An unofficial panel of judges convened at Streaming Media West in San Jose to give an award that has often been overlooked and is certainly long overdue – Miss Streaming Media West 2009.
We hope this category eventually gets included in the main Streaming Media viewer choice awards, kind of like how fringe Olympic events, such as snowboarding, finally make it mainstream.
We could have a prom king and queen.
The award goes to the woman we feel was probably hit on the most by the middle aged men who make up the bulk of the Streaming Media attendance and, more importantly, held her own. There were many unofficial nominees this year for this unofficial award. But alas, there can only be one winner.
And one woman stood out for her poise when confronted by the hoards of male Streaming Media conference goers. That woman is Meghan, Miss Streaming Media West 2009.
At a conference where every speaker was an industry insider talking to other professionals in the industry about how great our industry is, I talked to Meghan as a viewer, watcher and consumer of all the media we’re producing and all the distribution platforms we’re building so that people like her can consume more content across more devices for more time and watch more ads and pay for more views.
Meghan provided a sanity check to all the euphoria. Does she watch TV? A bit. Does she watch online video? Not really. Does she watch video on her smart phone? Not really. Does she know what Hulu is? Sort of. Boxee? No. MobiTV? Not really. FOIS? “Is that a science term”. Fancast? No. Roku? “Is that a pop star?”. FLO TV? No.
So listen up industry. We have a long way to go. We better do a little less naval gazing and a little more listening to our audience.
