M+E Daily

During the June 8 Global Media & Entertainment Day at the Royal Garden Hotel in London — and online via the MESAverse platform — attendees will be greeted with a half-day programme that packs in everything from the latest cloud technologies to new analytics solutions to a live escape room experience.

Here’s what attendees can expect:

• Following welcome remarks, Chris Evans, senior market analyst for Futuresource Consulting, will offer up perspectives on what came out of the April NAB Show, in the presentation “NAB Show Review.” Evans will examine what was showcased at NAB, and how it reflects the innovation taking place in the industry right now, and demonstrated the many partnerships and collaborative efforts which are transforming the media and entertainment sector. To digest all the highlights and trends from the show floor, Futuresource Consulting will provide a comprehensive round-up of the major trends impacting the media and entertainment business.

• The experts at Box will bring their insights into the latest advances in the content industry with multiple presentations. First up is “Transforming M&E with a New Approach to Content” with Diego Dugatkin, SVP and chief product officer, and Jade McQueen, VP and managing director of M&E retail. As workplaces continue to evolve, we’re witnessing the lasting impacts of distributed teams, widespread digital transformation, and an increasingly complex and high-stakes security and regulatory environment.

This new reality represents both a challenge and an opportunity for companies to move to more secure, collaborative, productive ways of working. And at the centre of this opportunity is content. As Box continues its mission to ensure that every organisation can get the most out of their content, it will share how the Content Cloud is transforming the industry.

Later in the programme, “Captivating Your Audience Begins with Content” will see Box’s Eléonore Hébrard, senior solutions engineer for EMEA, offer a technology spotlight presentation, where she’ll share how you can secure your talent, gear up for production and release your masterpiece, by connecting your content across every division.

• The team at Convergent Risks will give vendors ideas on how to simplify the security assessment process, in the presentation “Consolidating the Security Assessment Process for Vendors,” with Convergent Risks’ CEO Chris Johnson and EVP Mathew Gilliat-Smith sharing how Convergent helps media and entertainment players simplify the process.

Vendors in the M&E supply chain often spend more time than they want undergoing multiple security assessments from multiple content owners, and with the increase in cloud and application workflows there even more controls to cover than ever before. One possible solution: mapped control frameworks can help reduce the time and effort involved.

• “No Passports Needed: Content is Traveling Across Borders to Meet Audience Demand” will see Paul Hastings, SVP of global sales for Whip Media, cover the emerging trends around the global distribution of local titles, content that’s attracting viewers’ attention, and what’s needed to make better content planning and strategy decisions to maximise revenue.

As global demand for content and programming increases, a shift in what content resonates with viewers in each country is changing. A recent Whip Media study surfaced that European audiences across France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and the UK, are consuming less U.S. originating content – a downturn of 10 percent. Though the US continues to be the dominant content supplier to Europe, competition for audiences is encouraging platforms to seek out compelling content, from a greater diversity of sources.

A shift in what audiences want to watch is making way for new content to be discovered using new AI enabled tools. For studios and distributors, enhancing the value of titles globally is becoming increasingly more important.

• As Signiant has been at the forefront of the cloud transition both in terms of operating its own SaaS platform at scale and in helping most of the world’s top media companies on their cloud journeys, Signiant’s chief growth officer Rick Capstraw shares some insights learned along the way and common pitfalls to avoid in the presentation “The Five Pitfalls of Cloud & SaaS Economics in Media.”

The media supply chain is more complex than ever with companies delivering more content to more places on tight deadlines and often with limited resources. The cloud can be a great ally in helping navigate those challenges but also introduces new complexities with cloud economics being at the top of that list.

• Hollie Choi, executive director of EIDR, connects the dots between sustainable growth and standards in the presentation “How Standards Lead to Sustainable Growth.” All for profit organisations are measured upon their growth year over year, but at some point sustainable growth can feel elusive, especially when you’re talking about massive scale, such as that in the entertainment industry.

• The panel “The Impact of Virtual Production on M+E” closes things out on stage, looking at the exploding marketplace for virtual production (VP) by gathering participants in the Entertainment Technology Center at the University of Southern California (ETC@USC) “Fathead” project that was presented earlier this year at the Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) Tech Retreat. The proof-of-concept project gathered as many as 40 different companies/systems to engage and collaborate as these new workflow and technologies were adopted/invented. As VP moves from “the few to the many,” we’ll discuss the UK as well as broader European market for the hardware and software tools that drive these new “Smart Stages” and the overall impact to content production on a global scale.

Victoria Bousis, director, screenwriter, producer, creative director and project lead of UME; Chris Evans, senior market analyst with Futuresource Consulting; Erik Weaver, head of virtual and adaptive production for the Entertainment Technology Center at The University of Southern California (ETC@USC); and Erik Wolff, CEO of HALOstage will all take part.

• Attendees will be invited to take part in a physical escape room experience from Xcapism Learning. “You’ve got 15 minutes to beat the hacker,” said Meera Mehta, co-founder and CEO of Xcapism Learning. “Immerse yourself in the latest cyber escape room from Xcapism Learning where your mission is to stop them from stealing your data before it leaks. “

Those who complete the escape room come away with a “golden ticket,” and prizes will be awarded to the fastest team, best team name and more.

“Knowing the key cyber threats is increasingly crucial to the media industry and we’re excited to bring the latest in immersive learning with our new escape room, ‘Beat the Hacker’ to delegates at the Global M&E Day,” Mehta said. “They’ll have just 15 minutes to stop a hacker leaking secret files whilst subliminally learning along the way.

“You’ll come away from the room remembering some of the ways to protect yourself, having had fun along the way. You might even pick up a prize or two!”

To register for the M+E Day event, click here.

The second annual Global Media & Entertainment Day is produced by MESA, in association with the Hollywood IT Society (HITS) and the Smart Content Council and is being presented by Box with sponsorship by Signiant, Convergent Risks, Whip Media, and Xcapism Learning.

To find out more about upcoming MESA events or to get involved as a sponsor please contact Evie Silvers at [email protected].