Sonic Foundry Announces Winners of the Seventh Annual Rich Media Impact Awards

MADISON, Wis. – May 19, 2011 – Sonic Foundry, Inc.(NASDAQ: SOFO), the recognized market leader for rich media webcasting, lecture capture and knowledge management, today announced the winners of the seventh annual Rich Media Impact Awards, which honor excellence in the practical and creative integration of Mediasite in business, education, health and government.

“Every year we are more amazed by how far these programs drive innovation for webcasting growth in education, government and the enterprise. This year’s winners have taken their rich media programs through an evolutionary process, from initial proof of concept within their organizations, to working models that have transformed the way employees are trained, ROI is achieved and knowledge is transferred,” said Rob Lipps, executive vice president of Sonic Foundry. “We congratulate them on joining more than 100 organizations from around the world that have been honored with a Rich Media Impact Award.”

Winners were honored at UNLEASH 2011 in Madison, Wis., and the awards were also webcast live via Mediasite to a global virtual audience.

2011 Rich Media Impact Award Winners:

Association Award: Tennessee Bar Association
“The TBA already had a thriving webcasting program. During the Nashville floods we used Mediasite to produce three webcasts explaining rules and regulations that attorneys might need to pass on to their pro-bono clients. Our speakers covered timely info about filing for federal government aid and the home buyout program instituted by our local government. Our goal was to get the information out quickly and to as many people as possible, so these webcasts were offered free of charge.”
~Angie Bianchi, AV coordinator

Enterprise Award: Lockheed Martin
“These webcasts have also helped to build stronger teams. Participants have the sense that executives are speaking directly to them. This fosters a direct and intimate communication between execs and employees. Because employees are able to ask questions of the executive staff, which they normally would not have an opportunity to do, there is more interaction and interest from the employees. All of this comes together to cultivate better collaboration and team morale because the employees feel part of one unified team.”
~Katie Teufel, MultiVision operator for the IS&GS Media Services team

Excellence in Education Award: Tilburg University
“We would like to connect with a new generation of students. Lectures should be time and place independent, have alternative or mixed learning routes and it should be an online experience. Sonic Foundry Mediasite helps us extremely well by doing this. We also see some raw data of the results and we find out the results improved from 58% to 79% in 4 years. This is huge. It’s all made possible by Sonic Foundry Mediasite. There are benefits for students as well as for lecturers.”
~Bob van den Brand, adjunct associated professor at the Tilburg School of Economics and Management

Global Reach Award: Northrop Grumman
Aside from the Hornet International Conference we have other recordings that are viewed around the world. Some employees are based in foreign countries and some are deployed with military units overseas. They are now able to review training courses, management all-hands briefings, special events and lectures that would otherwise be unavailable to them. It really helps them stay connected with their fellow employees here in the US.
~Evan Guyer, senior video engineer

Government Award: NASA Safety Center
“We have 22 web based courses. We’ve gotten about 33,000 hours of utilization out of those web-based courses, and about 1900 graduates. If they were taught in the classroom I’d have only a handful of graduates today and somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000 hours of training at the most, but only if we were able to make the investment that it would have taken to get the instructor around to all the students and get the students to the instructor.”
~John Marinaro, director of technical excellence

Healthcare Award: Connecticut Department of Public Health
“We were able to provide training for over 1,000 housing code officials. It ended up costing less than $18 per student, whereas if they had gone to a commercial provider it would have cost about $175 per course. This produced a cost-benefit ratio of 14 to one. That’s fantastic, especially in these times of shrinking budgets.”
~Christopher Stan, distance learning coordinator

Prolific Use Award: Sam M. Walton College of Business
“We’ve used it to deliver dissertations live for faculty members that were travelling. We’ve created training and orientation videos for new staff and faculty. We’ve even done a live ceremony offsite at the RFID lab so businesses involved in the lab’s grand opening could view the ribbon cutting without leaving their offices. We received immediate feedback at the event speaking highly of the technology since they could not attend in person. We’ve even delivered a couple classes across the globe to our partner college in New Delhi, India.”
~Jim Goodlander, associate director of technology

Rapid ROI Award: Energy Center of Wisconsin
“As a financial analyst I really want to focus on this 42% return on investment per year number. What does that mean? If we had taken the money we spent on Mediasite equipment and hosting fees and invested it in the bank, the bank would have had to pay us 42% per year for each of the last four years to generate the revenue that we generate with our webinar series.”
~Steve Kihm, research director

Scholastic Achievement Award: University of Auckland
“Interest in our video delivery model from New Zealand’s Ministry of Education has resulted in a national delivery opportunity. This represents a significant increase in our presentation area from Auckland and Northland to encompass the whole of the country. That is an expansion from 132 secondary schools in 2010 to well over 374 in the 2011 year.”
~Mark Dashper, University of Auckland, Faculty Education, Team Solutions

Student Impact Award: Richard S. Miltenberger, Northwestern University Prosthetics-Orthotics Center
“The blended learning program combines six months of online learning with three months onsite, hands-on learning. During the six months I am able to work fulltime as well as go to school fulltime and that is due to Mediasite. Sonic Foundry’s Mediasite is an intuitive lecture capture program that combines real time power point presentation alongside video streaming. What’s valuable to me is the time-saving aspect of the media presentation. Lectures may be slowed down, sped up or paused in order for the student to catch up on the material which is really useful to me.”
~Richard S. Miltenberger, student