Program

(as of March 9, 2022 and subject to change)

Event Schedule:

8 a.m.: Venue Opens
9 a.m.: Welcome/Smart Content Sessions
10:30 a.m.: Networking Break
11 a.m.: Breakout Sessions (Multi-track Technology Showcases)
12:30 p.m.: Networking Luncheon/Lunch & Learn LIVE!
2 p.m.: EIDR APM Sessions
3:30 p.m.: Networking Break
4 p.m.: EIDR APM/Smart Stages Sessions
5:30 p.m.: WiTH Keynote
6 p.m.: Closing/Networking Reception

 

Event Program:

 

Smart Content Summit:

 
8:45 – 8:55 a.m.
Opening Remarks
Guy Finley, President, MESA
Mary Yurkovic, Director, Smart Content

 

8:55 – 9 a.m.
Conference Welcome Remarks
Carol Hanley, President, Whip Media

 

9 – 9:15 a.m.
SMART KEYNOTE: Why Map the Global Supply Chain for the Entertainment Industry?
When you think of the ecosystem servicing the M+E industry you can imagine the volume of companies who work together at various levels of synchronicity, integration and transparency across their platforms around the world. But how wide and deep does the global entertainment supply chain really run? We set the stage for the Smart Content Summit with a mind-blowing look at the international Media & Entertainment “universe” of content creation and distribution. Our Opening Keynote speaker will discuss scaling data across the enterprise using AI, data and metadata standards and provide some key benefits and use cases around aggregating this kind of information. Join us to hear this futuristic outlook about where we can evolve as an industry.
Atul Phadnis, Founder, Vitrina AI

 

9:15 – 9:35 a.m.
Intelligent Data Governance: International Solutions for Global Organizations
Here is the gorilla in the room… some top leadership most likely believes data governance is just something to make data systems work better. But if data is an asset, then it seems you need to engage more than a few stakeholders. Starting or “re-starting” a Data Governance strategy can be challenging. Join us for this lively session where DG advocated share their journey on how establishing DG capabilities that will actually work.They will discuss some defining the value proposition of a program, determining what elements and capabilities of managing data you need to bring to bear and identify critical success factors while helping you avoid typical roadblocks and pitfalls.
Moderator: Mary Yurkovic, Director, Smart Content
Panelists:
Anthony Accardo, Executive Director, Product Management, Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution
Ashleigh Faith, Director, Knowledge Graph, Semantic Search, & MLAI, EBSCO Information Services
Meg Morrissey, Co-Chair, LMT

 

9:35 – 9:45 a.m.
Smart Standards: Update from LMT
Yonah Levenson, Co-Chair, LMT
Meg Morrissey, Co-Chair, LMT

 

9:45 – 10:15 a.m.
Smart Licensing; The Power to Predict Content Performance
Today’s high-volume, high-velocity global content environment has challenged the way media and entertainment organizations buy and sell content. As companies play catch-up with the growth of streaming services, it’s imperative for operators and distributors to find smarter, more efficient ways to improve the current process of content licensing and planning and make better decisions. With fresh tools that can ignite the right connections between content buyers and sellers, using a data-driven approach and predictive insights, companies can now accelerate their dealmaking and maximize revenues. It’s a new day for content licensing!
Sherry Brennan, Executive Vice President & General Manager, Whip Media Exchange, Whip Media

 

10:15 – 10:30 a.m.
Smart Supply Chain: The Journey of Accelerating Automation in the Cloud by Investing in the Links
The digital transformation that our industry is experiencing is driving investments in end-to-end efficiencies inside the supply chain. But with the increased investment there is a growing expectation from every link in the chain to provide better insights in the process, that ultimately culminates in the end-user of the platform. As data and processes become more efficient, more reliable, and more transparent, the opportunities to expand the linkage to the audience increases the bottom line. In this session we will get a snap shot of one journey by discussing renewed investments in evolving production chain into cloud development-driven environment that keeps up with the increasing demand across business units for access to critical content and data that drives well informed decisions. We will also share the visions of the ideal state of this odyssey as it evolves.
Justin Briars, Director, Studio Products & Services, Fox Entertainment

 

10:30 – 11 a.m.
NETWORKING BREAK

 

11 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Smart Breakout Sessions (Multi-track Technology Showcases)
Subject matter experts share innovative ideas, processes, and perspectives in an interactive and intimate way. The audience are free to choose which topic/area they find most interesting on two separate tracks:
STAGE A
STAGE C

 

