George Yankov

The engineer, the producer, the dreamer and what more

Hello there,

Let me introduce myself, my name is George. I am a solution architect and an engineer, a multimedia producer, a casual photographer and a musician. How do I master so many different skills? Well, by successfully building up and learning from one venture and applying it to another, as well as by transferring the knowledge from one domain to another. I have quite an analytical brain that easily sees patterns and creates connections which helps me understand new complex systems and concepts based on my previous experience.

Let’s start with the most important and prevalent skills of mine - engineering. I have a MSc degree in telecommunications engineering. However, my ambitions have always been related to multimedia and audio-visual systems. Therefore I put a lot of efforts on engaging in courses related to audio and video digital signal processing, acoustics and auditory perception, and image encoding and decoding. But that’s not the only thing. I also realised the importance of business knowledge, so I learned how organisations work, the differences in the business entities, the basics of online business and entrepreneurship. And let’s not forget my experience and knowledge in electronics - both analog and digital.

SKAARHOJ (2012 - 2019) - Establishing a hardware production company.

I can talk for hours about all the small and big devices that I have built or projects that I have accomplished. But let me outline the most important and significant ones.

I will start with the “so far” biggest achievement - establishing and running a hardware electronics company.

Talking to customers at our “Skaarhoj” NAB 2019 booth in Las Vegas

From 2012 up to my resignation in 2019 I was a part of the company that I co-founded together with two other guys - Skaarhoj. We ran the business as a trio for the majority of the first couple of years, only hiring staff part-time whenever necessary and possible. In that period we were experimenting with the concept and the prototypes. However, it is important to mention that the business has been profitable from day 1 and we didn’t seek any investment through the years. We had just hit a sweet spot in the market that we managed to exploit.

All the production in the beginning was made in-house and I took the role of a production engineer, soldering PCBs, assembling products and doing all the tests and QA. I was also working on the supply-chain management, stock management, price negotiations with vendors. And as the one who knew the products inside out, I was also the top line of support. As you can imagine, with a small team like that everyone had to take multiple roles and the team had to work as one in order to succeed. I took roles in customer relationships, stakeholder management, looking for partners on both production and business side. A key development for the products was the customisation in the software that I introduced through a web-interface, which later on the software team turned into a full operating system. That enabled flexibility in the products allowing them to reach a much broader customer base. As the sales increased I looked for automation in the production and outsourcing most of the repetitive tasks to production houses both in Denmark and abroad.

We have attended trade shows in Amsterdam, Los Angeles, Singapore and have been represented by partners and clients all over the globe. We worked on a few big projects with companies like CNN, BBC, Google, Sony, Arri, AJA, Panasonic, etc. And we have sold dosens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of units worldwide.

For the majority of its existence the company was driven by the 3 co-founders. We hired part-time a software developer in 2014 and offered him a full-time position in 2016 when we started onboarding more part-time employees.

I exited the company in 2019 at a time when we have hired approximately 10 full-time employees and a few part-time students. At that time we had also partners/employees abroad running the sales in different regions - USA and Canada, Eastern Europe, Asia, Turkey and the Middle East.

At present the company is growing and expanding its markets.

SG multimedia (est. 2011)

Me as a business - a solution architect and a multimedia producer.

In parallel to this, I have also been running my own company - SG multimedia. For the majority of its existence I have been a solo runner. However I had one full-time employee, a few part-time students and an intern. This company is the entity enabling me to work as a consultant and a producer. I started as a video producer at DTU, helping with live-streaming of lectures and events. That quickly escalated and with the team there, we started designing systems that would facilitate and scale up the production allowing hiring non-trained students to perform the day-to-day tasks.

Live-streaming at the Digital Tech Summit 2023 for DTU

My most significant client - the Technical University of Denmark.

In 2014 we developed a self-operated system so teachers could do the whole production through a very simple interface. A derivative of this system was adopted by all major universities in Denmark. The next big project was the development of a fully automated Walk-In studio for the DTU library where teachers and students can book a slot and record their presentations, green-screen productions, interviews or whatever they need in a professional quality, all that by themselves. I also designed and constructed multiple audio and video racks and refreshed and re-designed the main video studio a few times. Since December 2023 I have been upgrading and renovating the studio again. The project is still ongoing and is expected to be finalised in April 2024.

In the beginning of 2024 I have started a project of renovation and upgrading of the studio with more modern technology. Many aspects have been re-evaluated together with the DTU Media Lab team and I have provided a detailed plan. The project is currently in execution.

Semi-automatic live-streaming system for lectures

The technology driving the Walk-In studio at DTU

The advanced panels controlling the systems in the Walk-In studio

The development between 2019 and today.

