M+E Daily

In addition to Metadata Madness East and the Content Protection Summit East, the inaugural Microsoft Media & Entertainment Day July 25 will see a pair of Microsoft-hosted tracks of panels and presentations.

First, in the morning, attendees at the Microsoft Technology Center (MTC) on Eighth Avenue in New York City can hear about the latest in AI, Machine Learning and Bots. Then in the afternoon, Microsoft will present Video in the Microsoft Cloud.

Here’s a look at what’s on tap:

• At 9:15 a.m., Dale Linneman, program manager for Microsoft will lead a discussion on “Understanding How Bots are Used in M&E,” looking at how the technology can be used to automate processes and enable efficiency for businesses. Graeme Hackland, CIO for Williams Martini Racing and Jon Theuerkauf, managing director and group head of performance excellence for BNY Mellon, are set to discuss.

• In “Making AI Accessible to All Organizations” at 9:45 a.m., Rajeev Dutt, CEO of DimensionalMechanics, will share how people without experience in artificial intelligence can still put AI to use to solve business challenges.

• The 10 a.m. keynote “Azure’s Decision Service and How it Impacts Humans” sees Markus Cozowicz, with Microsoft Research in New York, and Jonathan Crockett, technical lead of R&D for Complex Media, will share how Azure’s Custom Decision Service (CDS) uses reinforcement learning for personalizing content, by understanding context from the information users provide.

• To close the morning track, Martin Wahl, ‎principal program manager of Azure Media Services, will offer up the keynote presentation “Video Analytics – Understanding What’s in Your Content,” with a focus on the new cognitive video indexer service from Microsoft.

• The afternoon Video in the Microsoft Cloud track kicks off at 2 p.m. with welcome remarks from Tony Emerson, worldwide media lead for Microsoft, and is followed by the panel “Secure Rendering in the Cloud,” which has experts discussing the benefits of rendering projects in cloud environment. Joel Sloss, senior program manager for Microsoft Azure, Jeremy Smith, CTO for Jellyfish Pictures and Daniel Tutino, product manager for Autodesk, will be on hand.

• The 3 p.m. keynote “Optimizing Video Workflows” has Craig Dwyer, senior director of Avid Technology’s Global Center of Excellence, discussing how media organizations and creative professionals are looking to the cloud more often than ever before for full-scale media production, and how the Avid MediaCentral Platform, via Microsoft Azure, helps them be flexible.

• In the presentation “Real-Time Research Made Easy!” Andy Pongratz, founder, CEO and CMO for x.news, will showcase the latest advancements in that company’s platform, which helps news rooms verify incoming news feeds and helps avoid today’s “fake news” pitfalls.

The Microsoft Media & Entertainment Day is being produced by the Media & Entertainment Services Alliance (MESA), in association with the Content Delivery & Security Association (CDSA), the Hollywood IT Society (HITS) and the Smart Content Council, with sponsorship by Ooyala, ZoneTV, NAGRA, NexGuard, Avid Technology, Blue Prism, Dimensional Mechanics, LiveArena, TiVo, x.news, Affinio, Akamai, Sohonet, MediaSilo and Microsoft Azure.

To register or for more information, click here, or to showcase your company’s solutions and services at Microsoft Media & Entertainment Day contact: Christian Calson at [email protected], 310-945-6284.