Leslie Ellis is owner of Ellis Edits Inc. and Translation-Please.com, a Denver-based analysis/writing firm specializing in the technologies used in cable, multichannel and broadband delivery systems. Specific focus is “translating” the dense language surrounding the technologies and technology strategies of service providers, and particularly cable service providers.

In the late summer of 2000, she began writing the weekly “Translation Please” column for Multichannel News, a leading cable trade weekly, The column aims to demystify what is a motherlode of technology terms common in cable, broadband, and satellite conversations. (They’re all archived on this web site).
Ellis wrote the A-to-Z dictionary “Definitive Broadband: Next Generation,” in November, 2005, as a follow-on to “Definitive Broadband,” published in May 2001. She co-authored “The Field Guide to Broadband,” published in October 2002. Additionally, Ellis was a contributing author for the September, 2003 release of “Planet Broadband,” which describes a vision of the future as foretold by cable modem inventor Rouzbeh Yassini.

Since 2001, Ms. Ellis serves as Senior Technology Advisor to the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing (CTAM).
She received the National Cable Telecommunication Association’s Vanguard Award for Associates & Affiliates in 2005. She received the Rocky Mountain Women in Cable & Telecom chapter’s “Woman of the Year” of Technology in 2007. In 2010, she was named Woman of the Year by the Society of Cable & Telecommunications Engineers and national Women in Cable and Telecommunications. Previously, Ellis was Paul Kagan Associates’ Senior Technology Analyst. Ellis was Senior Technology Editor for Multichannel News/Broadband Week from 1994-1998, and Managing Editor of Communications Engineering & Design magazine from 1990-1994. She began in the cable industry in 1987, writing hardware and software manuals for an ad insertion company.

Ellis Edits was founded by Leslie Ellis in 2000. Her rules of engagement are simple: Interesting work for interesting people. Learn more…

Since the beginning of cable television, in the 1950s, competitors regularly emerge that promise to “kill the cable industry.” First there was microwave antenna / MMDS, in the 1970-80s. Then satellite-delivered services (DirecTV, DISH), in the ’90s. Then telco competition (Verizon FiOs, AT&T Uverse), in the late ’90s. In each case, the headlines and predictions were breathless and dire — but impossible to sample, short of moving to the geographic area with those services, and subscribing to them.

Over-the-top video is different. The the streaming hardware and software services are reasonably easy and inexpensive to sample. For that reason, in 2010, Leslie and then-intern Kirsten Nicholas embarked on a mission to build an over-the-top video lab, in a back room of the office. It started out with a “connected TV,” an AppleTV, and a Roku box (AND WHAT ELSE SARA). Today, the lab is run by Sara Dirkse, who blogs about it on this website — click to “Thursdays in the Lab” for the full skinny.

The purpose of the lab is simple: To see, with our own eyes, what these products and services are all about. What’s good about them? What’s not so good? At any given time, we track more than 20 hardware streamers and software services.

When not writing, talking, researching and living in the vast pool of technological jargon that lives and grows in cable television, satellite and broadband networks, Leslie is a passionate advocate for honeybees. Learn more…