HITS

More than a dozen breakout presentations from top Hollywood vendors at the May 23 HITS Spring event in Los Angeles are now available, covering the latest trends in metadata, cloud solutions, analytics and security.

True to the conference’s “Tech Takes Talent” theme, the HITS Innovation & Technology breakout session series explored major technology shifts in how traditional IT is transforming data, blockchain, 5G, OTT, and more, while also focusing on the skill sets required to make it happen.

Here’s a brief look at what members of the Media & Entertainment Services Alliance shared with more than 500 attendees:

• Darren Ehlers, SVP of product management for Entertainment Partners, shared digital tools are changing the game for studios and productions in his presentation “From Files to Data: Digitization of the Production Office.”

• Dennis Helms, innovation and experience lead at LiveTiles, walked attendees of his breakout session — “Intelligent Transformation: How to Build an AI and Bot Strategy for Your Organization” — through practical insights on how to implement AI technology.

• Steve Cronan, CEO and founder of 5th Kind, offered examples of how studios shifting their strategy to metadata-based tagging can empower security, and provide unprecedented control, allowing them to better monetize archives, in the presentation “The Metadata Endgame: What is Studio Asset Management?”

• Chris Cali, co-founder and managing partner of Spark Digital, touted the benefits of geotargeting, in the presentation “Meet Them Where They Are: The Future of Geotargeting Around the Corner and Around the World.” And Matt Turner, CTO of media and manufacturing for MarkLogic, and Jason Lambert, executive director of content licensing and metadata for Sony Pictures Entertainment, showed how a data-driven mindset is helping Sony drive content discovery and re-use, in the presentation “How Sony is Leveraging Curated Descriptive Metadata for Competitive Business Value.”

• Offering insights into the latest cloud, compliance and payment technologies for the media and entertainment industry were the team at industry payments specialists Exactuals with the presentation “Paperless Payments: Stop lighting money on Fire – Direct Deposit Residuals and Participations Now Available Industry Wide.”

Also in the cloud-centric breakout sessions were Joel Sloss, senior lead for media and entertainment–security at Microsoft Azure (“Get it to the Cloud (Evolving Your Edit Pipeline),” Birlasoft’s Kiran Chirra (senior director of M&E delivery), Raghu Seetharam (global head of CRM and SaaS technologies) and Timothy Sheehy (assistant M&E VP) in the session “RIP Sneakernet – Cloud-Enabled Workflows for Complex M&E Environments,” and Amazon Web Services’ partner Blizzard Entertainment in the presentation “Harnessing the Power of the Cloud to Deliver OverWatch League to a Global Audience.”

• In the AI, data and analytics track, Rick Pechter, principal solutions architect for MicroStrategy, gave attendees ideas on how to modernize their analytical capabilities, in the breakout session “An Intelligent Way to Drive Adoption of Enterprise Analytics using ML/DL/AI.” Meanwhile, SoftServe’s Matt Kollmorgen, VP of digital strategy, and Chip Plesnarski, media solutions lead, shared a solution to the recommendation engine dilemma, with their breakout presentation “Hail, Hybrid: A Better Recommendation Engine.” And Tobias Queisser, co-founder and CEO of predictive analytics specialists Cinelytic, gave attendees a look at how a studio can leverage machine learning, data and cloud technologies today to improve content evaluation and workflow, in the presentation “Predictive Insights at Your Fingertips: A Better Way to Evaluate Content.”

• The security, identifiers and workflows track saw Lulu Zezza, co-chair of the Content Delivery & Security Association’s (CDSA) Production Security Working Group, offering details on the first-ever content and cybersecurity guidelines for protecting film and TV productions against cyber and physical theft; and Guy Finley, CDSA executive director and CEO of the Trusted Partner Network, detail what’s next for the industrywide content protection initiative.

Additionally, the Entertainment Identifier Registry (EIDR) and the American Film Institute (AFI) discussed AFI’s evolving contributions to the film industry and American culture, in the presentation “AFI & EIDR: Identifying our Cultural Heritage.” And JT Gaietto, executive director of Richey May Technology Solutions’ cybersecurity practice, and Rick Nowak, COO of New Wave Entertainment, took the stage for the breakout session “Maturing your Content Protection Strategy: Lessons Learned from New Wave Entertainment.”

HITS Spring was presented by Entertainment Partners, with sponsorship by LiveTiles, 5th Kind, Amazon Web Services, Birlasoft, Exactuals, Expert System, MarkLogic, Microsoft Azure, Richey May Technology Solutions, SoftServe, Spark Digital, Avanade, CDSA, Cinelytic, EIDR, MicroStrategy, Signiant, the Trusted Partner Network, human-I-T, and Zaszou IT Consulting.

The event was produced by the Media & Entertainment Services Alliance (MESA) and the Hollywood IT Society (HITS), in association with Women in Technology: Hollywood (WiTH); the Content Delivery & Security Association (CDSA); and the Smart Content Council.