September 2nd, 2010, by Bastian in About BeBanjo, BeBanjo News and Announcements
Last year BeBanjo won a Streaming Media award in the IPTV category for its media workflow product Sequence.
We’re well on our way to create the best video-on-demand back office in the world right now! With our current customers our products are now used to put out VOD and Catch-up services to a wide range of platforms in Europe such as: IPTV, Over the Top, XBOX360, PS3, DTT, Internet-TV, Cable, mobile, etc.
Using the API’s we’re now integrating our products with a variety of systems for playout, asset management, rights management, MAM/DAM and media workflow. More info here: http://wiki.github.com/bebanjo/almodovar/
This year we’ve been been nominated again for StreamingMedia’s annual Readers Choice awards, and we need your help to win!
Movida
We’re especially keen to make people aware of our new product called Movida. Movida is the best solution in the market for rights management, metadata and scheduling across multiple on-demand services and platforms. Specifically it’s great and very efficient at so called catch-up scheduling.
Voting
Now on to the logistics of voting. It only takes 2 minutes of your time. There are three steps:
1. Go to: http://www.streamingmediaglobal.com/ReadersChoice
2. Fill in your name and email address
3. Vote for us. We’re nominated in the following two categories, and you can vote for us in each:
- Server Hardware/Software: Sequence
- TV over IP Solution: Movida
You don’t have to vote for any of the other categories unless you want to.
Your vote really helps us to get the message out that BeBanjo creates the best Video-On-Demand back office in the world! With your help we can win again this year.
Thank you!
May 25th, 2010, by Jorge in About BeBanjo
Many months ago we started looking for a designer.
It couldn’t be just any designer – it had to be someone with the potential to take BeBanjo to the next level through Design, in particular through our products, but in general through applying design principles to anything we do, whether it is for our customers, for our friends or for ourselves. Last but not least, it would have to be someone with the design chops to live up to and continue the amazing work that our friends at Vostok have done with Sequence and our website and logos.
After many moons searching and discarding, many moons of scratching our foreheads wondering if we would ever find THE ONE, if he really did exist or if the oracle was pulling our leg when she said that he would be able to bend reality… we are incredibly pleased to announce that Alejandro Muñoz (a.k.a. @bomberstudios) has joined BeBanjo.
We knew Ale well already; him and us had worked together already as The Catacrockers for the 2009 Rails Rumble making it to the 12th place in 48 hours with our Diversion App, a git powered text editing and collaborating tool. The amazing thing is that every time we daydreamed about who would be great for BeBanjo, Ale was there at the top of our very short list. We think we are incredibly fortunate, and we can’t wait to see what we are able to produce in the coming weeks and months.
Ale comes from The Cocktail, easily the leading web design and development boutique in Spain. He is also well known in the community through his Sofá Naranja blog, and through Orange Commands, an open repository of custom made Adobe Fireworks scripts, a tribute to his wizard-level skills with Fireworks.
Welcome to the team, Ale.
Look at him go! He is so good, he doesn't need to look at the screen...
May 13th, 2010, by Bastian in About BeBanjo, BeBanjo News and Announcements, Video On Demand
There’s not a lot of time today to write a proper update. However, in spite of IBC, MIPCOM and MipTV being much larger shows then The Cable Show, we don’t have Hulk Hogan and Ron Jeremy plugging our broadcasters offerings in Europe. More tomorrow….
May 12th, 2010, by Bastian in About BeBanjo, Media, Video On Demand
Day 1 at the Cable Show. Highlights and impressions:
- Started of at Kinko’s to get business cards with our new logo, and handouts for Movida printed.
- The Cable Show is big, but it’s a lot smaller then IBC in Amsterdam. I’d say a third of the size. Reason is probably that The Cable Show just caters to the US market, and IBC is international.
- Had a couple of interviews with industry publications. Let’s hope it will lead to some press for BeBanjo.
- Meetings with a couple of Hollywood studios, a couple of the big US TV Networks, Hotel VOD and a well known adult entertainment company.
- Invitation to speak about VOD at the annual summit for all affiliates of a major US TV network is in the bag!
- The BeBanjo launch cocktail was a cosy and intimate affair with a wonderful view as you can see from the pictures.
- Ran into several old friends and familiar faces.
Enjoy the pictures! More tomorrow.
-Bastian
September 29th, 2008, by Bastian in About BeBanjo
Many people have asked where we got the name BeBanjo from.
Banjo = Bastian and Jorge, the two founders of the company.
We put Be in front of it because banjo.com was already taken by the world’s “no1 bluegrass superstore”……
So…… there you go!
-Bastian
September 25th, 2008, by Bastian in About BeBanjo, Software Development
BeBanjo at the bleeding edge of productivity innovation
So, Jorge convinced me of the merits of pair-programming a while back. In short this basically involves two programmers/engineers working off the same computer simultaneously.
At BeBanjo we always like to be at the very forefront of innovation. Today standup-trio-programming was invented here. A wiki will be made available once the scientists have figured out whether this makes sense or not……
September 24th, 2008, by Bastian in About BeBanjo
First Two Months: What we spent time on
When we started BeBanjo back in April, we had a rough idea of what we were going to do.
Other then typical startup logistics (bank account, lawyer, notary, office etc.) the first couple of months for us were really about deciding what we were going to build, in which order and how we going to build it.
We looked at the technological alternatives for us to build our software on. (We went with Ruby on Rails)
We were very lucky in the sense that we had a couple of telco’s doing IPTV, and some friends from within the TV industry, who made themselves and their teams available to us, so we could bounce our ideas around. This was very helpful, since it really enabled us to go very quickly from the “wide” vision we had when we started the company, into a much more detailed understanding of what our customers real problems were, before starting to build the software.
So, at the end of this period we had a pretty good idea of what we were going to do and how we were going to do it.
We basically fine-tuned our vision, and laid the foundations for its execution.
This was for us the moment to start hiring, which I’ll deal with in a separate post.
First Two Months: What we didn’t spend time on
We didn’t really spent a lot of time (yet) on getting our website in order, or getting a corporate identity or anything like that. All we did in terms of corporate identity was to order some business cards from an online printshop. At this time we didn’t feel it was important, since we didn’t have anything to sell to a wider audience yet. Most of our initial prospects are actually people either Jorge or I have dealt with in the past.
The key focus for us was to get our story right (see previous section) and get the first client.
Message to startups: Without a customer you don’t exist.
September 23rd, 2008, by Bastian in About BeBanjo, BeBanjo News and Announcements
Jorge, my partner in BeBanjo and I left paid employment almost 7 months ago, and we’ve been working on getting a team together and create software that handles the “management layer” of television business.
When I refer to the “management layer”, I actually mean that we create software that helps to run television business better, more efficient, and ultimately helps our customers to serve their customers better.
Starting today, we’ll share some of our adventures in getting our business up and running with you, and we’ll also look at the media business in general.
I hope you’ll like it, there will be loads more to come.
-Bastian