The engagement with all those activities in my company went down as the other business - Skaarhoj, grew up. However, after my leave in 2019 I devoted my time to SG multimedia. I hired a full-time editor and we did some great video productions and photoshoots. All that while also keeping the engineering part - consulting on and developing the designs of complex AV-systems. Apart from DTU, I engaged with clients like KU, MIT, TEDx, the European Meteorological Society, ESA business incubator, Skylab DTU, Novo LIFE fonden and many more. Here I have to point out a major client - SAP Denmark. Though officially I was employed by the company, the agreement was as if they were a client of my company. There I fine-tuned and expanded the video-streaming solution that they have adopted due to Covid. I helped them simplify the AV-system and worked with their vendor in order to make the system reliable and easy-to-use, trained the newly hired team, and did hundreds of videos, live-streams, hybrid events, webinars and podcasts. I cooperated with Euronews in the recording and creation of multiple high-end episodes for SAP. I traveled to Sweden, France and UAE and collaborated remotely with teams in the UK, the Netherlands, Finland, Norway, the US.

The video studio at DTU which I have re-designed a few times

Running a video production at SAP Denmark

Filming a podcast with Maersk and SAP distributed by Euronews

At EXPO 2020 in UAE before the live-streaming a hybrid event for SAP

A skilled project manager and a team leader.

That all leads me to two very important skills that I have - project management and leadership. As you can see, I have been involved in countless projects. Some of them were already in progress, but many were entirely my idea. So depending on the type of project I engaged in a different degree. The ones that I initiated or was the lead on, I have managed from the beginning to the end and have created a knowledge base in order to support and improve future projects. I executed alone many small projects. But here come my next skills - team-play and leadership. I am very adaptive and easily fit different roles depending on what is required for a specific project. And when it comes to me leading the team, I take full responsibility, provide all necessary tools and knowledge to the team, direct the project and manage all stakeholders. I have lead many projects with both small and bigger teams.

Photography - between a hobby and a profession.

I mentioned “a photographer”. Well, that is one of my least developed skills, and yet, I have been taking professional photos for events as well as food photos (for JustEat). As for experience - I have taken thousands and thousands of photos of people, landscapes, products, cars, coffee, pet animals. It’s a nice hobby that I really enjoy and use to support my other ventures.

The roots.

Now, where did it all begin? I grew up in a small town close to Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. From an early age I was fascinated by machines and all sorts of mechanics. I learned how to disassemble and fix my toys. Later on I learned how electricity works and immediately started making simple projects with small bulbs and batteries. I wanted to make them as elaborate and complex as possible, which lead me to learning electronics. And I am talking - 13-14-years of age. Of course, I didn’t have the deep understanding but I simply learned by doing. I made Hi-Fi amps, loudspeakers, blinking LEDs, security alarms with infrared triggering.

My beginning in music and sound.

I was introduced to the piano at a very early age - 7. I attended lessons for many years and though I have never became a very good performer, I have a decent level. At my mid-teens I started listening to rock music. I started dreaming of being a rock star - just like the ones I was seeing on the TV. That is when I formed one of my first long-lasting organisations - my rock band. In time we changed our name for a couple of years but we were known as “Incident” and “Integra”. That is where I first developed my leadership skills and professional attitude to the projects I work on. In the beginning we were struggling with the equipment so I used my experience in electronics to build loudspeakers, mixers and effects. At least it was a start until we could afford some more professional equipment. In my ambition to perform better and create and record more complex music I started learning the MIDI protocol. That is one of the pivotal moments in my life as it kickstarted my professional journey.

Becoming a professional.

Due to my knowledge in music and MIDI I managed to secure a job at Toxity Records - a multimedia company which, at the time, was producing content for mobile phones (dumb phones). I started producing and formatting ringtones. There I acquired the valuable skill of optimisation and automatisation of processes. I developed some scripts in the audio software we were using in order to batch process large amounts of files. That saved countless hours to the team and it freed my time to start working on the development of the music production studio, where we recorded hundreds of artists. This studio is still operational. As a valuable member of the company I was engaged in other projects as well - Music Space - a music-streaming platform promoting local artists, TicketStream - online tickets.

My music career.

In parallel I also formed another music band - Pro.Feel - it was more oriented towards pop and funk inspired by multiple genres. We performed on the national television, we recorded and released a couple of songs, we shot a video which we aired on multiple channels and premiered it on the then national music channel.

At the recording of our video with Pro.Feel

How did I end up in Denmark?

And that leads me to 2008 and the financial crisis. I saw that things are not going very well worldwide. On top of that the release of the smartphones was shrinking our market at Toxity. So I started looking for opportunities outside of the country. That lead me to seeking better education. As I have already got my BSc degree, I wanted to continue and advance my knowledge. That lead me straight to DTU and Denmark. I engaged in a 2-year MSc program.

Coming to Denmark I had the plan on working in the sound industry. However due to the crisis, a lot of the sound recording studios got out of business and the audio companies were not hiring so much. That lead me to pivot and utilise my humble skills in video production that I had acquired as a kid playing with my VHS camera. And step-by-step I learned enough to become a video producer, but also design and produce my own video systems, products and make countless designs.

Well, though it is a long story, it is just a very short excerpt from my life experience. There are so many things I had to skip, because I will go into many deep rabbit holes.

I hope you, at least, have got a good overview of who I am, my skillsets, my mentality and professional attitude, attention to details, ability to keep strong focus while having the broader view and react on any changes in the environment.

Best regards,

George Yankov