Dr Silvia Pfeiffer
I am Silvia Pfeiffer and the CEO of Australian start-up Vquence providing services in social video metrics. I am also the vice-president of SLUG (Sydney Linux Users Group) and the president of the Annodex Association, a non-profit organisation created around the open source technology Annodex. I came to Australia in 1999 as a just-graduated PhD student in digital media. I joined the CSIRO to work on automated audio-visual content analysis algorithms for video. Within a year, I was introduced to Linux and open source software by colleagues at CSIRO, in particular Conrad Parker, the then SLUG president. We created the idea of a World Wide Web based solely on video and called it Annodex. For such a project to succeed, it was absolutely necessary to have it as open standards and in-valuable to provide reference implementation as open source software. The W3C is now evaluating the technology as part of its activities to standardise new video web technologies. Over the last 8 years I have been amazed at the quality and high calibre of the Australian open source community, in particular in media. I am also very proud that we run an important developer workshop in open media software called FOMS annually here in Australia, which attracts other key developer from international places and sponsorship from world-renowned organisations.