years, is located in the city center. Just like VRT, ORF is going through an architectural transformation. Within a few years, all of ORF services will be grouped on the same location. TV and Radio will then be subdivided per program.

ORF has two large TV channels and two interest channels (culture and sports). They do not have a children’s channel, as they find almost all of their content in Germany.

Within their own country, there’s almost no competition: ORF has a turnover of 1 billion €, that’s huge!

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Media Honeypot and YLE introduce us to the cold north

Blogpost by Sarah Geeroms

A visit to Media Honeypot (http://mediahoneypot.com/ ) and YLE, the public broadcaster, brought me to Helsinki.

Media Honeypot started on Wednesday with an opening night. Colleague Judy from BBC was there too and that made the entrance a little easier. I spoke with many people, including the EBU technical committee who went to Helsiki to attend Media Honeypot and for their meeting Friday at YLE. They all turned out to be friendly, interesting people from across Europe. I could not resist and took the opportunity to ask if I could pitch my project to their group that Friday. Check! It was late when we arrived at the hotel again and I could start preparing this unexpected presentation.

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This was The Sandbox Hub – Cycle 1

Blogpost by Sarah Geeroms

I am thrilled! Today, Thursday February 8th our Sandbox Hub officially starts. If you know that many broadcasters are already working on media innovation, but that their expertise and learnings are not systematically shared, then you will understand why the creation of our Sandbox Hub is a milestone. In doing so, we are building a European network on media innovation, sharing our (innovative) knowledge and giving local startups a stepping stone to scale faster and more efficiently in Europe.
France TV, Swedish Radio and BBC are the first to join our network. We have therefore invited them to a two-day immersion at VRT Sandbox.

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France Televisions, Swedish Radio and BBC first to join European Media Start-up Network: The SANDBOX HUB

On the 8th and 9th of February, broadcasters France Télévisions, Swedish Radio and BBC are visiting the Belgian broadcaster VRT for the kickoff of The Sandbox Hub, part of the European MediaRoad project, which is led by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU).

The Sandbox Hub aims to build a European network of innovation incubators. Inspired by the VRT Sandbox model of Belgian broadcaster VRT, these broadcasters will either establish their own incubator or they will exchange experiences and expertise with the network.

THE SANDBOX HUB – A EUROPEAN NETWORK FOR STARTUPS IN MEDIA

The Sandbox Hub, led by VRT Sandbox, aims to create a European network of media innovation incubators through which groundbreaking ideas can be tested and scaled. These incubators,

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