12:30 – 2 p.m.
NETWORKING LUNCHEON/MESA Lunch & Learn LIVE! – STAGE B:
Host: Richard Atkinson, President, CDSA
Guest Speaker: Ashleigh Faith, Director, Knowledge Graph, Semantic Search, & MLAI, EBSCO Information Services

 

EIDR Annual Participant Meeting – STAGE A:


 
2 – 2:20 p.m.
EIDR APM Opening Remarks
Hollie Choi, Executive Director, EIDR

 

2:10 – 2:15 p.m.
EIDR APM Welcome Remarks
Rob Delf, Chief Executive Officer, Fabric

 

2:15 – 2:45 p.m.
Introduction of the 2022 Board of Directors
Our Board of Directors gathers in the afternoon to kick off our meeting with an outline of EIDR’s strategic vision for collaboration in the next decade of operations. This APM opening session addresses the goals of speeding commerce, decreasing costs, increasing discoverability, and improving consumer experiences by connecting content producers and platforms with industry-curated unique identification of the fundamental building blocks of movie and TV distribution.
Moderator: Hollie Choi, Executive Director, EIDR
Panelists:
Greg Geier, Senior Vice President, Title Stewardship, Systems & Workflow, Sony Pictures, and President, EIDR
Ronda Haralson, Technical Operations Director, Global Title Management, NBCUniversal
Eric Iverson, Head of Product, Amazon Studios
Scott Maddux, Vice President, Business Development, Xperi
Sarah Nix, Senior Director, Archives & Global Data Governance, Paramount

 

2:45 – 3 p.m.
Working Group: Catalog Mergers and Acquisitions
As media companies merge, split, and acquire catalogs from one another, someone must deal with the intellectual property and its metadata. The process can be complex and time consuming and it comes with unique challenges. The EIDR Working Group for Catalog Mergers & Acquisitions shares some advice and lessons learned.
Nona Janssen Walls, Senior Principal Consultant, Slalom

 

3 – 3:30 p.m.
When Streaming Goes International
As streaming services spread into the international markets, the teams making it happen face unique challenges and solutions. Some are foreseeable but some are not.
Moderator: Hollie Choi, Executive Director, EIDR
Panelists:
Alisa Joseph, Senior Vice President, Business Strategy & Development, Whip Media
Sara Nix, Senior Director, Archives & Global Data Governance, Paramount
Steve Rosenberg, Chief Commercial Officer, Premiere Digital

 

3:30 – 4 p.m.
NETWORKING BREAK

 

4 – 4:30 p.m.
Identifier Interoperability – The Future of Standards
Industry standards tend to be specific to workflow and business segment. Advertising uses one ID, while distribution uses another. Registries developed around their corresponding workflows with little to no collaboration with the others. Different standards groups have been working behind the scenes to simplify and align with one another in an effort to standardize themselves, to benefit the industry as a whole.
Moderator: Matt Turner, Chair, Applied Data Working Group
Panelists:
Hollie Choi, Executive Director, EIDR
Yonah Levenson, Co-Chair, LMT
Mary Yurkovic, Director, Smart Content

 

4:30 – 4:45 p.m.
EIDR Enabled Broadcast Automation
Automation in broadcast presents many challenges, especially when you consider the fluidity of live television. Automation can be achieved using a combination of EIDR IDs and Ad-ID’s.
Guy Hadland, Chief Technology Officer, Unisoft

 

4:45 – 5 p.m.
Expanding Globally – What Tools are Needed to Achieve Long Term Success?
A exploratory session looking at why and how streaming services can compete both domestically and internationally to enable sustainable growth and success!
Dan Meyer, Sales Manager, BeBanjo

 

5 – 5:15 p.m.
EIDR Kicks Off Analytics
EIDR,’s registry has, from the very beginning, been a clear value proposition for every member and user. For twelve years, our members have registered their content, amassing more than 2.5 million records. Now, EIDR will provide the tools to utilize this data within your business workflows. This session looks at what’s been built, what it does now and where we are going with this project.
Moderator: Richard Kroon, Director of Technical Operations, EIDR
Panelists:
Jonathan De Armas, Owner & Solutions Architect, Island Pitch
Jim Whelehan, Sales Director, M&E, MicroStrategy

 

5:15 – 5:30 p.m.
Automate your EIDR – Triggered
EIDR registration doesn’t have to be a manual process. Title management and version management workflows have natural triggers to automated EIDR registrations.
Moderator: Hollie Choi, Executive Director, EIDR
Panelists:
Murthy Addiredi, Senior Manager, Software Engineering, UnitedHealth Group
Richard Kroon, Director of Technical Operations, EIDR

