IABM Announces Winners Of 2022 BaM Awards

IABM has announced the winners of the 2022 BaM Awards® and the Annual IABM Awards at its gala Awards dinner held in London on 1 December 2022.

The Awards dinner followed IABM's highly successful BaM Live™ London event earlier in the day.

The BaM Award® winners are chosen from nine individual categories described by the BaM Content Chain®, as well as a tenth category recognizing an outstanding project or collaboration. The judging was carried out by a panel of more than 40 independent, expert judges, each with specialist expertise in one or more of the awards categories.

The Annual Award winners were chosen from entries across a total of five categories: Andrew Jones Young Person of the Year; Technology Leader of the Year; Broadcast/Media Company of the Year; Impact Award; and Environmental Sustainability.

The BaM Awards® winners are listed below by category, with abridged judges’ comments appended:

Create
Mo-Sys Engineering - Mo-Sys bMR: a flexible route to LED content studios
“Perfect to see Virtual and MR sets finding their way into the newsroom; this technology is emblematic of the power of AR, XR, and the mixed reality environment that will be at the center of nearly every broadcast show within five years; a nice blend of cinema-style virtual production with live multi-camera techniques.”

Produce
Hawk-Eye Innovations (a Sony Group company) – World-first semi-automatic offside technology
“Brings the football offside rule to life for fans and adds accuracy to VAR and refereeing; this is a brilliant and very practical tool for the biggest global sport. Offside is often the big debate - and making this even better to judge makes the sport fairer.”

Manage
Tedial – smartWork NoCode media integration platform
“This company has a very good approach to making flexible MAM software - bridging different software platforms. The trick here is to deliver the tools - with quality - and make it REALLY work (not only on paper); user-friendly Infrastructure as Code - testable and secure. A really interesting concept, democratizing the workflow configuration for a supply chain, and addressing ‘non value add’ activities like common vendor integrations that otherwise have to be built bespoke each time.”

Publish
Ateme – Unlocking the potential of 5G for high-quality, low-latency streaming to any device
“Innovative development to maximize the potential of 5G; this looks like quite a cutting-edge, innovative solution to effective live video delivery over IP, bridging the capabilities of 5G with the quality needs of video producers. Leveraging an 'on-trend' technology to truly enhance customer-audience offering. This product helps the OTA broadcaster broaden their distribution and therefore their potential audience.”

Monetize
Adthos – Adthos Creative Studio
“The ability to insert audio ads in real time based on live information advances the ability to target advertising. An excellent example of the practical use of AI technology. Great solution for targeted audio advertising.”

Consume
Accedo – Tata Play Binge Mobile App
“A single app that consolidates OTT services is the kind of thing consumers are clamoring for. The ability to share recommendations and aggregate content across platforms is interesting, particularly in a crowded market. Inclusion of live sports is innovative, and the recommendation engine is a plus;
Great solution addressing a real consumer challenge like navigating a crowded app ecosystem.”

Connect
Vislink – Vislink 5G 4Live Event Production Solution
“Brings 5G use to life for remote productions. 5G NPNs (Non-Public Networks) will be as common in future OB locations as ISDN has been in the past. A great product ready for the next-generation contribution ecosystem. Providing this level of control over the signal path will enhance content delivery.”

Store
Spectra Logic – Spectra Vail Distributed Multi-Cloud Data Management Software
“Innovative system to manage content in today’s hybrid environments. Interesting method of managing across local and cloud-based assets. Allowing customer-based policy management is a big plus because it enables cost-effective asset management that can be optimized to client workflows. Automized movement of assets is also a plus.”

Support
Telestream - ARGUS
“One can't fix problems if one doesn't know where they are; the ability to provide broadband network performance analytics is critical to high integrity content delivery. This product provides an integrated (and aggregated) monitoring solution.”

Project, collaboration or event
University of Texas at Austin – Perceptual picture quality algorithms and databases for streaming and social media
“Right quality to each and everyone. Less waste in process and right quality; great! This project shows research at its deepest; critical for today's streaming environment.”


The IABM Annual Awards winners are listed below with relevant nomination or judges’ quotes included:

Impact Award
The Impact Award celebrates a MediaTech company and/or its products or services that have made a significant impact for the greater good in a niche, local or global community.

Ross Video
Ever since its inception Ross Video has always given back to its community, encouraging talent, driving employment and being a ‘good citizen’ in the region where it’s based. The business has grown impressively year on year for many years and continues to do so. Much of this is down to the leadership and the focus on the culture and people in the business. It is not surprising therefore that when a global catastrophe took place in the form of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Ross Video and its leadership were quick to respond and galvanised its staff, customers and the wider industry into action.

Ross talked with IABM to find a visible place for concerned companies in the broadcast and media industry to show what they were doing to help Ukraine. The result was the well-supported ‘We stand with Ukraine’ page on the IABM website, which highlighted organizations which had stopped shipping to or supporting the Russian propaganda machine, as well as sending humanitarian aid in support of Ukraine.

Within a week of the invasion, Ross itself stopped selling to or supporting the Russian media and donated $100,000 to the Red Cross specifically for the aid of Ukrainians in a war zone, as well promoting financial paths where others could support Ukrainians. Ross has also highlighted the human cost of the war on the ground.

