The Future of Television and Where to Build it.
Alan Cannistraro is always working. Whether it’s burning the midnight oil writing code for a side project or figuring out the best way to string a set together as a DJ, he’s always exploring, tweaking, and testing. As he explained to the Terminal community during his Tech Talk last month, Alan credits his biggest career accomplishments at Apple and Facebook to this innate trait. Curiosity drives his bias towards action and sparks his greatest visions, like the one behind his San Francisco-based company Rheo.
With Rheo, Alan aims to change how people experience television. He believes that the future of media is ambient, that is, it will be all around us, all of the time. He has good reason to think this — consumption of media has steadily increased with the rise of new technology over the last century. It is projected that we will consume more content passively everywhere we go and the television, Alan projects, will play a unique role in our lives as a personalized feed of information. Many advertisers share Alan’s vision and are gearing up for a new wave of automation that could increase media consumption. Tasks such as driving, which have always demanded our dedicated focus and attention, will soon become automated, which will increase the opportunity for people to tune in.
Alan and his team imagine a world where entertainment systems adjust to each individual consumer. “I envision Rheo as your omnipresent ambient stream; your media assistant. You leave Rheo running while we contextually present the right information to you at the right time.” That futuristic vision isn’t so far off. With smartphones tracking our every move, and engineers using graph databases to build personal interest relationship traits, the ability to serve content based on movement and preference is already available for engineers to tinker with and hone. That’s an important area of focus for Alan and his team moving forward, but it’s a challenge he says his engineering team will not address in San Francisco.
“I made the decision a few months ago that it was time to leave the Bay Area. I was a little apprehensive about telling my investors that I was leaving San Francisco — I thought they would not be pleased with that, but unanimously the reaction was positive. Every one of them said ‘this is great — you know you’re gonna get better talent; your investment money is going to go further; and you’re gonna be able to reach your goals faster than if you were here in the Bay Area.”
Alan encourages other founders to do the same and admits there is “some magic happening” in Kitchener-Waterloo, which is where he will relocate the majority of his team.
You can watch Alan’s talk in its entirety on the Terminal Tech Talk page.