 

5:30 p.m.
EIDR APM Closing Remarks
Hollie Choi, Executive Director, EIDR

 

MEDCA/Smart Stages – STAGE C:


 
3:50 – 4 p.m.
MEDCA Opening Remarks
Guy Finley, President, MESA
Lisa Griffin, Executive Director, MEDCA

 

4 – 4:30 p.m.
Two Years Later: Making Virtual a Reality
Just before the pandemic started, the best and brightest minds in virtual production were spending weeks to craft and create just a few minutes of virtual production content. The complex hardware infrastructure required, in combination with the advanced workflows needed to make the hardware and software communicate instantly and in real-time, is a mind-boggling leap into the future. Fast-forward to where we are today, as an industry, from a cloud, data, and infrastructure perspective and you can see that efficient virtual productions that utilize remote tools and workforce are becoming commonplace and driving new tools for collaboration, connectivity, and increased throughput regardless of the use case or environment. The conversation from the desert continues as this session looks at where we are heading as the challenges turned into victories and virtual production continues to proliferate in M&E.
Moderator: Guy Finley, President & CEO, MESA
Panelists:
Sinan Al-Rubaye, Chief Experience Officer, ICVR
Victoria Bousis, MBA, JD, Founder & Creative Director, UME & Director
Ryan L’Italien, Director of Solutions, Perforce

 

4:30 – 5 p.m.
Smart Connected Stages: The Great Build is Underway!
With Hollywood’s frenetic adoption of virtual production, remote technologies and their accompanying data-centric workflows, media & entertainment is moving rapidly and deeper into the well established paradigm of the data industry. Data is the data center industry’s realm. Multiple supporting verticals and their governing bodies protect the data industry, including architectural, electrical, environmental, connectivity, security, governmental, fire & safety, and more. As a result, robust sets of infrastructural standards and practices are pre-established and readily available for the Hollywood community to adopt and implement. Lack of awareness puts production stages and post production facilities at great risk, both financial & security, and ultimately customer service. This session gathers the players at the forefront of the “next great build” to discuss the challenges and opportunities in this emerging industry ecosystem.
Co-Moderator: Lisa Griffin, Executive Director, MEDCA
Co-Moderator: Sean Tajkowski, Technical Director, MEDCA and Founder, Technical Planning
Panelists:
Anna Claiborne, Chief Technology Officer & Co-Founder, PacketFabric
Chris LeDoux, Visual Effects Supervisor, Crafty Apes VFX
Tim LeDoux, Visual Effects Supervisor, Crafty Apes VFX
Eric Rigney, Executive Vice President, MEDCA
A.J. Wedding, Co-Founder, Orbital Studios

 

5 – 5:30 p.m.
What is MEDCA and Why it Matters to M&E’s Future
As “IP everything” continues to proliferate across small and large installs around the world, data centers (large or small) are the heart of the transformation. The “homegrown” approach is showing signs of weakness as more companies are building at an exponential pace. Smart, connected stages and remote connectivity require “industry standard” build outs for interoperability and the long term evolution of the production process. But what “industry standard” should we reference and aspiring to when 90% of today’s M&E workflows are based on data-centric processes while most stages are built on legacy platforms which were integrated out of necessity, rather than a structured engineered approach. Where can we LEARN from the experts to make the application of these products within M+E successful? MEDCA’s mission is to provide continuing education, information, and best practices to develop a good foundation for the explosive growth in M&E data centers that we are seeing around the world. This session discusses how this initiative was formed and has taken hold over the past 6-months since its introduction.
Moderator: Guy Finley, President & Chief Executive Officer, MESA
Panelists:
Lisa Griffin, Executive Director, MEDCA
Eric Rigney, Vice President, MEDCA
Sean Tajkowski, Technical Director, MEDCA
 

Closing Keynote – STAGE B:


 
5:30 – 6 p.m.
WiTH CLOSING KEYNOTE: Unleash Your Joy! 5 Ingredients to Living a Joy-Fueled Life
Have you ever looked at someone and wondered how they’re so damn happy? Our closing keynote speaker has been asked that on more than one occasion and her response always shocks people. In this high-energy, inspiring and enJOYable talk, you will not only find out her secret to happiness, but also the key ingredients needed to meet life’s uncertain moments with unwavering joy! Shari Alyse has been described as “caffeine for your soul”.
Shari Alyse, “America’s Joy Magnet”, #1 Best-Selling Author and TEDx & Inspirational Keynote Speaker

 

6 p.m.
Conference Closing Remarks/Networking Reception
 

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