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Cloud Applications, Smart Production Among Feb. 27 Smart Content West Topics

When the industry’s best and brightest descend on the Luxe Sunset Boulevard Hotel Feb. 27 for the fifth annual Smart Content West Summit, they’ll get a primer on the best practices, industry data initiatives and tools that studios, broadcasters and their business partners are using to make content more identifiable, accessible and useable.

Among the top themes of the day will be latest IT developments. Here’s a quick primer on the topics Smart Content West attendees will encounter:

• Angel Stone, director of production IT for Warner Bros. Technology and Amie Tornincasa, manager of production technology for Netflix, — with an introduction by Shawn Przybilla, M&E solutions architect for Amazon Web Services — will be on hand for the panel “Smart Production Technologies at Work,” which looks at the advanced technology and platforms that create smart content to optimize how entertainment is being made.

• Following that panel, Przybilla will examine practical applications of artificial intelligence in the cloud, and look at what resulted from AWS’s move of democratizing computer vision by making it easy for developers to extract meaningful metadata from content with managed deep-learning services, in the presentation “Practical Applications of Machine Learning for Image and Video in the Cloud.”

• Richard Whittington, SVP and GM of media and entertainment industry cloud solutions for SAP, will share why media companies need to move away from the traditional value chain to a model where the consumer is at the center, and do so by using the right tools, in the presentation “How Direct to Consumer is Changing the Rules for M&E.”

Other Smart Content West presentations and panels will include:

• The Metadata Madness luncheon will have attendees hearing updates from trade groups and others regarding current industry metadata needs, and the standards and best practices being formed or already in place.

• “I Want My Talent ID” will be presented by Eric Iverson, chief information officer for the Creative Artists Agency (CAA), looking at the industry’s digital identifier work for actors, screenwriters and directors often working across many companies.

• “Smart Minds: Neurodiversity in the Workplace” with Tom Roach, SVP of technology for Warner Bros. Studios.

• MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe and Ted Farnsworth, chairman and CEO of MoviePass parent company Helios & Matheson Analytics, for the day’s keynote address “Innovation Across the Entertainment Industry; the MoviePass Effect.”

• The panel “Data, Marketing and Analytics – A New Paradigm” with Jason Lambert, executive director of content licensing and metadata for Sony Pictures Entertainment, Greg Eansor, senior director of account success and acquisition for MicroStrategy, and Avi Swerdlow, manager of research and development for Disney/ABC Television Group.

• “Using Consumer ‘Watch Data’ to Grow Your OTT Service” with Jim Clements, director of business development for NeuLion.

• The session “Interactive Media: By The Numbers”with John Canning, chair of the Producers Guild of America’s (PGA) New Media Council and Mike Bloxham, SVP of global media and entertainment for Magid.

• Ad-ID’s Geller will moderate the panel “Smart Advertising: Advancing the Medium (for the Message)” with Mark London, VP of advanced ad products for FOX Networks Group and Chris Pizzurro, head of sales and marketing for Canoe.

Produced by the Media & Entertainment Services Alliance (MESA), in association with the Hollywood IT Society (HITS) and the Smart Content Council, Smart Content West is sponsored by Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, MicroStrategy, NeuLion, GrayMeta, MarkLogic, SAP, Bob Gold & Associates. Association partners include Ad-ID, DEG: The Digital Entertainment Group, the Entertainment Identifier Registry Association, Entertainment Merchants Association, and the Entertainment Technology Center @ USC.

To become a Smart Content Summit sponsor contact: Christian Calson at [email protected].

To register or find out more visit SmartContentSummit.com.