The recent Geekwire Sports and Tech Summit, the first of its kind in the area, was a great opportunity to tell some stories about our company and about the local tech community. This event summary by the Geekwire sports specialist Taylor Soper sums up a lot of interesting info from the day.
It was exciting to see a sports and tech community come together at the event. Of course, a lot of these people already knew each other, because they’re sports fans. Many of them are sports journalists who are well known. But it was exciting to see them focus on the potentials and challenges of technology as it intersects with sports.
There are a number of reasons Comcast stepped up to sponsor the conference. For one thing, it’s just weeks away from the Rio Olympics which Comcast NBCUniversal wants to make the best ever for viewing and engaging. But the other thing we wanted to do is create a forum where people can learn who is doing what with technology and for that, Comcast has a proud story.
Among the speakers at the event were these very different but connected members of the greater Comcast family:
- Brad Allen, executive chairman of NextVR, a company in the Comcast Ventures portfolio. Comcast Ventures is exploring a variety of frontiers in tech, including this and other virtual reality companies. NextVR stayed around for the summit after party and demo’d some of their tech to summitgoers and other guests.
- Rick Cordella, SVP & GM NBC Sports Digital at NBC Sports, where they’re on the front lines of providing the most comprehensive coverage of these Olympics – and also, day in and day out, digital sports coverage for a variety of sports channels.
- Preston Smalley, Vice President for Product Management, the Sports and X1 Apps, who demonstrated how the X1 platform allows for customization and the ability to view more hours of programming than you have in a day on any screen. He is based in the Comcast Silicon Valley Innovation Center.
For people who think Comcast is a company that strings around a rubbery cable and Internet magically appears, it’s eye-opening to reflect that the company has quite a bit of innovation going on. It was fun to see all these people in one place along with other members of the Comcast family. The innovation is just going to continue and grow.
