World's leading media innovation center based on open innovation principles, interactive and linear digital entertainment for mobile and connected-living rooms.

MISSIONS: It will promote the effective convergence of media technology innovations - centered on HTML5, open web standards, free/open-source and patent-unencumbered technologies - with emerging video-centered entertainment formats based on interactivity, social participation, multidevice, immersive user experiences, interactive cinema, gaming, and more.

GOALS: It’s will lead a coalition of leading Italian and European video content producers, broadcasters, aggregators and rights owners in a strategic alliance with global leading open media technology makers - based on open innovation, free and open-source software and open web standards - and aimed at retaining and expanding their editorial control and their startegic positions in media value chains, notwithstanding the fast-expanding role of global proprietary media consumption platforms.

TIMELINE:

Q4-2011 - OMC begins activities in 450 sq.m. Open Media Hub which will start offering discounted office and co-working facilities and open media services to Rome’s and EU’s micro and small media innovators.

Q2-2012 - OMC starts executive start up plans and start operation on leased office and lab facilities in the Formello Productive Zone. The project will be financed through a public-private partnership, with primarily private investment.

Q2-2012 - Telematics Park begins construction, planned to end on Q4-2013

Q4-2012 -  OMC begins full scale operations

Q3-2013 - OMC moves to final new 1,800 sq.m dedicated facilities and labs within the Telematics Park.

FACILITIES AND INFRASTRUCTURE:

OMC wil be located in dedicated facilities which will be available for 50 years free of charge, with the right to lease up to 50% of the spaces to relevant other entities. These will include specialized production facilities, labs, training and incubation.

ACTIVITIES: research, educational activities incubation, knowledge transfer, developer community building, prototyping, user-driven innovation, testing, localization and aimed at at wide-spread adoption. For example: innovative HTML5 apps, content, websites, browser plug-ins, web platform frameworks; mobile, tv-connectable, smartTVs and hybrid devices.

It will develop and manage a Universal Audiovisual Archive consisting initially of over 2,500 TB of locally-cached audiovisual and media content under public domain or open licenses, as well as over 60,000 DVD/Blu-ray Jukeboxes of Italian and foreign classics locally accessible through fiber-connected workstations (for consultation).

TECH PARTNERS: SAE Institute, BIC Lazio Incubator (the Business Incubator Center for the Lazio Region), Qantm, the Faculty of Communication Sciences and the Department of Computer Science and Systems (DIS) of the first university of Rome "La Sapienza", TheNetValue, The Audiovisual and Cinema Training Centre of the Lazio Region. The center will be complemented by the Open Media Network which will manage year-long community building activities, an annual world-class week-long event, and smaller trimonthly events, which will provide conference, community building activities, knowledge transfer and training opportunities, and intensive developer sprints.

MEDIA PARTNERS:

LOCATION & CONTEXT: It will be located within the upcoming 57,075 sq.m and €120 millions Telematics Media Park of Rome, Italy, promoted by Tecnoconsult International Srl (“TI”)  on owned land that will begin construction in Spring 2012. The Open Media Cluster will be the talent pool, artistic and technolgical innovation engine of the Digital Artists Labs (DAL) with its 32,866 sq.m of rich-media and video production facilities (including 23 soundstages), constitute EU's second largest video production compound. OMC will be integrated in the living creative community constituted by the Telematics Park - with its very extensive residential, hotel, entertainment facilities and traditional video production facilities.

FUNDING:

Beyond initial funding, outlined below, OMC longer term sustainance counts on attracting sizeable funding from Media Partners and public grants at all levels. It aims to become fully self-sustaining at the end of the 5th year of operations, except for free facilities, and discounted ICT services provided by the Telematics Park.

The project has secured initial funding through a public-private partnership, signed on …. by Tecnoconsult International and Municipality of Formello, which commits signing parts to the following committment, conditional to approval of the project by Rome Province and Lazio Region:

3,8M€

To: building of … sq.m Zero Emission office and lab facilities dedicated to open media innovation activities. Of these,  …. sq.m spaces are used and managed at zero cost for 50 years by OMC, while an adjacent … sq.m building will be hosting public agencies in the field of open innovation (MOUs ar ein plac with, BIC Lazio, Province School of Cinema, and La Sapienza University for Interdiscpiplinary Master Programs and Research Center by lead by the departments of Communication Science and Informatics).

By: Municipality of Formello in the form of “mandatory extraordinary infrastructure contributions by developers to the needs of new European Media Pole of Formello”.

4M€

To: startup fund for fundraising, executive planning, partnering, and initial operations, at the complete disposal of OMC.

By: Tecnoconsult International Srl

1,5M€

To: deployment of an open access internet backbone capable of up to 600Gigabit, and of an ultra wide band internet access in the entire Municipality of Formello, providing a catalyst of living creative community, as well as a testing  and user-driven development.

In addition, the Telematics Park and Digital Artists Labs commit to provide to OMC local projects a special porice for any services (including bandwidth, apartment rentals, utilities) at just the marginal cost of providing them.

Why is Open Media Innovation good for both Italian and European citizens, as well as for their media industries?

The protection of Technological Neutrality is an even bigger priority for the italian video sector and citizens than the problem of Net Neutrality. In fact, leading global software companies in operating system, cloud-based services, and video content aggregation, are investing huge resources to corner the exploding Net-TV and TV-connected device markets by ensuring that content rich-media content will mostly be consumed through proprietary application stores or application frameworks controlled by them, rather than through open and neutral platforms such as web browsers.

Major Italian broadcaster and Telcos will not be able to keep up with their level of technology investments, and the extent of global content and technology partnerships, leaving to such global foreign giants in a tight, albeit indirect, control over the nature and value of the content that will be mostly accessed through TVs and TV-connected devices in Italy.

This, we believe, amount to a cultural and economic emergency for Italy, its media economic sectors and its citizens.  Adoption of open standards is the only way for Italy to fight back to the editorial and economic control of those giants, as there is no one Italian player or group of players that are able to affirm reliably any other sustainable OTT/smartphone proprietary standard.

A widely-increased adoption of open technology standards, in particular HTML5, is therefore in the best interest of Italian and European video content producers, both mainstream and emerging, large traditional public and private broadcasters (Rai, Mediaset, Sky), and Telco/IPTV operators, because it would favor the widespread availability in Italy of end-user devices for rich-media fruition over broadband and broadband/broadcast which will rely primarily on open standards, as a platform over which broadcaster, telco, content producers, aggregator can build their unique offering through pre-loaded content, web apps and plug-ins, pay DVB-T integration, UI customizations, and more.