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CSVA: Opportunities Abound

In this issue...

Main Feature ................ 1

Events ........................... 2

News .............................. 3

Support ......................... 4

Customer Spotlight .... 5

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ISSUE 02: JULY 2012

At last month’s Collegiate Sports Video Association Conference, held at the

Hyatt Regency in Indianapolis, at-tendance was at an all-time high. Within attendance was a grow-ing number of female sports pro-fessionals breaking into the field.

Darby Dunnagan (University of Memphis), Chris Hooley (Univer-sity of Central Florida), Dory Kong (University of Hawaii) and Liz Lam-bert (Arkansas State University) are four current XOS Thunder us-ers who have achieved recognition in sports video through incredible work ethic, mentor assistance and consistent CSVA networking.

Hooley, in her seventh year at UCF and the most tenured of the group, recalls only one other woman in the profession when she first en-

01

tered the sports space profes-sionally.

“It was a bit of a challenge to find someone who was willing to give you a shot working in football, and then also talk a head football coach into giving you a shot,” she said. “I don’t think that it took too long before I was just another video person, and not seen dis-tinctly as a female in video. It was my reputation as skilled at my job that landed me my first head VC job at Southern Miss.”

Brad Helton (Marshall) hired both Dunnagan and Jen Holmes, XOS Field Support representative, af-ter they concluded roles as stu-dent assistants elsewhere.

“I never looked at it as male or female,” Helton said. “It was ‘can

02 XOS Digital

XOS EventsNAB: April 14-19

In April the XOS team attended the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Convention in Vegas to show off its Hurricane HD Replay system. XOS developed the product to address the growing need for a simplistic produc-tion system for live event production teams and student assistants. The re-sponse to Hurricane at NAB was phe-nomenal, and XOS appreciates those who came by the suite to check it out.

CSVA: May 14 - 18

XOS Digital continued on as the title sponsor of the Collegiate Sports Vid-eo Association (CSVA) Conference, which took place in Indianapolis in May. At this event XOS is always productive interacting with the video coordina-tors who use XOS Thunder, Remote Camera Systems, and XOS PlayerOn-Demand. CSVA had a jam-packed schedule that achieved a perfect me-dium between work and play – all cul-minating in a banquet and casino night in which members are acknowledged for their efforts during the year.

CSVS: June 6-7

The Sports Video Group’s Collegiate Sports Video Summit (CSVS) held in June in Atlanta brought together a large percentage of the video mar-ketplace. XOS demonstrated Hurri-cane HD Replay again, as well as its Digital Network solution that enables fans to interact with their favorite teams, conferences, bowls, or leagues through mediums such as SmartTV, mobile devices, websites and affiliate networks. XOS employees Hannah Chalker, on-air talent and producer of the SEC Digital Network, and Barry Loudis, vice president of digital sports networks, also served as ses-sion panelists.

NACDA: June 25-28

XOS continued its partnership with NACDA and built the mo-bile app that was used for all event information. In the booth, XOS demonstrated HD Replay and Re-view, Remote Camera Systems, Integrated Soltions, and its Digital Network Platform.

you do the job and have passion for it?’ It is nice to have a balance in the office, and women are usually better at detaching themselves from the emotion of the game.”

CSVA has not only provided an at-mosphere for experienced video professionals, but also for those looking to break into the field.

“The most interesting part at Stan-ford was learning about CSVA and finding out that there were so many VCs out there who were close and helped each other out,” Kong said. “I continue to attend CSVA to net-work and to see my VC friends.”

Aside from attending CSVA, Lam-bert provides the following advice: “Don’t be afraid to randomly call people and ask questions. People in this profession are really willing to help you out, but they don’t know that you need help unless you ask,” she said.

XOS Digital is pleased to seeing more women breaking into sports as the opportunities continue to grow for them. CSVA deserves rec-ognition for helping to provide a prime venue that men, women and emerging professionals can find val-ue in, as well.

- Written by Chris Taylor,Marketing Coordinator XOS Booth at CSVS

03

XOS Thunder

Facilities

July 2012

Industry Insider

Product News

This past quarter, Arizona State University, Bryant University, Colorado State University,

the University of Mary Hardin Bay-lor, Samford University and Tulane University added XOS Thunder Football to their programs. We look forward to strengthening these part-

Summer is in full swing, and so are preparations for the upcoming season. Many teams are evaluat-

ing methods for capturing practice video as well as standard-definition (SD) versus high-definition (HD) solu-tions. In general, XOS Digital has no-ticed a significant trend in HD transi-tions within football during the past year.

Teams that completed HD facility up-grades in the second quarter include the New England Patriots, and Memphis and Temple universities, among others. Memphis, in particular, enhanced its team meeting room with customized graph-ics and HD video integration. ESPN selected Memphis’ new team room for the broadcast of the 2012 Nike Football Training Camp held on June 1.

Temple University’s football practice fa-cility was also completed with the inte-gration of various spaces, including the team meeting room, coaches’ locker room and offices, the team lounge, train-ing room, equipment room, conference room and auditorium.

Lastly, we’d like to know how you cap-ture practice video, and would appre-ciate your assistance with this quick two-minute survey. Also, don’t forget to check out the support section in this newsletter for the XOS season readi-ness plan!

nerships for many years to come.

