Just before the new year I spoke with Dan about the highlights of 2008 and what to expect in 2009. While he's not a predictions guy he did offer his insights on the CDN market, streaming technologies and the new CDN Summit which I had previously spoke with Dan about here.
Larry Kless: What were some of the key events and milestones that shaped 2008 and the industry?
Dan Rayburn: You got to look at a lot of different things. First and foremost, the basic trend that the industry is growing even with the downturn in the economy and the lay offs and some companies not doing so well, we still have consumers consuming more content, more often, longer form, at higher quality, on more devices which all of that combined means that people are transcoding more videos, storing more video, delivering more video, managing more video and the more video that's on the internet the more online ad models exist. So I look at it being another successful year because the industry is still growing.
A lot of people said that it's not as good as it should have been or we had a downturn but that happens in any industry where you have a ton of vendors in the market with many doing the same thing it's hard for consumers to distinguish the differences.
LK: With the affect of the poor economy on the conference circuit, were there successes you saw in terms of the online video and streaming media conferences?
DR: I said a year ago on my blog, which some people didn't like it, that a lot of the video conferences that were out there wouldn't make it, and they didn't. We had four video conferences disappear in 2008 and while a lot of folks may think that's good for me being in the conference business, it's not good, I'd rather see more than just one or two because that's good for the whole industry which helps me in the long run. It wasn't because of the industry it's because those conferences weren't focused.
LK: How does it look for the Streaming Media conference looking forward to 2009?
DR: We had Streaming Media West grow by about 8% in terms of revenue and that was down from the growth we had the year before. Typically we probably see about 15% growth year after year. So it was down by a little but it's not surprising since the west coast show is smaller for us than the east. It's a different size show. We didn't see any impact last year. Whether or not we see an impact this year, I expect we'll see an impact, I definitely do, on the vendor side. Because some vendors have simply said, "We're going to be cutting our marketing budget in half next year and that's going to include trade shows."
So I do expect that we'll see a bit of a hit as a result. Fortunately because our entire business is not just dependent on trade show revenue, the magazine which will probably take a hit, the web site is still strong, the blog still makes money, the newsletters, the webinars, the case studies and white papers. Fortunately we have a very diversified revenue stream. But I would be surprised if our business does not grow as well in 2009 as it did in 2008.
Here's a partial list of confirmed companies speaking at the Streaming Media East show. Speaker details will go online next week. View the program.
