HITS

The full-day HITS Fall program awaiting attendees Oct. 3 in Los Angeles will tackle everything from how CIOs are addressing new content production and distribution challenges, to what CEOs think about the marketplace for AR as both a storytelling and information gathering tool, all under the theme that new technology — and its implementation — takes the right talent.

The hundreds of studio and vendor attendees will also be treated to a series of breakout sessions, with media and entertainment experts presenting across four tracks of sessions: Systems & Solutions, Compliance & Security, Data & Governance, and Workplace & Analytics.

The day concludes with Women’s SoCal Leadership Summit presenting an update on the Women in Technology Hollywood (WiTH) Foundation, along with two keynotes around the topic “Resilience and Risk-Taking – Keys to Success.”

Here’s a look at what to expect:

• The morning HITS conference sessions kick off with opening remarks by Darren Seidel, CFO and COO of Entertainment Partners, and a high-level panel around “Setting the Stage (for our IT Future)” and a look at how digitization of the production process means more than just the elimination of paper in the presentation “Adjacent Problem Solving: Technology and the NYC Parking Predicament.”

The first keynote of HITS Fall sees Cheryl Bayer, CEO of augmented reality (AR) technology firm Living Popups, walking attendees through the future of the tech and the impact it’s having on media and entertainment professionals, both as individuals and in their business roles within the industry. Her presentation — “A Seamless World: an Augmented and Intelligent Form of Communication” — will also look at how both your education and career path have more relevance than ever with how you identity as an individual and with the communities you engage, and that AR is quickly becoming one of the tools that fuel your information gathering, in terms of both data and learning.

To close the morning mainstage, Mark Hoebich, president of Variety Business Intelligence, will take part in the session “How a Powerhouse Utilizes Market Intelligence,” looking at the importance of market intelligence across agencies and the broader entertainment market.

• Beginning at 11:15 a.m., HITS Fall attendees will have a choice between four different innovation and technology showcases.

In the Systems & Solutions track, Entertainment Partners’ Darren Ehlers, SVP of product management, and Martin Mazor, SVP and CISO, will give attendees a look at EP’s suite of products and how they help clients protect user identities, make sure studios stay in compliance, and keep productions secure, during the breakout session “Protecting User Identities.”

For Compliance & Security, Genpact’s Maninder Singh, VP of media and entertainment and business lead, and Pradeep Ramasamy, VP and head of trust and safety practice, will share how content owners can be served by looking at the drivers of piracy behaviors, and examine why people steal instead of buy, during the session “Content Protection and Moderation: When Sharing is Second Nature, How do you Safeguard High-Value, Copyrighted Content?”

They’ll be followed by Rahim Jina, COO and co-founder of vulnerability management solutions firm edgescan, who’ll offer the opinion that how you approached vulnerability management in the past may not cut it with today’s technology stack and development methodologies, in the presentation “Vulnerability Landscape 2019 – Hocus Pocus Refocus.”

The Data & Governance sessions begins with Hoebich, and Carolyn Finger, SVP and head of research for Variety Business Intelligence, and their presentation “Data Licensing and Business Solutions from the Entertainment Authority.” They’ll share how major studios and streaming companies are using contextual entertainment metadata to drive innovation and growth.

Next, in the presentation “You’re Doing it Wrong! Why Data Governance Currently Sucks and What You Can Do About It,” Tim Padilla, director of consulting, west, for MarkLogic, will share his insights into the difficulties in getting value from data for entertainment firms.

The final breakout session — Workplace & Analytics — begins with David Salter, director of technology solutions for intelligent workplace software firm LiveTiles, and his presentation “How to Create an Agile Digital Workplace with Your Existing Investment in O365.” He’ll be followed by Tobias Queisser, co-founder and CEO of Cinelytic, and his session “Real-time Insights at Your Fingertips: A Better Way to Assess Content Value.”

• The afternoon portion of the program begins with the keynote “When is Good Enough, not Good Enough?” with planning consultant and technical design expert Sean Tajkowski addressing how commonly overlooked the physical production environment — the backbone to productivity in most every M&E business — is today, when it comes to meeting current standards and proposed industry best practices.

In the panel “Ad Sales and Ad Buy in the Spotlight: Boost Customer Experience and Revenues With Digital Technologies,” Brajesh Jha, global head of M&E for Genpact, will moderate a panel of experts around the emerging technologies in the ad space, and how they’re transforming both media buying and selling.

“Fusing Art & Technology: Empowering Innovative Television Programming” will offer attendees a look at how it’s possible to fuse storytellers with technologists to improve content creation, while “Metadata Moonshot: A True AI Approach” will see Yves Berquist, program director of AI and neuroscience in media for the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC), providing an overview of the foundational approach for a machine-based “grammar” of media content.

The final session of the HITS Fall program — “Digital Innovation: People, Processes and Technology” — will make the case that digital innovation requires the implementation of new technologies where people are the central element driving the Innovation.

HITS Fall is presented by Entertainment Partners, with sponsorship by Genpact, Variety Business Intelligence, edgescan, LiveTiles, MarkLogic, the Entertainment ID Registry (EIDR), Signiant, Cinelytic, Microsoft Azure, Richey May Technology Solutions and Comcast Technology Solutions.

The event is 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.

For more information visit HollywoodITSummit.com.