HITS

When the Media & Entertainment Services Alliance (MESA) holds its first-ever Microsoft Media & Entertainment Day July 25 at the Microsoft Technology Center (MTC) in New York City, a pair of keynotes highlight two of the four session tracks that are on tap.

In the session track Video in the Microsoft Cloud: Where Collaboration Meets Workflows, Craig Dwyer, senior director of Avid Technology’s Global Center of Excellence, will share in the 3:30 p.m. keynote “Optimizing Video Workflows” how his company is helping the media industry tackle full-scale media production in the cloud. Avid’s MediaCentral Platform is available via the cloud on Microsoft Azure, helping media organizations create, distribute, and monetize content using various deployment types.

Dwyer leads global strategic solutions for Avid, directing the teams that handle large-scale transformation projects for clients as they modernize media operations and adopt the Avid Everywhere platform, which includes solutions geared toward enhancing efficiency and supporting creativity in the media and information management environment.

Meanwhile, in the session track AI, Machine Learning and Bots, Martin Wahl, ‎principal program manager for Azure Media Services, will be on hand for the 11:15 a.m. keynote “Video Analytics – Understanding What’s in Your Content.” There, he’ll offer up insights into how video analytics has changed, from simply looking at how many people tune in, to actually discovering who those people are, and what they’re saying about the content. Wahl will share how that actionable metadata is a game-changer for content companies.

Wahl is responsible for working with customers and partners who use the Azure cloud for internal and external digital media workflows, and has been with Microsoft for more than seven years, working within the Interactive Entertainment and Xbox business groups, as well as on the cloud-based Office365 service.

The Microsoft Media & Entertainment Day is being produced by 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.