Ten weeks. That’s what it took to bring together over 150 high-caliber streaming technology professionals from 52 companies for the inaugural #buffconf conference in Seattle. Despite being the MC, I’m still in disbelief by what we accomplished together as a community.

The Vision Behind (Buffer-Free Video)^AI Conference

When we conceived (Buffer-Free Video)^AI as a joint initiative between Momento and Meta, we had a clear mission: create a builder summit where AI and video technology come to life through real-world production stories. With Demuxed moving from San Francisco to London this year, we felt there was a gap in the streaming community’s calendar for a conference filled with the combination of technical depth and practical focus that makes “builder” conferences truly valuable.

The result? A conference that was laser-focused on signal, not noise, where every session delivered production-tested insights from the builders themselves.

Exceptional Speakers, Exceptional Content

Our speaker lineup represented some of the most innovative minds in streaming today, and their presentations exceeded every expectation. Mayur Srinivasan from FOX opened with “Lessons Learned From Streaming the 2025 Super Bowl to 15.5 Million Viewers”, sharing candid insights about the priorities that matter when scaling video delivery: platform stability and quality of experience first, with low latency optimization as a welcome bonus when time permits. His transparency when answering questions from the audience set the bar for the rest of the conference – the crowd was technical and came with excellent questions!

Between Mayur’s opening keynote and the closing keynote from Michael Martinez, Director of Engineering at Meta, we had a lineup of incredible speakers, and I cannot thank them enough for all responding with a vibrant “yes!” when we asked them to share their deep expertise for a first-of-its-kind conference in the Pacific Northwest. Huge props to Zack Cava, Matt Scharr, Jeremy Brown, Jordi Cenzano, Adam Brown, Jessica Powell, Shankar Regunathan, Qi Cai, Nick Wu, Ryan Lei, Kiran Patel, Colleen Henry, Tim Harris, Sophie Raniwala, Rushaan Mahajan, Wei Li, Spencer Shanson, Joshua Lamb, Phil Harrison, Andy Beach, and the amazing technical workshop leaders: Hanna Figueiredo, Todd Sharp, and Allen Helton. You all were beyond amazing and delivered some of the best presentations I’ve seen in my twenty-five years of conferences.

What Made This Conference Special

Beyond the exceptional content, what truly set (Buffer-Free Video)^AI apart was the engagement level of our attendees. The Q&A portion of the sessions were especially electric. The audience’s thoughtful, technical questions enabled every presenter to go deeper than their prepared remarks.

Mayur’s extended discussion about device-specific latency challenges, the comparison between iOS CMAF LL-HLS enabled devices, and the discrepancy with platforms like Roku, generated the kind of nuanced technical dialogue you rarely see at larger conferences. The audience appreciated having time to explore these details, and every speaker rose to the occasion with generous, detailed responses.

This wasn’t about sales pitches or surface-level overviews. These were production war stories, complete with the lessons learned, the mistakes made, and the solutions that actually work in the real world. We also had a lot of fun, hearing bursts of laughter at some of the AI speech-to-text mistakes highlighted in Jeremy Brown’s presentation, or when Andy Beach asked his monetization panelists “what ad would you pay money to never see again?”

But overall, I think we all left stimulated and hopeful about a future where AI in video production is not a passing fad but a real revolution like the Internet was 30 years ago. And, to bounce back to Michael Martinez’s closing keynote: if humans have made their last video edit and have given up this tedious work to AI, it’s for them to focus on what they do best: being creative.

Gratitude and Recognition

Creating a new conference is only possible with extraordinary partners and speakers who believe in the vision. I want to extend heartfelt thanks to:

Our co-hosts Meta and Product at Scale for their partnership in bringing this vision to life.

Our sponsors Amazon IVS, AWS Elemental, Fastly, SVTA, and AntStack, who understood the value of supporting a technical community gathering focused on substance over spectacle.

Our attendees, who brought the curiosity and technical depth that elevated every session. Your questions were not just good, they were the kind of questions that push the conversation to new levels.

Our incredible event team at Momento, starting with Hannah Wales and Mike Callahan, two true marketing superheroes who pulled together so much in record-setting time, and the entire Momento crew who stepped up to make it a success.

Looking Forward: Our Technical Community Thrives

The streaming technology landscape continues to evolve rapidly, particularly at the intersection of AI and video delivery. What became clear over our two days in Seattle is that the community’s appetite for technical depth, real production stories, and honest discussions about challenges and solutions remains strong.

Conferences like (Buffer-Free Video)^AI remind us why the streaming technology community is so vibrant, and demonstrate the power of “IRL” connections. When you bring together people who are solving similar challenges at scale: whether it’s handling 15.5 million Super Bowl streams, optimizing AI-powered content recommendation, or architecting the next generation of live streaming platforms, the conversations that emerge are invaluable.

The connections made in the hallways of T-Mobile Park and SURF Incubator, the technical deep-dives that extended well beyond scheduled session times, and the collaborative spirit that defined our two days together… This is what drives our industry forward.

Thank you to everyone who made #buffconf a success. Here’s to building the future of video streaming, one conversation, one conference, and one revolution at a time.

Lionel Bringuier is GM Media, Entertainment & Gaming at Momento and was the opener and MC of (Buffer-Free Video)^AI 2025. Connect with Lionel on LinkedIn to continue the conversation about streaming technology innovation.

Lionel Bringuier

Author

With over 25 years of experience in the media and entertainment industry, Lionel Bringuier has held leadership positions at AWS Elemental, Videon, and Anevia (now part of ATEME) before joining Momento. During his career, he was directly responsible for the launch of several mission-critical products and services, including AWS Elemental MediaPackage, Elemental Delta, Videon LiveEdge Max, and LiveEdge Cloud, as well as the suite of Anevia products that pioneered the OTT video distribution market in 2009/2010.

From a software engineering background, Lionel has honed his expertise in deploying solutions to over 300 customers, effectively addressing their challenges through technical innovation and business acumen. His domain of expertise encompasses video streaming on highly scalable and resilient architectures.