XOS Digital would also like to con-gratulate all the video coordinators who received awards at CSVA in-cluding XOS partners who were acknowledged as Video Coordina-tor of the Year for their respective

General News

XOS Digital recently an-nounced the acquisition of StratBridge LLC, a pri-

vately-held Boston-based software company that develops web offer-ings for complex, data-intensive products. The acquisition enables XOS to implement more robust

statistical and analytical data into its video-centric coaching technolo-gies, specific to player evaluation.

Through the acquisition, XOS un-veils the latest addition to its XOS Thunder coaching platform. The new XOS ThunderCloud Analytics

enables sports organizations to in-corporate video into a player analy-sis database, which formerly only supported numerical data. XOS ThunderCloud Analytics is available for a wide variety of sports including football. For more information, visit the XOS Newsroom.

conferences and sports:

Andy Wagner, Brad Helton, Brian Martin, Doug Aucoin, Hank Wil-son, Jamie Guy, Matthew Hammock, Mike Nobler and Tim Asher. Also, congratulations to Steve Pohl for winning the Motivational SAVVY.

Click here for more images of the Memphis Team Room

XOS Digital04

Support

The XOS “Season Readi-ness” initiative is designed to ensure that all of our

partner teams are fully prepared for the upcoming season, and that any system failures or concerns are resolved in a timely manner.

When the season starts, video staff and coaches can feel confident that workflow interruptions will be dramatically reduced. How great would it be if you could go an en-tire season without a single major workflow issue? It’d be wonderful! The XOS Season Readiness plan

The XOS Digital Support team will be installing the latest build of XOS Thunder

Football for the 2012 season. XOS Thunder Football 7.0 will have a few new features to improve high-definition capabilities and increase the efficiency of users’ workflows.

After a highly successful first season using HD video, XOS will expand its CODEC support in 2012. Last season XOS introduced support for 6Mb 1080i AVCHD video. This season XOS will also support 8Mb 720p MP4 as well as 6Mb 1080i with a 1920x1080 raster. The professional grade 1080i supported last season uses a 1440x1080 raster.

Secondly, XOS will incorporate a new database schema. As XOS Thunder databases grow and coaches look to travel with more and more informa-tion, XOS decided to invest engineer-ing time into optimizing its database structure for greater performance. Not only will the resulting database size be smaller, but users will see dramatic increases in several opera-tions throughout their workflows.

Full details will be included in the 7.0 release notes.

Lastly, a favorite feature of many coach-es is further evolving for maximum re-sults. XOS Thunder Football 7.0 will in-clude improved voice-over capabilities. XOS listened to partner feedback and has added several new features as a re-sult. A full user guide will be released with the 7.0 release notes.

XOS Thunder

Facilities

may not provide you with an issue-free season, but it will definitely re-duce the number of problems you’ll encounter.

XOS has pioneered emerging tech-nologies for nearly 15 years, and our experience has helped us iden-tify trends that have allowed us to preemptively strike against upcom-ing issues (such as hardware fail-ures).

You can use the XOS Season Readi-ness plan as a checklist to deter-mine if your equipment makes the

grade or if it needs to be adjusted and repaired. Each Season Readi-ness plan includes detailed tests – all easy to perform on your equip-ment – and a system to capture and track results.

It’s worth the time invested in re-viewing the checklists as it could prevent serious headaches during the season if left unchecked, oth-erwise.

Preview the XOS Season Readi-ness plan here: Season Readiness Plan

How do you capturepractice video?

05Industry Insider

July 2012

Customer SpotlightChicago Bears Football

Having partnered with XOS Digital since its establishment in 1999, the Chicago Bears

know XOS products, services and technologies extremely well. Due to this solid, long-term relationship, XOS selected the Bears as its Q3 Custom-er Spotlight. Read on to learn more about this team’s innovative approach.

The Bears currently incorporate XOS Thunder HD and XOS PlayAction Simulator within their facility. Accord-ing to the team’s director of video services, Dave Hendrickson, the Bears leverage these technological resourc-es to achieve greater efficiency with daily operational workflow. He also attributes much of the team’s recruit-ing and training successes to the tech-nologies they have on hand thanks to XOS Digital.

“XOS products have enabled our

coaches to fully analyze opponents, as well as our own players, to give us a competitive advantage,” he said.

When it comes to XOS Thunder HD, the Bears coaches have been “amazed” at the high-quality picture that the new platform delivers. The upgrade to high definition enables a smaller file size which increases the amount of storage and, therefore, the amount of footage Hendrickson can store online. The smaller file size also decreases the time needed for captur-ing, editing and distributing video.

In terms of XOS service and sup-port, Hendrickson refers to it as a “cut above the rest.” According to Hendrickson, the XOS support team has never failed to respond to his re-quests, regardless of the time of day. He notes that the team made a big im-pression on him a few times when his

XOS support reps literally jumped on a plane to resolve onsite issues imme-diately. Hendrickson has even ordered lunch for the XOS support team from across the country to show his appre-ciation. (Thanks again, Dave!)

“We work closely with XOS and view the relationship more as a partner-ship than as a simple vendor service,” he said. “XOS has been there for us through thick and thin. We value the opportunity to collaborate, and it’s nice to see XOS developers consis-tently using our feedback to enhance the products we use.”

XOS Digital has enjoyed working with the Chicago Bears for the last 13 years, and looks forward to further growing the relationship.

- Written by Chrysta Bayliss,Affiliate Network Coordinator

Facilities ContinuedMore images of the front and rear of the new Memphis Tigers team room.