9 – 9:10 a.m.
Opening Remarks
Guy Finley, President & Chief Executive Officer, MESA
9:10 – 9:15 a.m.
Conference Welcome Remarks
Sinan AlRubaye, Chief Experience Officer, ICVR
Ihar Heneralau, Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, ICVR
9:15 – 9:45 a.m.
OPENING KEYNOTE: Design at the Speed of Innovation
Our Opening Keynote speaker is at the forefront of the next generation of design thinking and is no stranger to the HITS community. He has worked with many of Hollywood’s ‘A-list’ directors, including Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott, David Fincher, to name a few. As well as top brands ranging from Apple, to RED/cameras, Samsung, BMW, and more. Highly regarded in the film, game, advertising, and design industries, with multiple awards and patents, he’s worked on a diverse portfolio of projects ranging from entertainment, to medical, tech, and sustainability. This broad experience drives the core strategic ideas he uses when working with global leaders, international researchers, innovators, and educational institutions. Nurturing creativity to overcome global problems in order to effect change in a real way, he addresses a wide range of topics from current water shortage crisis to the revolution of our educational systems through implementing already existing tech. He opens this year’s HITS:Spring in-person, revisiting how creative strategies can impact organizational breakdowns and provide insights to overcome communication barriers and cross-platform integration. He’ll kick-off the day’s sessions by discussing future design thinking and update us on the exponential acceleration of a “t-shaped world” in a future dominated by Artificial Intelligence.
Jeff Julian, Founder, Lab5
9:45 – 10:15 a.m.
The Impact of IT Across the Studio Org
This session sets up the day’s proceedings with a CIO-level strategy discussion that addresses the challenges our industry faces at the dawn of post-COVID content production and distribution. How has the increased volume of production impacted the global network of systems required to manage and maintain an evolving “slate” with a healthy mix of theatrical, streaming and regional content? How has the pandemic accelerated the continued transformation of the enterprise through executive talent, business unit transparency, as well as the critical exercise of technology integration and evolution. Regardless of business model in creation or exhibition, how are we modernizing our tech stacks and workflows to optimise efficiencies and increase profit? Our opening panel discussion explores this along with our focus on metaverse and virtual production.
Moderator: Guy Finley, President & Chief Executive Officer, MESA
Panelists:
Christina Aguilera, Head of Technology Workflow & Strategy, Amazon Studios
Theresa Miller, Chief Information Officer, Lionsgate
10:15 – 10:45 a.m.
INNOVATION KEYNOTE: Building the Future in an Innovation Lab
This Keynote presentation takes us inside the Innovation Lab at Amazon Studios to look at the methodologies and focus for spearheading new development on both the production and distribution sides of their business. What makes a Lab one of the critical elements in a studio’s strategy for driving experience with creatives, throughout the enterprise or with the end consumer. How do you remain ahead of the curve and driven to goal when you know 70% of your work doesn’t make it to the final product? What feedback loops resonate and inform your next steps as you pioneer entirely new ways to work, create or demonstrate your products? This insightful presentation gives you an exclusive look at the innovative methods behind the transformative madness!
Jonathon Lee, Head of Media Engineering & Innovation, Amazon Studios
10:45 – 10:55
Introduction to Breakout Sessions
Guy Finley, President & Chief Executive Officer, MESA
10:55 – 11:15 a.m.
NETWORKING BREAK
11:15 – 11:45 a.m.
Analyze Your Move to the Cloud, It’s Still an On-Prem Play
With studios and production houses moving assertively towards cloud-based workflows, producers come to realize the true cost of doing business in the cloud: dollars and latency. Challenges such as public versus private clouds, and how best to support low-latency, high-throughput processes have already been addressed. The solution: Edge Data / Cloud Hybrids. Be it virtual or traditional, production already happens within Edge Data Centers. DIT Carts are micro data centers, supporting many processes such as Realtime Visual Effects, Video Assist and Collaboration, and Camera to the Cloud workflows. This workflow continues to depend on low-latency, ever-increasing processing demands, prior to any data reaching a public cloud provider. As a result, on-prem infrastructure gains more importance than ever, not less. This session discusses the functionality of on-premises infrastructure, the role and responsibility facilities have in knowing when to get their clients data to the cloud or on to a local private cloud. The ecosphere of virtual production doesn’t work in a legacy cloud and we’ll describe the value of a hybrid Edge Data/Hyperscale Data Center solution, the two working in concert together, each doing what they do best in support of the process.
Moderator: Sean Tajkowski, Technical Director, MEDCA
Panelists:
Jason Bautista, Solutions Architect, Enterprise Strategy & Technology, CommScope
Tony Grayson, General Manager, Quantum, Compass Datacenters
11:50 a.m. – 12:05 p.m.
