Exclusives

At the March 9 Smart Content Summit West event in Los Angeles, executives from MarkLogic will look at the benefits of using a data hub for film and TV production; an expert with Amazon Web Services share how his company is extract meaningful metadata from visual content; and reps from TiVo, GrayMeta and more will look at how artificial intelligence is affecting the media and entertainment space.

Media and entertainment executives in attendance will also be treated to insights from experts from nearly every major studio, Netflix, Amazon, Microsoft Azure, Nuxeo, FilmTrack, NeuLion, Avanade and Crawford Media Services, covering everything from the smart content space to the latest standards making the digital supply chain more manageable.

“Now in its third year, Smart Content Summit West will again feature our popular Metadata Madness Luncheon and will focus on how data and new AI technologies are transforming the entertainment supply chain,” said Guy Finley, executive director of the Media & Entertainment Services Alliance (MESA).

Here’s a look at what attendees at the Luxe Sunset Boulevard Hotel have to look forward to:

• The opening panel of the conference — “Smart Content: Capturing Data from Inception to Infinity” — sees reps from Sony, Amazon, Fox and Warner Bros. sharing their thoughts on how content is being made “smart,” from the inception of a project through direct delivery, culminating in a long-term archive and asset management strategy. Jason Lambert, executive director of content licensing and metadata for Sony Pictures Entertainment; Ryan McKeague, video workflow manager for Amazon Studios; Thomas Stilling, VP of global enterprise operations for 20th Century Fox; and David Sugg, executive director of digital media systems for Warner Bros. will be on hand.

• Amber Case — TED Speaker, author, fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, and visiting researcher at the MIT Media Lab — will be the keynote speaker for Smart Content Summit West, and her presentation — “An Inconvenient (Data) Truth – Integrating Data Across All Business Units” — will look at how master data has become the most important asset for content companies aiming to scale their businesses. And the “inconvenient” part media and entertainment companies need to accept, according to Case, is that the data structures many are using are failing, due to a lack of standardized metadata structures.

• The annual Metadata Madness Luncheon will have industry associations reporting on how they’re actively making sense out of their members’ metadata needs, and sharing which metadata standards and best practices are being formed. Don Dulchinos, executive director of the Entertainment Identifier Registry (EIDR); Eric Hanson, digital media industry evangelist for the Entertainment Merchants Association (EMA); Philip Hodgetts, metadata guru and president of Lumberjack Systems; Joshua Kolden, C4 framework architect for the Entertainment Technology Center at the University of Southern California (ETC@USC); Randal Luckow, board secretary for the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) and director of archives and asset management at HBO; and Dave Lindsay, member of the Technology & Operations Committee for DEG: The Digital Entertainment Group and director of operations strategy for The Walt Disney Co., will all present.

• In the presentation “A View from the Frontier: How AI and Neuroscience are Changing Entertainment,” Yves Bergquist, program director for data and analytics at ETC@USC, will share how the explosion of content, audience segments and influx of data are creating new issues for the industry, and how machine learning, artificial intelligence and neuroscience are proving to be useful tools to handle these new challenges.

• Bergquist will then take part in the panel “Smart Machines: Artificial Intelligence Meets Media & Entertainment,” moderated by Jay Tucker, executive director of the UCLA Anderson School of Business Management. That discussion will look at whether Hollywood is making the right, sophisticated investments in advanced technologies to meet new consumer demands. Bergquist and Tucker will be joined by Case, Hodgetts, Michael Jeffrey, ‎VP of client engagement and partnerships for TiVo, and Josh Wiggins, chief commercial officer for GrayMeta.

• In the presentation “Leveraging AI for High Scale Indexing of Visual Media,” David Pearson, technical business development manager for the AI services team at Amazon Web Services, will offer up the latest on Amazon Rekognition, the technology that when integrated with Amazon S3 and Lambda helps developers automate the analysis of large scale digital media libraries, with only a few lines of code.

• Todd Holloway, director of content science and algorithms for Netflix, will share how the streaming media giant is leveraging data and data science to make the best decisions possible when it comes to content creation and distribution, in the presentation “Content + Data Science = Netflix.”

• In “Smart Planet: Advanced Workflows that Drive Operational Excellence,” panelists will offer a look into their work into data capture as content moves through different international distribution chains. Ryan C. Benson, VP of digital media services for Lionsgate, Simon James, VP of sales engineering for NeuLion; and Jason Kassin, co-founder and CEO of FilmTrack, will take part.

• The creation of a new, software-driven, cloud-based production data hub at New Regency, one that is enabling creatives to work seamlessly on their productions, will be among the topics discussed in the panel “Smart Production: Using a Data Hub for Film and Television.” Jukka Paajanen, technology innovation lead for Avanade, Eliot Sakhartov, account technology strategist for Microsoft, Matt Turner, CTO for MarkLogic, and Lulu Zezza, production executive for New Regency, will discuss.

• In the presentation “Video Metadata Platforms: How to Futureproof Automation,” Anthony Accardo, director of R&D and metadata, and Miquel Farre, manager of R&D Technology, both with Disney ABC Television Group, will look at how Disney is implementing machine learning and automation to avoid locking into any particular tool or platform, while effectively implementing a futureproof, descriptive metadata architecture.

• Asset management will be the name of the game in the panel “Smart Supply Chain: How Asset Management Can Make Your Content Work Smarter,” with the various forms of asset management — DAM, MAM, PAM, BAM — each getting its due. Matt Corodimas, with the media, entertainment and creative arm of Nuxeo; Kyle Hufford, Director, digital asset management expert with Monster Energy, Callum Hughes, senior solutions architect with Amazon Studios, and Corinne Whitney, director of content services for Crawford Media Services, will be on hand.

• To close the conference, Women in Technology Hollywood (WiTH) will host the featured session “Smart Ways to Reach and Engage with Consumers,” with panelists looking at the ways entertainment and tech companies are both evolving the direct-to-consumer relationship, by leveraging data insights to make a more meaningful content connection. Su Kwon Kelsay, executive director of consumer intelligence for Warner Bros. Entertainment; Dr. Duan Peng, executive director of analytics for Fandango; Nadya Ichinomiya, director of IT, TV marketing and research for Sony Pictures Entertainment and co-founder of WiTH; and Rachel Souder-Arguedas, director of business relationship management in home entertainment information technology for Sony Pictures Entertainment and co-founder of WiTH will take part.

Smart Content West is produced by the Media & Entertainment Services Alliance (MESA), with Ad-ID, the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement, the Hollywood IT Society (HITS) and the Smart Content Council serving as association partners. The conference is sponsored by MarkLogic, Amazon Web Services, TiVo, GrayMeta, Microsoft Azure, Nuxeo, FilmTrack, NeuLion, Avanade and Crawford Media Services.

To register, click here.