The team | AA Media Group

The AA Media Group consists of a core team of dedicated professionals, with a wealth of experience in the area of Media Technology and project management.

Benco van der Meulen

Benco van der Meulen is one of the three founders of the AA Media Group. He has over 20 years project management and general management experience in the IT industry.

With this background and his vast knowledge of proven project management methodologies, Benco enables the AA Media Group to engage into the largest and most complicated IT/Media projects.

Benco's professional background

Benco van der Meulen graduated from the Eindhoven University of Technology in 1982, specializing in mathematical of physical processes. As an analyst/designer of technical-scientific applications, he worked with several companies before joining CMG (nowadays Logica) in 1987.

At CMG Benco fulfilled a number of consultancy and management positions within the 'Advanced Technology' division, undertaking a range of projects from technical infrastructure, e-business to information security. In the role of project manager he was responsible for the development of the SMSC (Short Message Service Centre) - a successful GSM service which was later to become a worldwide bestseller. As Director, he executed several international infrastructure projects, including the development and implementation of electronic trading systems for EuroNext in Amsterdam, Warsaw and Paris.

In 2003 Benco was asked to manage the DDV (Digital Facility) project for the Dutch Public broadcasters on behalf of Sony Professional services. The project resulted in a ‘Tapeless’ production environment for 26 Dutch Public Broadcasters. After the DDV project Benco was asked for several other assignments by both Sony and Technicolor, the former customer of Sony in the DDV project. Some of the recent assignments are:

Acting director Global Project Strategy for Technicolor Broadcast services in the Chiswick Park facility (London, UK).
Project Management of the MCP (Multi Channel Platform) project for the Dutch Public Broadcasters.
Lead System Integrator Programme Manager in BSkyB’s Harlequin 1 Technical Fit-out (TFO) programme.
Programme Manager at Technicolor Digital Content Delivery in the Hilversum facility in The Netherlands.

Eric

Eric Hardsteen

Eric started in 2007 as one of the 3 founders of AA Media Group -after a long corporate career- out of the ambition and passion for innovative media projects.

Eric has over 25 years of wide experience in the broadcast market and was responsible for many innovative leading edge broadcast projects supplied though the EMEA zone including bespoke software development on product and project level.

Due to his experience he can act on multiple levels from steering committee, project or programme board or to drive technical implementation teams. Resent projects spanned from workflow-, technical infrastructure- to operational change-, design and implementation in broadcast environment.

Eric's professional background

Originally educated in electronics, Eric held many differed positions, including: broadcast system lead designer, project/programme management, sales and marketing management in the broadcast market, corporate board level responsible for projects and service throughout EMEA as Director in one of the largest broadcast system and vendor suppliers worldwide. In this role he was responsible for the strategy, P&L and line responsible for resource teams over 300 people throughout EMEA.

Beside the technical background Eric also graduated at TSM (linked with Technical University of Twente in the Netherlands) with an MBA title in 1998.

Eric is capable to oversee complex environments and has the analytic skill to address the real issues. His drive to deliver the agreed solution that meets customer needs makes him by nature an asset in a project or programme team.

Eric has a very wide experience of working in different countries/cultures from Nordic countries (such as Norway), UK (where Eric lived and worked for 5 years), Belgium, Netherlands, Italy, France, Middle East countries (e.g. Iran) and Japan.

Last few years, Eric was closely involved in scoping and delivering several projects to Broadcasters, based on innovative workflows, metadata and mostly IT technology. Eric held the project responsibility ensuring that the multiple software and hardware vendors delivered the agreed functionality by a technical sound platform. Needless to say nowadays that this is only successful in very close cooperation with the operational change program of the customer operation.

Peter

Peter van Overbeeke

Peter is an open and communicative personal who combines passion and optimism that drive him to achieve his objectives. He led successful audiovisual projects in Germany, Czech Republic, Italy, UK, Netherlands and Singapore, where his ambition to ‘get it done’ was always welcomed and highly appreciated.

Peter adds focus on existing and new processes assuring buy-in of the people involved. In projects, Peter’s focus is on filling the gap between project-scope and operational requirements, which helps to reduce the acceptance-barrier.

Prior to becoming a successful interim professional, Peter has gained experience in multiple positions in international business and projects throughout East- and West Europe.

Peter's professional background

Peter began his career in the supply chain of a multinational where he developed a strong understanding of finance and inventory management. As a next step, he ran a marketing services department of SONY Netherlands, responsible for gathering and interpreting all market- and company data. In this role he was responsible for the business applications in the IT infrastructure, such as a CRM system (Scope Marketing Technology). After moving to the European marketing HQ of Sony Professional, he assumed responsibility for the marketing of the systems business throughout Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Since 2001, Peter is an interim professional and with his passionate optimism he has driven many teams to find solutions in the management and organization of infrastructure and change projects, where he has held positions like bid manager, program manager, project manager, test manager, implementation manager and migration manager.

In his first ICT project he set-up a Management Information System for an ITIL-grounded division of the national banking institute, and consulted how to align this with the organisational requirements.

More recently Peter has helped developing business plans for Digital Signage, he implemented numerous infrastructures for audiovisual applications in all sorts of fields, ranging from deep Broadcast to pure business based military communications.

Peter is one of the founding partners of Certified Media Professionals network.

Winfred

Winfred van Kuijk

Winfred has the unique skill of combining business, technology and creativity. He has a very detailed and structured approach without losing track of the high-level objectives. This diverse background results in more optimized and integrated projects.

In over 15 years in the media industry, Winfred has held marketing, project management and technical roles for both product and solution vendors. The common theme has been to focus on IT based workflows for broadcasters and content owners. Winfred is great at applying leading edge technology with concrete results.

Patrick

Patrick Mans

Being a solutions engineer, Patrick’s primary focal points within AA Media Group are implementation and support of systems regarding Media Asset Management, storage, editing and playout. His outstanding skills to translate the user's needs into technical solutions guarantees the most appropriate workflow for the customer.

With an IT background, Patrick has gained experience within the broadcast industry over the last 12 years, both as a customer and as a supplier. He has worked as technical manager of two major post-production companies in Hilversum, responsible for the technical infrastructure and services. Within the largest national broadcaster of news and sports, he was involved in many projects regarding newsroom workflows and (digital) broadcasting. His knowledge and skills reach out to the borders of the broadcast and IT technology.

Rianne

Rianne Veen

Rianne Veen joined AA Media Group in October 2007. She is responsible for the project office administration and gives support to all project managers of AA Media Group.

After finishing a Marketing and Sales education, Rianne started as a secretary on the sales department of a large industrial automation company. Before she started at AA Media Group, she was responsible for the project administration of Control Systems in Infrastructure. These years of experience and the possibility of flexible working areas and times makes her a perfect complement to the team.

With AA Media Group, our projects are in safe hands.
-Manager Professional Services, Sony