Audazzio Names Audio Team Members, Holds Team Summit

Industry vets Fred Aldous, Roger Charlesworth, Michael Abbott join advisory panel

A software startup and finalist in Comcast NBCUniversal’s SportsTech Accelerator program, Audazzio, whose Live QR solution encodes data as sound inaudible to the human ear but easily discernible by mobile devices, named its audio advisory panel and held a team summit.

The company, which was welcomed as an SVG Sponsor in February, provides clients with tools that enable real-time focused messaging directly to fans at home or in a stadium or arena.

The summit — which took place June 24-26 at the Boulder, CO, facility of Boomtown Accelerators, a partner in the Comcast NBCUniversal SportsTech Accelerator — gathered executive leadership, expert industry consultants, software developers, and other key members of Audazzio’s team. COO Danny Abelson and Chairman of the Board/CEO Roy Terracina were joined by industry experts Fred Aldous, Roger Charlesworth, and Michael Abbott, who together constitute the Audazzio advisory team, which was hand-picked by Abelson. The summit explored next steps in the ongoing rollout of the Audazzio Live QR technology, which leverages ultrasonic, data-encoded sound waves to instantly create valuable second-screen opportunities on viewers’ phones and tablets.

At the Audazzio’s recent team summit: (from left) Audazzio COO Danny Abelson; Audazzio advisory-panel members Fred Aldous, Roger Charlesworth, and Michael Abbott; and Audazzio Chairman/CEO Roy Terracina

The summit assembled several of the industry’s elite specialists. Aldous is a 27-time Sports Emmy Award-winning audio engineer whose career spans several decades and is credited with forging new ground for live surround mixing in sports, including for Fox Sports’ NFL national A-game productions and NASCAR’s most important races. He has designed systems and mixed audio for Fox Sports, CBS Sports, NBC Sports, ABC/ESPN, MTV, Turner Sports, Showtime, HBO, and others, working on such high-profile events as Super Bowls, the Olympics, multiple World Series, NCAA National Basketball Championships, and Daytona 500s.

Abbott is an award-winning broadcast-audio expert who provides engineering, consulting, and project-management expertise to entertainers, major broadcasts, venues, and large-scale live events. He currently serves as audio producer for the Grammy Awards live broadcast, having served on the production team for several decades. Abbott’s other credits include such high-profile programs as American Idol, The Voice, and Shark Tank.

Broadcast-audio and -television veteran Charlesworth is executive director of the DTV Audio Group and serves as an independent expert on media-production technologies, including multichannel audio for television.

“The main purpose of this summit was to give our advisory team a chance to network directly with the developers of our technology,” says Abelson. “We spent a year collaborating remotely, which fortunately has been very productive for us. We’ve been able to develop a technology from scratch, successfully demonstrate it on major network broadcasts, and confirm that it functions well in stadiums and arenas. But it was past time for all of us to get together in person for a concentrated session around a white board. I thought it would really benefit the team to spend a weekend where we assembled all of our product developers and all of our industry experts, so they could share ideas and perspectives.

“Our developers,” he continues, “were able to provide a deeper understanding of the technology to our advisory team. They, in turn, will be able to communicate that knowledge to our customers. It was an immersive meeting. We worked together morning, noon, and night for three days and accomplished a huge amount. For instance, together we developed a workflow that our customers will be able to execute efficiently, so they can integrate Audazzio into their broadcasts and live events. Bringing together our advisory team with our development team made that possible. And, at the end of the weekend, it was clearer than ever to our entire organization the stunning potential of this groundbreaking technology.”