As of March 3, 2017 (subject to change)
EVENT SCHEDULE:
10 a.m.: Registration Opens
11 a.m.: General Sessions Begin
11:30 a.m.: Featured Keynote
12 p.m.: Metadata Madness Luncheon
3 p.m.: Networking Break
6 p.m.: Networking Reception
CONFERENCE SESSIONS:
10:45 – 11 a.m.
Opening Remarks
Guy Finley, Executive Director, MESA
Mary Yurkovic, Director, Smart Content Council, MESA
11 – 11:30 a.m.
Smart Content: Capturing Data from Inception to Infinity
On the screen, in storylines and futuristic tales, Hollywood has a fascination with artificial intelligence (AI). But off-screen, as content moves through various business units and supply chains, there are considerable challenges when approaching data as a continuos thread that moves along with any project. With the advancement of emerging integrated technologies, organizations need to leverage the most advanced software tools now to keep up with the flood of data gathered along the creation chain, as well as during distribution, to capitalize on the everyday consumer content demands. Making content “smart” from the inception of a project through direct delivery and culminating in a long-term archive/asset management strategy is the only way to advance the monetization of the media supply chain in an efficient and effective manner.
Panelists:
Jason Lambert, Executive Director, Content Licensing & Metadata, Sony Pictures Entertainment
Ryan McKeague, Video Workflow Manager, Amazon Studios
Thomas Stilling, Vice President, Global Enterprise Operations, 20th Century Fox
David Sugg, Executive Director, Digital Media Systems, Warner Bros.
11:30 a.m. – 12 p.m.
KEYNOTE: An Inconvenient (Data) Truth – Integrating Data Across All Business Units
Master data is the most important asset any content company has to scale their business future. An inconvenient truth is that the data structure behind many media & entertainment companies simply isn’t ready for prime time. Without aggressive adoption of standardized metadata structures across media, agencies and brand owners, we are headed toward our own “digital global warming.” Experts explain the importance of a comprehensive data strategy and you’ll learn the key developments that will help get your C-level leadership get on board.
Amber Case, Author & MIT Fellow
12 – 1:15 p.m.
Metadata Madness Luncheon
The Smart Content Summit features our annual Metadata Madness Luncheon, where industry associations report on how they are actively making sense out of their members’ metadata needs. What metadata standards and best practices are being formed or are in place? And, most importantly, how they are working together by evolving the entertainment supply chain to eliminate inefficiencies and create new opportunities for their content. Lunch and learn from these experts:
Don Dulchinos, Executive Director, Entertainment Identifier Registry (EIDR)
Eric Hanson, Digital Media Industry Evangelist, Entertainment Merchants Association (EMA)
Philip Hodgetts, Metadata Guru and President, Lumberjack Systems
Joshua Kolden, C4 Framework Architect, Entertainment Technology Center at the University of Southern California (ETC@USC)
Randal Luckow, Board Secretary, Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) and Director of Archives and Asset Management, HBO
Dave Lindsay, Member, Technology & Operations Committee, DEG: The Digital Entertainment Group and Director, Operations Strategy, The Walt Disney Company
1:15 – 1:30 p.m.
A View from the Frontier: How AI and Neuroscience are Changing Entertainment
The entertainment industry is facing a landscape of unprecedented complexity and opportunity. The explosion of content, audience segments and firehoses of data are all creating new challenges and calling for new tools. At the same time, machine learning and artificial intelligence, as well as neuroscience, have come forward with powerful methods and tools that could, and will, address the industry’s largest concerns. Led by one of the leading practitioners of the field, this presentation will provide an overview of these new methods and tools, drawn from his own research and development efforts.
Yves Bergquist, Program Director, Data & Analytics, Entertainment Technology Center at the University of Southern California (ETC@USC)
1:30 – 2 p.m.
Smart Machines: Artificial Intelligence Meets Media & Entertainment
Hollywood is embarking on a new frontier. Advanced technologies such as machine learning, AI and cognitive computing, are forcing many traditional studios and networks into uncharted territory. With content creation disruptors such as Hulu and Netflix having a larger digital engineering team per production, who is maturing with their technology and creating new opportunities as a result? Millennials inherently embrace technology, but is Hollywood sophisticated enough to make the proper investment in advanced technology to meet the demand of these new consumers? Can they make the transition from their mature legacy system to embracing these technologies as they are maturing in the marketplace? This session sees thought leaders and executives discussing the path to evaluate and integrate this new approach within the M&E space.
Moderator: Jay Tucker, Executive Director, UCLA Anderson School of Business Management
Panelists:
Yves Bergquist, Program Director, Data & Analytics, Entertainment Technology Center at the University of Southern California (ETC@USC)
Amber Case, Author & MIT Fellow
Philip Hodgetts, Metadata Guru and President, Lumberjack Systems
Michael Jeffrey, Vice President, Client Engagement and Partnerships, TiVo
Josh Wiggins, Chief Commercial Officer, GrayMeta
2 – 2:15 p.m.
Leveraging AI for High Scale Indexing of Visual Media
Amazon Rekognition makes it easy to extract meaningful metadata from visual content. By leveraging Rekognition’s integration with Amazon S3 and Lambda, developers can automate the analysis of large scale digital media libraries with only a few lines of code. Video content can be indexed to per-second levels of granularity, making search and discovery capabilities more powerful than ever.