How AI and Other Advanced Computing Integrate into Production
Corporations are making considerable investments in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. How well these systems will work and integrate within business units across the organization and also with service provider partners begins with the design and installation of proper data center infrastructure, meeting data industry standards. Workflows in the age of UHD/4K require more connectivity and throughput. Your facility’s design, on-prem storage/compute and connectivity all lead directly to your ability to leverage AI/ML across your business. This session discusses the similarities that a remote or virtual production facility has with Multi-Tenant Data Centers and Edge Data Centers. When it comes to high speed, low latency connectivity, the design and planning approach, can take inspiration from these concepts and this is fast becoming a foundational requirement for any business plan that addresses growth or expansion in our industry.
Jason Bautista, Solutions Architect, Enterprise Strategy & Technology, CommScope
12:10 – 12:40 p.m.
Moving Hollywood to the Cloud: A Packing List
Get this packing list to make your transition to the cloud stays secure. What should your studio vendors prepare for? What resources will they need to keep your content secure? Join Richey May in this session to help your vendors’ move to the cloud safe and effective.
Alvin Tugume, Cybersecurity Engineer, Richey May
12:45 – 2 p.m.
NETWORKING LUNCHEON
2 – 3 p.m.
INNOVATION KEYNOTE: NFTs 101: Who, What and Why Should I Care?
What are NFTs, how do they work and why should I care? Join us as we demystify the metaverse by providing the basics on NFTs and the blockchain and fill you in on the opportunities, challenges and concerns in this space. We will give real world examples of how this emerging market has exploded over the last year and why NFTs are here to stay in Hollywood and beyond.
Jenefer Brown, Executive Vice President & Head of Global Live Interactive & Location-based Entertainment, Lionsgate
Eva Feder, Senior Vice President, Business & Legal Affairs, Lionsgate
3 – 3:30 p.m.
Innovation through Community Collaboration and POCs
The Hollywood Professional Association is the premier community for production and post-production individuals, businesses and technologies. Anchored each year in their legendary “week in the desert” at the HPA Tech Retreat, this community provides fertile ground for cutting-edge collaboration as they regularly host Proof-of-Concepts that engage dozens of member companies and hundreds of participants. This session gathers the leaders of HPA with the champion of their latest POC to discuss the impact that these revolutionary “projects” have made to our industry.
Moderator: Guy Finley, President & Chief Executive Officer, MESA
Panelists:
Kari Grubin, Project Director, SMPTE Rapid Industry Solutions On Set Virtual Production Initiative
Seth Hallen, Managing Director, LightIron
Chuck Parker, Chief Executive Officer, Sohonet
Erik Weaver, Head of Virtual & Adaptive Production, Entertainment Technology Center at The University of Southern California (ETC@USC)
3:30 – 4 p.m.
NETWORKING BREAK
4 – 4:30 p.m.
A Whole New World: How Disney is Meeting Today’s Challenges and Solving for Future Obstacles
Disney is leveraging new ways to streamline procedures and eliminate manual processes to optimize revenues and improve financial operations to meet today’s high-volume, high-velocity content world. This session will discuss the companies’ partnership and evolution which has spanned over a decade; from manually managing financial operations for transactional home entertainment in 2011 to managing all of the complexity of linear, transactional and streaming revenue and content cost management across Disney owned platforms.
Mike Czabala, Director, Accounting, Disney-ABC International Television
Liz Schwan, Vice President, Global Enterprise Account Management, Whip Media
4:30 – 5 p.m.
Building a Framework for Ethical AI
Artificial Intelligence has comes a long way since its early introduction into mainstream IT. This presentation looks at the frameworks driving AI and how they integrate with the algorithms driving increased usage. With increased usage and use cases, it is critical to infuse ethics into the decision-making being performed across any AI integration.
Jessica Graves, Founder, Sefleuria
5 – 5:30 p.m.
CLOSING KEYNOTE: Make Space to Lead
Do you find yourself in firefighter mode, rapidly moving from flare-up to flare-up? Are you continually context-switching between each urgent and evolving priority? Does it feel like you’re drowning in the quicksand of changing customer or leadership needs amidst this global context of uncertainty? From her personal experience as a design leader and her work as a coach to leaders in tech, our keynote speaker shares a leadership model that takes a systemic approach to leading that changes limiting patterns and focuses on flow states. Make space to lead across these four different facets of your leadership: Personal, Projects & Processes, People, and the Organization as a whole. You’ll leave with tools & inspiration to try to shift your mindset towards spaciousness and build in permission to slow down in order to speed up. You’ll learn how to track your energy and time against impact as well as allow focus on both relationships and releases. Attend this mindful CLOSING KEYNOTE and discover how to establish structure for yourself, and your teams, to amplify creative flow.
Introduction: Nadya Ichinomiya, Chairwoman, WiTH Foundation and Executive Director – Head of Agile Center of Excellence, Sony Pictures Entertainment
Tutti Taygerly, Leadership Coach & Author, Taygerly Labs
5:30 – 6 p.m.
Closing Remarks
Guy Finley, President & Chief Executive Officer, MESA
Richard Atkinson, President, CDSA
Ben Stanbury, Chairman, CDSA
5:30 – 7 p.m.
NETWORKING RECEPTION