Abeer Abdullah

Abeer Abdullah, a Saudi producer and filmmaker based in Dubai. She made her directorial debut with a film that she also co- wrote and produced titled (Trail of lights) which was to be first screened in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, at The Golden Falcon Film Festival- (2018) in Riyadh, after re-Opening cinemas in Saudi Arabia. Her work highlights psychological stories in an artistic manner. She believes through being a filmmaker she has the power of telling stories that inspire change.

Joe Addalia

Joe Addalia is the Director of Technology Projects for Hearst Television, Inc. and in his roll is responsible for new technology discovery and implementation surrounding television workflows including News Technology and Broadcast Operations Technology.

Joe has been in Broadcast Engineering for over thirty years and has hands on experience in all facets of the technical side of television, radio, digital and cable. He has an Associate in Applied Science Degree in Television and is a SBE Certified Broadcast Engineer and an active Member of SBE Chapter 42 in Central Florida and a Manager of the SMPTE Florida Section. In 2016 Joe was honored to be selected as a recipient of the Technology Leadership Award from Broadcasting and Cable Magazine.

Erik Åhlin

Erik Åhlin is the co-founder of Vidispine, which was founded 2009 by Isak Jonsson and Erik Åhlin. In 2017, Arvato Systems acquired Vidispine and as of July 1st 2020, Arvato Systems relaunched the media & entertainment unit of Arvato Systems and Vidispine as a go-to-market brand for media management and monetization. Today, Erik heads up the sales and marketing division within the new brand, focusing on growth and customer relationships. Before Vidispine, Erik was VP of Sales at Vizrt and Ardendo where he was a part of digitizing media organizations all over the world. Erik Åhlin has a Master of Computing Science from Umeå University in Sweden.

Raul Aldana

Raul started his career at the age of six,acting in a film, theatre and later, TV. When he was 14, while filming a movie and working in a TV series,he discovers the world of dubbing and voice over acting and starts combining them with the rest of his acting activities.Building on this experience for a further 20 years, Raul became the Spanish voice of Mickey Mouse, Kermit The Frog, Lion King’s Timon and many other significant pop culture characters.During this time, he expands his career as a writer and main cast member on a project that would become the most successful TV comedy in Mexico –as well as further work across TV, radio, and musical productions.It was the combination of all his talents that motivates Disney to invite Raul to lead and manage ‘Character Voices and Content Localization in Latin America.From 1997 to 2018,he was the regional creative director managing all the dubbing and localization process of more than3,500 titles, per year,in Spanish and the same amount in Portuguese. This role involved establishing the highest quality standards, especially in theatrical features in which he collaborated with star talents and celebrities –these included Phil Collins, Sting, Gloria Estefan, Viggo Mortensen, Vin Diesel, Emerson Fittipaldi and the most well-known Latin American stars like Chayanne, Shakira, Marco Antonio Solisand more. During this time, Raul managed the operations of the area; producing, directing,writing and adapting scripts and lyrics.This also involved creating and developing localization strategies to support the needs of marketing, programming and film operations–and positioning Latin America as one of the first day and date international territories; delivering each project at the lowest possible cost, in the shortest completion time with best quality.During his last three years with Disney, along with his daily managerial duties, Raul collaborated closely with Pixar in the localization strategies of the award winner animated film “Coco”, also writing the lyrics of the songs in Spanish, providing advice for cultural matters and,for the Mexican version,he brought on board and recorded more than 30 celebrities, helping the film to become the most successful theatrical release in the history of the industry in Mexico.Since March 2018, Raulhas shared his knowledge and experience with ZOO Digital, a localization service provider, helping to develop and fine tune a cloud-based dubbing platform that marks the future of the dubbing and localization industry.

Randi Altman

An editor and journalist, Randi Altman has been a sought after source of insight in the ever-changing industry of post and production for over two decades. Covering companies, trends and filmmakers, she’s an authority on how technology is used in service to creative vision. As founder and editor-in-chief of postPerspective, she works as a bridge between the post and production communities and the companies that serve them. She is committed to telling the stories of creative talent and technical innovation and their impact on our industry.

Gary Ballabio

Gary Ballabio serves as Cloudinary’s Head of Technology Partnerships where he helps manage the company’s strategic partner and technology ecosystem. Before joining Cloudinary Gary was a strategic sales manager at Akamai where he was responsible for key relationships with Apple, Facebook and Google. Gary’s previous roles at Akamai also included Product Management, Professional Services and Engineering.

