IBC’s 2021 Accelerator Innovation Programme is Now Open for Project Challenges

Ground-breaking Media Innovation Programme Gets Set For 2021 Cycle Kick-start!

London(26 Jan 2021)

IBC, the International Broadcasting Convention, today called for submissions to its Accelerator Media Innovation Programme for 2021, inviting organisations large and small from across the media and entertainment technology ecosystem to participate in its ground-breaking series of fast-track, collaborative, open R&D projects that set out to solve common business and technology challenges across the content supply chain.

Projects are facilitated and supported by IBC through a 4-5 months’ development cycle, beginning with the call for challenges and culminating with physical and virtual showcases at the IBC event in Amsterdam (10-13th September 2021). The deadline for new challenge and project submissions is Friday 26th February 2021.

“The Accelerator programme is a managed framework for innovation, introduced by IBC in response to the myriad of disruptive challenges and opportunities of digital transformation, and the need to innovate at speed in today’s fast-changing, dynamic media & entertainment sector,” said Mark Smith, Innovation Lead and Advisor to IBC.

“The launch of the 2021 Accelerator cycle follows the tremendous success of last year’s programme. The industry faced massive challenges in 2020, but the programme still produced the successful, collaborative development of eight remarkable projects involving 62 media organisations, which culminated in virtual and physical demonstrations at IBC’s digital showcase event in September.”

Champions in the 2020 Accelerator cycle included AP, Al Jazeera, BBC, BT Sport, EBU, ITV, MovieLabs, Olympic Broadcasting Services, Reuters, RTÉ, Sky, SVT, TV2, ViacomCBS, Yle and many others. Projects ranged from 5G Remote Production and 5G Location Based VR, AI-enabled Live Content Moderation, AI-powered Video Shotlisting and an AI-moderated Live Music Talent Show, to CG Animation and VFX workflows and IP based distribution of TV as Objects.

Accelerator challenges are set by project ‘Champions’, typically broadcasters, studios and other content providers who are supported by Co-Champions along with teams of expert vendor and solution providers as project ‘Participants’. Project Challenges selected by IBC will go forward to pitch ideas at IBC’s virtual ‘Kickstart’ event in March 2021, further details of the event will be announced shortly.

“There is no doubt that the framework and collaborative nature of the Accelerator programme has delivered significant value to the many media organisations that have taken part in the projects to date,” added Mark Smith.

“It offers a trusted, agile and collaborative environment to learn, understand and solve problems with tangible experimentation. We aim to identify and kick-off another 8-10 key projects for 2021 and look forward to assessing some of the fascinating challenges and project concepts that come forward.”

For more on the IBC’s Accelerator Programme, including the full 2021 programme and process information and submission form, plus details and video highlights of the 2020 projects, please visit: show.ibc.org/call-for-innovation