Mio Babic is the President and CEO of iStreamPlanet, the company he founded in 2000 that is an innovator of digital media strategy, managed webcasting services, and Rich Internet Applications. He has brought iStreamPlanet to the forefront of its industry, leading his team in the management and deployment of over 1,000 large live events viewed online by millions. Mr. Babic also spearheaded the companys successful partnership with Smart City to provide turnkey webcast services and a full suite of online media applications at over 60 of the largest convention centers and event facilities in the United States.
With over a decade of experience, Mr. Babic is recognized as one of the pioneers in the business of streaming media. He directed the iStreamPlanet team in the implementation of the worlds first live pay-per-view webcast event using digital rights management technology, the 2003 World Series of Poker, and also oversaw iStreamPlanets webcast of the first pay-per-view speech from a convention center, at the 2005 National Association of Broadcasters trade show. Under his leadership, the iStreamPlanet team has managed and deployed all large live webcasts for AT&T blue room, including the popular music festivals Austin City Limits, Bonnaroo, Coachella and Lollapalooza, as well as the first successful implementation in Microsoft Silverlight of multiple, simultaneous, user-controlled mosaic live video feeds for the 2008 Masters Golf Tournament. Mr. Babic recently organized the iStreamPlanet team in consulting on the development and deployment of all live and on-demand content for the 2008 Olympics, including performance, backup, failover and scalability scenarios for Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) and back and failover systems for content ingress from Beijing.
A native of the former Yugoslavia, Mr. Babic holds degrees in finance and economics from Montana State University. Prior to founding iStreamPlanet, he played professional basketball in Japan and China. His inspiration for iStreamPlanet came during a visit to Las Vegas at the end of his basketball career, when an acquaintance asked him to create a system for broadcasting events from The Little White Wedding Chapel via the Internet.
As an acknowledged expert in his field, Mr. Babic speaks frequently at high profile industry events. He has been a featured speaker at National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), IP Media Expo and at such Microsoft events as World Partners Conference (WPC) and Microsoft Global Experience (MGX), discussing new content strategies and iStreamPlanets use of Microsoft Silverlight.
