Today, I am very happy to release the first part of my conversation with a very accomplished person and a great person. Engineer, entrepreneur and investor, Bill Warner, founder of Avid Technology.
As a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Bill founded Avid Technology in 1987. With a small team of hardware and software engineers, Warner created a tool that revolutionized the way movies, TV and all dynamic media are created, Avid Media Composer.
When I first met Bill in 1992, Avid had begun to shake the editorial world. Media composers are growing rapidly and have made great progress in high-end commercial post-production. After watching a demo, I became addicted to the idea of "editing on a computer." Soon I found myself helping my friend and film editor Steve Cohen, who was making the first Hollywood production. One. On Avid. The project is significant for this still young company, with Bill and several other key players from the original team flying from the East Coast, providing support, getting feedback and generally seeing how we design new digital post-workflows.
The rest, as they say, is history. In the coming year, work on digital jobs is underway. In 1993, Bill and And Avid received an Emmy Award from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences to develop Avid Media Composer. In 1999, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented Avid with Oscar® to successfully transform the editing process for filmmaking. Bill accepted the award on a global television broadcast.
But for Byl Warner, this is just the beginning.
In 1992, he founded Wildfire Communications and designed the first voice-based e-secretary and sold it to Orange's PLC. Since then, he has shared his time with non-profit organizations and focused on helping entrepreneurs. In addition, he has served as an angel investor in 13 startups and 3 non-profit organizations. These startups are in various fields, such as 3D animation, email-based blogs, event networks, online video ad insertion, nightclub visual environments, shared calendars, and payroll design and management. For planning purposes, non-profit organizations participate in Boston's history/current drawing; a film school, and an open source mechanical design approach to launch new cars for people with disabilities. Recent angel investments include sparkcloud, marginize, posterous and zelfy.
He is also writing a book on entrepreneurship called "Intentions and Inventions." It explores how to optimize the linkages between the drivers that drive entrepreneurs and how they can invest from this dynamic.
Mr. Warner has been a long-time trustee of the Massachusetts Technical Leadership Council and has taught courses for entrepreneurs through the organization. In 2008, Warner created and co-hosted the MassTLC Innovation 2008 unConference. Now in its third year, the 2010 Innovation Conference will be held in Boston and has become the annual focus of the Boston community's innovation community. In 2009, MassTLC awarded Warner the Innovation Catalyst Award for its partnership with startups and innovative communities.
As a true Renaissance man, Bill Warner founded these companies over the years:
1975 - Bionic Control Corporation - Environmental control system for disabled people. Turn the lights on/off and just use your own whistle to change TV channels. 1980 - New England Walking Stick - Made a manual pedaling cycle from 1980 to 1990. 1987 - Avid Technology, Inc. [Avid] - Create video, audio and movie editing systems. Listed company. 1992 - Wildfire Communications, Inc. - Designed the first voice-based e-secretary - sold to Orange in 2000 - 1999 - FutureBoston, Inc. - Non-profit - Design a high-resolution map system that combines past/current/future maps into layers. The city of Boston uses this technology. 2002 - Warner Research LLC - Software Development Corporation and Angel Investments. Catch up with the Warner Research Center's collaborative space - providing space for entrepreneurs until 2008. 2006 - Move With Freedom, Inc. - Non-profit organizations focus on open source design that provides mobile tools for people with disabilities. It will soon be free to move the transformed mobile phone into production. Everything in Investment - Personal Angels Investment Fund focuses on new entrepreneurs, new technologies and new markets 2010 - All Labs - An Accelerator Lab, focused on helping new entrepreneurs and new teams help each other, designing products and companies to make them in line with the founding People meet market demand.
Larry Jordan: So where did you get the idea of Avid?
Bill Warner: from
Well, I like photography, I always like photography. From the age of six, I have a Brownie camera and then an Instamatic camera. I remember the moment Nikon FTn. It's like college graduation, I am 15 years old or something else. This is really a good thing.
Then when the video cameras are small enough that you can actually buy them and carry them with you, these things will be great today, for only $2,000, you can put them aside and have separate cameras. I bought one of them. I started shooting video.
Then I realized, "You need to edit these things." Then the question is, how do you edit?
And me; we always spend family holidays with our parents. In Palm Springs. They retired and lived in Palm Springs. The whole family is here. I came with my camera. Start shooting videos of my nieces and nephews.
Once I decided to make a video called "Running Money." We wrote it and made parts for all the kids, then I directed and filmed it. This is a big achievement: the whole family.
Then I went into post-production, in front of my parents' fake fireplace ' Palm Springs house. I sat there and the camera tape decks were connected to their home tape deck, which meant they couldn't watch TV for the entire time. It takes hours, hours, hours and hours, of course I can't punch in the right place and I can't get everything right.
Larry Jordan: from
Clean edit?
Bill Warner: from
Oh no. Forget it. Just being a good thing in every place on the court, you move on.
Larry Jordan: from
Pure frustration.
Bill Warner: from
absolute.
So I made this video called "Running Money". And I have to tell you that we just saw it and it still makes me happy. It is available to all of us.
It is this experience that makes editing so difficult that I feel that something is better than what I have.
Larry Jordan: from
How did you start from there? How did you get it from this idea, let us say, prototype?
Bill Warner: from
Ok, there is a long way to go between "take money and run" and Avid. So, I am doing these home videos, which is great, but unbelievable.
Then, at the company I work for Apollo Computer, they have a small editing system. So I thought, "Ah. So, now, this will be fine." So I started using their little editing system; Panasonic Knob Editor. It's more accurate, but it's still the same pain as linear editing. I started to think about the meaning of this linear editing. The real meaning of it is that you change your mind and lose it. I mean, this is really painful. Basically you have to continue building and building, if you want to go back, forget it.
Orignal From: Bill Warner, creating fanatics - Part 1
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