David Pearson, Technical Business Development Manager, AI Services Team, Amazon Web Services
2:15 – 2:45 p.m.
Content + Data Science = Netflix
Netflix will spend six billion dollars this year on content, with an increasingly large portion spent on Originals. As they continue to expand their Original Content within Hollywood, their goal is to leverage Netflix’s world class data and data science to make the best decisions possible. This presentation explores areas and approaches taken that embrace “data as a culture” within Netflix and offers insight into how the company structures data, along with the insights it provides, throughout the content creation and distribution process.
Todd Holloway, Director, Content Science and Algorithms, Netflix
2:45 – 3:15 p.m.
Smart Planet: Advanced Workflows that Drive Operational Excellence
We’re working in a global business — studios and networks continue their work on operational excellence by meeting the challenge of integrating data across all business units around the world. Are you working with your legal department to create smart contracts that can follow a production throughout its supply chain and automatically track and fulfill your financial obligations in each region? What data and metadata are factored into your distribution plan that can be driven by a vizualized data-set socialized to senior management? This session sees leading executives discuss their groundbreaking work, within different business unit silos and international locales, that synthesize and effectuate the data captured as content moves quickly through these international distribution chains.
Moderator: Guy Finley, Executive Director, MESA
Panelists:
Ryan C. Benson, Vice President, Digital Media Services, Lionsgate
Simon James, Vice President, Sales Engineering, NeuLion
Jason Kassin, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, FilmTrack
3:15 – 3:45 p.m.
NETWORKING BREAK
3:45 – 4:15 p.m.
Smart Production: Using a Data Hub for Film and Television
Attempting to manage and automate data collection during the creation stage of your content’s lifecycle can sometimes feel like a losing battle as the demands of creatives constantly move forward. When considering the multiple, disparate software applications that have been developed to assist production teams, you realize that many existing tools don’t share even the most basic information in a meaningful way. This session looks at how New Regency created a software driven, cloud-based production data hub that is enabling creatives to work seamlessly on their productions, in a comfortable UI/UX driven environment, with executives able to harness this critical production data to analyze, utilize and inform their business decisions such as residuals management and product placement data visualization/reporting.
Moderator: Guy Finley, Executive Director, MESA
Panelists:
Jukka Paajanen, Technology Innovation Lead, Avanade
Eliot Sakhartov, Account Technology Strategist, Microsoft
Nancy Silver, Principal Solutions Architect, MarkLogic
Lulu Zezza, Production Executive
Introduction: Matt Turner, Chief Technology Officer, MarkLogic
4:15 – 4:45 p.m.
Video Metadata Platforms: How to Futureproof Automation
With all the promises and product demos from software and service providers around automated metadata and machine learning, the task of planning a roadmap that integrates these technology developments into existing workflows can be overwhelming for content creators. This session will cover a modular, and futureproof, descriptive metadata architecture and explain how Disney is implementing machine learning and automation to avoid lock-in, with any particular tool or platform, as these processes evolve.
Anthony Accardo, Director, R&D and Metadata, Disney ABC Television Group
Miquel Farre, Manager, R&D Technology, Disney ABC Television Group
4:45 – 5:15 p.m.
Smart Supply Chain: How Asset Management Can Make Your Content Work Smarter
DAM, MAM, PAM, BAM – whatever flavor of asset management you use, internal/external or if you use more than one system/tool, are they really intended to be the hub for content distribution? Any “connected” software tools (metadata, master data, warehousing, etc.) are just as vital to a “future-proof” content supply chain. Specific individual solutions may tackle particular challenges with various forms of content, however, there are methodologies that are critical when setting up your software suite. This includes a friendly interface and user experience that needs to be embraced by both the people and processes across business units. The experts in this session will discuss the truths of the various forms of asset management, related tools as well as the workflow and human factors of a complete, integrated digital supply chain.
Moderator: Mary Yurkovic, Director, Smart Content
Panelists:
Matt Corodimas, Media, Entertainment & Creative, Nuxeo
Kyle Hufford, Director, Digital Asset Management, Monster Energy
Callum Hughes, Senior Solutions Architect, Amazon Studios
Corinne Whitney, Director of Content Services, Crawford Media Services
5:15 – 6 p.m.
Featured WiTH Session: Smart Ways to Reach and Engage with Consumers
This panel looks at the ways entertainment and technology companies are evolving the direct-to-consumer relationship by leveraging data insights to make a more meaningful (and monetizable) content connection. Personalization, social integration, discovery and engagement all drive deeper data strategies that will constantly evolve by analysis of data returned, across multiple business units, through consumption across all devices.
Moderator: Mary Yurkovic, Director, Smart Content
Panelists:
Su Kwon Kelsay, Executive Director, Consumer Intelligence, Warner Bros. Entertainment
Duan Peng, Ph.D., Executive Director of Analytics, Fandango
Introduction:
Nadya Ichinomiya, Director, IT, Television Marketing & Research, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Co-Founder, Women in Technology: Hollywood (WiTH)
Rachel Souder-Arguedas, Director, Business Relationship Management, Home Entertainment Information Technology, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Co-Founder, Women in Tehnology: Hollywood (WiTH)
6 p.m.
Closing Remarks
Guy Finley, Executive Director, MESA
Mary Yurkovic, Director, Smart Content Council, MESA
6 – 7 p.m.
NETWORKING RECEPTION
