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MediaLab is hosting a party on the opening night of IBC2026. Just drinks and the people who run media operations across broadcast, production, sport, and brand teams. Hans de Heus, Pete Lalonde, and the team will be there. Capacity is limited. Registration required: https://lnkd.in/e_Va7-49 See you on Friday, September 11!

You have Fox and Roku. Paramount and Warner. The broadcast side of this industry is consolidating fast, and the software side will follow. Play it forward and you can imagine a market with a handful of mega media consortiums. At that point they dictate the terms. These are the two or three flavors you can pick from, and that is it. What does that mean if you build software for this industry? I used to think the goal was to be indispensable. I have changed my mind. Indispensable makes you a target. Flexible makes you attractive. The vendors that survive consolidation are not the ones that lock the most customers in. They are the ones that fit into whatever stack the acquirer and the acquired bring to the table, without forcing anyone to rip and replace. That is the position we are building from. Cloud-agnostic, stack-agnostic, part of the equation rather than a different equation altogether.

The countdown has started. I'm about to switch off for a well deserved summer holiday, but I already know what will be waiting when I'm back. IBC Amsterdam. For us, it's more than just another industry event. It's our home game. Four days of catching up with clients, meeting new people, discussing where our industry is heading, and seeing which innovations are actually solving problems instead of creating new ones. Over the past year we've welcomed new customers, expanded further into sports and live events, and continued building MediaLab together with broadcasters, production companies, brands and rights holders. IBC is always the perfect moment to share those stories and hear yours. And of course, Friday means our annual TGIF After Party. Without a doubt my favourite networking moment of the week. Great conversations, familiar faces, new introductions, and a chance to end a busy day with the people who make this industry such an enjoyable place to work. If you're coming to Amsterdam, let's find some time to catch up. Whether you're looking at improving your media workflows, curious about what we've been building, or simply fancy a good conversation over a drink, I'd love to meet. And perhaps you can spot these nice AF1's in the wild. First, holiday. Then... IBC.

The pitch I hear most from software vendors is some version of "one platform for everything." I have never seen it work in this industry. Broadcasters and media teams already run twenty to thirty tools. It doesn't mean they particularly enjoy tool sprawl, it's just that no single vendor is best at every part of the workflow. The editor has an opinion. The archive team has a different one. The transfer setup was chosen for a reason. All of it took years to settle. Walking in and saying "replace all of this with us" feels kinda like a fantasy pretending to be a strategy. Our approach at IBC this year is the opposite. We are showing up with the partners we integrate with, not against them. Specialist tools for each part of the workflow, one platform holding it together, and nobody being asked to give up something they picked for a reason. The winning position in this industry is being the connective tissue between specialists, not the walled garden that replaces them.

Most SaaS platforms limit you. Seat limits. File size limits. Upload limits. Storage caps. You hit a ceiling, and suddenly you're negotiating a new contract just to do your job. MediaLab removes those limits. No limits on contributors, viewers, or uploads. No file size restrictions. No upload throttling. You move what you need to move, at the speed you need to move it, without asking permission. MediaOps teams don't get to pause for pricing conversations. They keep the media moving. That's the point, and that's what we built for. #NOCAP

I pay attention to the words customers use when they describe us, because they are almost never the words we use to describe ourselves. We write things like "scalable media infrastructure." Customers say "it just works." One of us is clearly better at this, and it is not the side with the messaging framework. What comes back is usually three things. 1) The first is that we are easy to use. A journalist can find a file and download it without being trained, without calling anyone, without thinking about it. 2) The second is that the hard things still get done. Behind that easy screen, content from many venues is being collected, organized, and routed across the world. The end user never sees it. The operator knows it is there. 3) The third has nothing to do with the product at all. It is that we show up. We get on the call. We are in the meeting. We are reachable by a human being when it matters. None of these things are actual features. You will not find them on a pricing page. Marketing has asked, though. But the answer is that you cannot list "we pick up the phone" as a feature. You can only keep doing it.