In addition to the public initiatives, Ross has also quietly helped individual displaced Ukrainian refugees, hiring three individuals into the Ross team in Canada. Most recently, Ross has co-signed the first-year lease of an apartment for a Ukrainian family that is arriving in Canada in mid-December.

In summary, Ross Video has demonstrably made a ‘significant impact for the greater good’ and are worthy recipients of the Impact Award.

Technology Leader of the Year
This award recognizes a person who is at the forefront of disruption and innovation within the broadcast and media industry who, through inspired leadership, has helped to deliver ground-breaking technology and business benefits. The 2022 winner is:

Chris Clarke – CEO and Co-founder, Cerberus Tech
Chris Clarke founded Cerberus Tech to exploit breakthrough technologies in IP, software encoding, and cloud processing to enhance the delivery of live content. Chris is responsible for the overall steerage of the company, as well as conducting business development activities and managing key strategic accounts.

Chris is particularly passionate about driving change and progress in an industry which is often holding itself back by reliance on traditional, baked-in workflows and processes. Chris’ determination and belief in Cerberus Tech’s solutions has secured many high-profile customers for the company. Chris has built the organisation to be innovative, providing revolutionary video delivery methods for the broadcast industry. He leads by example, encouraging all team members to get involved with sharing ideas to help the business evolve.

Chris is passionate and dedicated and takes pride in sharing his IP expertise with the wider industry. Chris regularly takes part in industry panels and networking events to share his insights and build his knowledge.

Broadcast/Media Company of the Year – supported by IBC
This award recognizes and rewards broadcasters or media companies that have demonstrated throughout the year that they are at the forefront of creating and distributing ground-breaking content through innovation across the content chain. The 2022 winner is:

Blackbird
The Blackbird cloud-native editing and publishing platform is spearheading the revolution in remote production and the flexibility to create video content by anyone, anywhere, anytime. The platform was conceived around the concepts of freedom from location, freedom from proprietary systems and hardware, and the resilience to continue to operate with very little resource.

The Blackbird toolset is accessed through a browser on any laptop with an internet connection from just 2Mb/s. Research has evidenced that Blackbird generates up to 91% less carbon and is 35% cheaper to run than cloud-based and on-premise editing systems, as well as being up to four times faster for creating and distributing content.

Blackbird grew revenues by 78% in H1 2022, with overseas sales growing by 314% over the past 3 years.

Blackbird recognises the urgent focus on the societal impact of businesses. Blackbird believes that the foundation for effective ESG (Environmental, Social & Governance) management is robust and transparent governance and integration of these factors into the way it does business.

Andrew Jones Young Person of the Year – supported by IBC
This award is named in honor of IABM friend and colleague Andrew Jones who we sadly lost in 2019. Andrew was IABM's Head of Training and played a vital part in the development of our educational initiatives and fostering the next generation of talented people for our industry. The award recognizes someone new to the industry (under 25 years old) for their hard work, diligence and potential. The 2022 winner is:

Megan McEwen – Hardware Developer, Ross Video
Megan McEwen focuses on research and development, customer support, and manufacturing support for robotic camera systems under the Camera Motion Systems portfolio at Ross Video. Megan has been with Ross full-time since June 2020, having completed a co-op term with Ross in 2019 while at Carleton University, from which she graduated in 2020 with a degree in Electrical Engineering.

Megan’s passion for engineering started at an early age. In high school, she joined the robotics team and helped build her first robot. She was part of the FIRST Robotics program and competed at the robotics world championships.

As well as developing robotic camera systems, Megan also assists with solving issues in the development process, jumping in and testing alternatives to ensure that Ross can deliver products to meet customer commitments. Recently, she was chosen to be the lead hardware designer on an upcoming robotics product.

Megan has a long list of volunteer experience related to engineering, including advocating for women in STEM, assisting with youth outreach programs, leading engineering workshops, mentoring, guest speaking, and more. All these efforts truly exemplify Megan’s passion, dedication, and selflessness, and her commitment to her field, industry, and community.

Environmental Sustainability
Like very industry, broadcast and media is accountable for its effects on our beautiful but fragile planet. But as companies increasingly label themselves “eco-friendly,” it can be tricky to identify the companies that are truly eco-friendly and those that are merely jumping on the environmental bandwagon for “green marketing.” This award recognizes companies that have made real strides in reducing their carbon footprint. The 2022 winner is:

EVS
Driven by the vision “sustainability is not what we should do, sustainability is what we need to be”, EVS is focused on delivering true positive impact for environmental and social concerns.

EVS’s 23,000m2 headquarters in Liège, Belgium incorporates many energy-saving initiatives, including adiabatic cooling, low-energy lighting, thermally activated systems, heat recovery and external blinds. The company has also installed 2,000+ solar panels which contribute 10-12% of the company’s annual energy consumption. EVS has also installed solar-powered EV charging stations and aims to have its entire vehicle fleet electric by 2026.

EVS introduced an ESG programme in 2021 and produced its first sustainability report in 2022, and in September received a Silver medal from Ecovadis, the world’s largest provider of sustainability ratings, placing the company in the 88th percentile.

EVS is also committed to further reduce the environmental footprint of its product offerings through increased development of cloud-defined solutions supporting remote workflows and virtualization as well as optimized power consumption of sustainable hardware.

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