Aayush Bansal

Aayush Bansal received his Ph.D. in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon University under the supervision of Prof. Deva Ramanan and Prof. Yaser Sheikh. He was a Presidential Fellow at CMU, and a recipient of the Uber Presidential Fellowship (2016-17), Qualcomm Fellowship (2017-18), and Snap Fellowship (2019-20). His research has been covered by various national and international media such as NBC, CBS, WQED, 90.5 WESA FM, France TV, and Journalist. He has also worked with production houses such as BBC Studios and Full Frontal with Samantha Bee (TBS). More details are available on his webpage: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~aayushb/

Yves Bergquist

Yves is an AI researcher and the director of the “AI in Media” Project at USC’s Entertainment Technology Center (ETC). A research center at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, ETC brings together all the Hollywood studios as well as large tech companies such as Microsoft, Amazon, and Google. At the Center, Yves and his team use frontier AI methods to help media companies develop deep insights into their content, their audiences, and the cognitive relationship between the two. Yves is also the co-founder and CEO of Corto, an AI startup developing AI tools to make stories and audiences computable through the DNA analysis of narratives. Corto is in Private Beta with a dozen studios, advertising agencies, and global consumer brands.

Marina Bosi

Dr. Marina Bosi, a pioneer in the development of digital audio coding, is a recognized global executive with deep experience in digital media technology markets, rights management, and licensing. Marina received her degrees in Physics and in Music from the University of Florence (Italy) and from the National Conservatory of Music (Florence, Italy), respectively, and completed her thesis as a Chargèe de Recherche at IRCAM in Paris, France. After working with the composer Luciano Berio at Tempo Reale, Florence, Marina came to the USA and became a Consulting Professor (since 1998) at Stanford University’s Computer Center for Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) and in the Electrical Engineering department (2004-2009). An experienced industry leader, Marinaco-founded (with L. Chiariglione, MPEG Chair) the Digital Media Project and was the CTO of MPEG LA, Vice President -Technology at DTS, Project Engineer at Dolby Laboratories, and DSP Engineer at Digidesign (Avid). A Fellow and Past President of the AudioEngineering Society (AES) and a Senior Member of IEEE.Marina’s awards include the AES Silver Medal in recognition of “outstanding achievements in the development and standardization of audio and secure digital rights management” and the ISO/IEC Editor award for her contributions to ISO/IEC 13818-7, MPEG-2 Advanced Audio Coding (AAC). A graduate of Stanford Business School’s “Stanford Executive Program”, Marina holds several patents and publications and she is author of the acclaimed textbook “Introduction to Digital Audio Coding and Standards” (Kluwer/Springer December 2002). Marina has experience working with boards of directors, committees, and external stakeholders and is currently a founding Director of the Moving Picture, Audio and Data Coding byArtificial Intelligence –MPAI, and teaches and supervises graduate-level research at Stanford University.

Rob Bredow

Rob Bredow is an Academy Award nominated VFX Supervisor who leads Industrial
Light & Magic with a particular focus on the creative strategy for the storied visual
effects company. As SVP, Chief Creative Officer, Bredow is responsible for the
company’s overall creative strategy and technology innovation. Recently he has been
instrumental in the development and buildout of ILM’s StageCraft LED virtual
production capabilities with permanent stages in Los Angeles, London, and Sydney.
Bredow served as the Visual Effects Supervisor on Solo: A Star Wars Story for which he
received Academy Award and VES Award nominations. He also served as a Co-Producer
on the film serving as a key creative partner to the filmmakers throughout the production.
Bredow joined Lucasfilm in 2014 as Vice President of New Media and Head of
Lucasfilm’s Advanced Development Group. He helped launch ILMxLAB in 2015 and
co-wrote and directed Trials on Tatooine, a story-based virtual reality experiment created
in collaboration with Lucasfilm’s Story Group, ILMxLAB, and Skywalker Sound. In
addition, he has served as CTO of Lucasfilm starting in 2016.
Previously, Bredow was CTO and Visual Effects Supervisor at Sony Pictures
Imageworks. He has contributed as a supervisor on films such as Independence Day ,
Godzilla , Stuart Little , Cast Away , Surf’s Up , Cloudy With A Chance of Meatball s, and
others.
Bredow is a member of the VFX Branch of Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences
and helped to form, and currently chairs, The Academy Software Foundation.

Philippe Brodeur

CEO & Founder of Overcast HQ -a Video Content-as-a-Service (VCaaS) platform that helps distributed teams manage video easily and effectively | AWS Media Select Partner | NABShow “Best in Show” Award | Lecturer and Keynote Speaker.

