I was born in 1962 and raised in Cannes, France.
At the age of 20, I decided to try the American adventure, starting by sailing from my hometown Cannes to Ft Lauderdale in 9 months.
Shortly after being established here in the US, I joined the US Army for 3 years…. Not so bad, I was assigned in Oahu, Hawaii with the 25th Infantry Division for 2 1/2 years! Who would complain! We deployed to Korea and Japan, it was a real great experience over all, and I’ve learned a lot and the respect…
After that, I went to school, got my degree in electronics and was hired as a field technician for Hill-Rom, a company based in Indiana. Spent a few years with them, taking care of equipment from one hospital to another and towards the end based at Mercy Hospital in Miami.
I started to get interested in this new blooming Internet thing, making my first site and then working part-time for JustSurfit where I got very involved and developed one of the first live interactive webcast using video with audio and a Chatroom. I started in 1996 the first commercial interactive live video webcast on the Internet from the Elbo Room and then Bootlegger’s early 1997.
In September that year, I left Hill-Rom and started working full time with JustSurfit, operating all the webcams and specialized in the Live Event Broadcast.
Trying to push this Internet Broadcast further, in Jan 1999 I went with Online Video Network, a company that specialize in high bandwidth transfer for live broadcast and continued streaming live video and audio. In September 1999 OVN basically closed down and Crawford Grimsley, Brian Slusarz and started ProWebcast. This went through the year of the “Dot Com” and like many others we did not make the big $$.
October 2000, I was offered a very nice salary and decided to take a different road, working for TheHelp.NetWork, helping non-profit make money using the Internet. About a year later we started Marlin Productions in Orlando, equipped with 10 production studios and a very nice Control Room, and In June 2002 they decided to close and sale all the equipment!
So I went back home to Ft Lauderdale and started working with VBC Studios, reloading, managing and taking care of their hosting server as well as working on sites, database, asp scripting and more. VBC Studios somewhat joined Penrods or better known as Nikki Beach in Miami Beach, where I started to take care of their internal Network, Point of Sales system, and providing computer tech support for all staff.
In June 2006 we started a new branch called NikkiNews, and I have been involved with doing almost all the video footage including montage representing what’s happening in the different Nikki Beach locations around the world. This has been exciting since this new branch has taken me back to Cannes France during the film Festival and also to Saint-Tropez, Sardinia, Venice, Koh Samui Thailand, Portugal and a few more places…
Finally, In 2011, I relocated to Cannes, France for family reasons and started to enjoy family life…
In 2015, the Nikki Beach adventure ended, and I’ve been providing technical support ever since…
Some stats:
I broadcasted over 192 live events and produced over 300 videos from around the world