David J. Knight

Long considered a ‘serial entrepreneur,’ David Knight has founded or participated in the buildup of numerous startup companies in the high-tech and consumer media industries. From his first paying job as the youngest disk jockey in America, through to his current development of the world’s first rolling television network (Big Moving Pictures), he has always operated at the leading edge of the customer experience and technology.

First, the Music

Knight was brought into the entertainment industry at a very early age, having been inducted into the music business at the ripe age of 12 years old. Due to a serendipitous set of circumstances, he found himself doing voiceover work for a project that required a child’s tone – immediately following this, his voice changed and he was asked to perform as a disk jockey, joining the second mobile DJ service in the country, and eventually finding himself on radio. He kept his hand in the music side of the entertainment world all the way through college, however on the other side of his tenure at UCLA (Applied Physics) he moved into the engineering side of audio technology, and became involved with the first Compact Disc music recordings. That expertise led him into other forms of digital entertainment, and eventually into the computer networking world.

Knight was on the IPO team that took early e-mail developer ISOCOR public, and later the company was purchased by then-hot Critical Path for a large sum. Further movements in the computing and communications worlds included the co-Founding of RedBox Technologies, based in the United Kingdom, where Knight was a Principal. Knight then returned to the U.S. where he co-Founded click2send.com, which at one point was the largest file transfer service on the Web. When the dot-com meltdown occurred, Knight went into ‘triage mode’ helping various companies, founded by friends, former business partners and/or investors who asked for assistance, with the job of getting from their then-decimated, post-meltdown states to either a sale, profitability, a funding event, or other necessary stage-change so that the company could move forward again. Notably, of the seven companies Knight was involved with, all but one is still in business, and the experience of performing turnarounds provided useful lessons for any future difficulties with Knight’s own endeavors. During this time he was awarded a Computerworld-Smithsonian Medal (2001).

Next Stop, Space

In early 2004, Knight took a giant leap and joined with Dr. Peter Diamandis, Erik Lindbergh and a handful of other associates in operating the fast-moving X PRIZE Competition – this was the challenge of building and successfully flying a manned spacecraft to a suborbital altitude, with the succeeding party to win a $10 Million cash prize. Knight brought in funding, key relationships and other elements that were needed to pull off the large-scale events built around Burt Rutan’s launching of SpaceShip One in the Mojave Desert. Of the six powered flights of the SpaceShip, Knight was present at five. Due in part to the X PRIZE experience, Knight was asked to produce the non-profit Space Venturing Forum, which he produced in both 2005 and 2006. Knight was also a member of the Large-Scale Projection Dome Project which led to the opening of the (currently) world’s largest high-definition projection system, operating in a 70-foot dome at the Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland, California. With a resolution of over 8 Million pixels, the system can provide stunning imagery depicting the galaxy, or scanned-in IMAX footage, and is truly a Big Moving Picture system.

What The World Needs Are Big Moving Pictures

Knight began testing the Big Moving Pictures concept with a modest screen that was comprised of the brightest LEDs available — the screen was used at the winning X PRIZE flight of SpaceShip One and made the overall experience much more understandable and engaging for the assembled crowd. In fact, Knight’s screen formed the backdrop for the live Discovery Channel broadcast of the event, which went out live to over 70 countries. Now fully operational, BMP is intended to literally change the way that large spectator events are experienced, and most critically, perceived by increasingly jaded younger audiences. By integrating Hollywood-quality content, leading-edge production, and state-of-the-art display and audio technology together in a scalable, well-managed environment, BMP will indeed make a major difference to the millions of people who attend air shows and other major outdoor events every year, while providing a new medium for advertisers who are increasingly dissatisfied with the performance of traditional television networks as vehicles for their messages. Extending into the mobile and Web-based content world, Knight and BMP operate at the vanguard of next-generation delivery technology, creating new market segments as he has done successfully before. And, this one involves fighter planes and race cars...