Anne Brooker-Grogan

Anne Brooker-Grogan has lived multiple lives and has had a variety of careers, ranging from a multilingual analyst to a gun-toting communications security specialist, an operations planner, and a Red Teamer. She was an early adopter, user, and educator in Risk Assessment and Management for US federal law enforcement and civilian and military agencies.

Not satisfied with just having adventures, she turned to educating the next generation of intrepid adventurers, went back to graduate school for too many years, and retired from the Federal Government in 2012. From 1980 until the pandemic, she was (and will be again soon!) the Director of Operations and Logistics and lead camera operator for Audio-Video Freelance, a company owned and operated by she and husband Ed Grogan. She misses traveling to Palm Springs this year, but will share a boat drink and some lessons learned of what worked (and why) within the broader entertainment industry. Please be sure to share some of your own lessons! She plans to compile this information into a White Paper for HPA to add to their resources once the HPA dust settles this year.

Roy Burns

Roy Burns Is the VP of Media Solutions at Integrated Media Technologies, a Los Angeles based Systems Integrator with over 800 customers. He is a named software patent holder for “Data Migration Management and Migration Metric Prediction” and is on the forefront of emerging media workflows and technologies. As a member of the Advanced Consulting Team, Roy partners with clients to map their current and future media workflows, define best practices, as well as recommend and implement scalable forward looking MAM solutions. He is a graduate from Musicians Institute’s: Recording Institute of Technology and is an active member of SMPTE and HPA.

Taylor Bynum

Zachary “Taylor” Bynum is a filmmaker, editor, and producer born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He studied Media Production and Writing for the Screen & Stage at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Film/TV Editing at the Academy of Media Professionals in Burbank (formerly known as Video Symphony). He is an Avid-certified editor and member of the Motion Picture Editors Guild. His background is in feature development, media production, and editing for TV/Film. In 2012 he got his first job in Hollywood at Scott Free Productions where he worked for a year in the office of Tony Scott as a story analyst for features in development before falling in love with post production and becoming an editor. Since 2013 he has contracted as an editor, producer, and writer/director of music videos, documentaries, TV commercials, indy films, theatrical trailers, and long-form television. In 2018, he started working at Brat TV during the nascent stages of the company’s development. At Brat TV, he joined forceswith Chase Logan, and the two of them built a post production department from the ground up, using their favorite parts of different NLE workflows from their past experiences, and blending them all together into a mutant, multi-NLE Hybrid workflow that highlighted the strengths of each of these common tools in post production.

Steven Calcote

Steven Calcote is an award-winning director with a passion for great storytelling, world building, and exploring humanity’s relationship with technology. An expert in the latest digital filmmaking technologies, animation, visual effects, and interactivity,Steven continues to push the envelope for original entertainment. He serves on the executive committee of the Television Academy’s Interactive Media Peer Group and has directed projects for Legendary, Twitch, BuzzFeed and many others.

Annie Chang

Annie Chang is the Vice President, Creative Technologies for NBCUniversal, responsible for developing strategies and designing innovative next-generation workflows across film and episodic television productions. Prior to joining NBCUniversal, Chang was the VP, Technology for Marvel Studios and held various roles during more than a decade tenure at The Walt Disney Studios. Chang is an AMPAS Governor-at-Large, the Chair of the AMPAS SciTech Council and the Board Chair for UHD Alliance. She was the Chair of the Interoperable Master Format (IMF) Working Group at SMPTE, is an SMPTE Fellow and recipient of the SMPTE Workflow Systems Medal Award, Advanced Imaging Society’s Distinguished Leadership award and StudioDaily’s 2018 Exceptional Women in Production and Post. In 2020, The Hollywood Reporter named Chang on their list of top “Hollywood Innovators.” Annie has been honored with the HPA League Honor of “The Catalyst” which recognizes a leader who has successfully inspired and sparked positive change and innovation in entertainment as a “mover and shaker,” as well as TVNewsCheck’s Women in Technology Futurist Award, Women in Technology WiTH Leadership Award, SMPTE’s Presidential Proclamation, DEG Entech Hall of Fame award and a Technology and Engineering Emmy for her work with IMF.

Paul Chapman

Paul Chapman has worked in the Video and Post Production industry in Los Angeles for over 30 years,

Paul received his BSc (Hons) in Computers & Cybernetics from the University of Kent, Canterbury.

During his first 15 years in the USA he worked as Telecine engineer and Director of Engineering for Rank Cintel, Unimedia, Complete Post and Unitel Video.

He then worked at FotoKem from 1996-2017, initially as chief engineer and then as Senior Vice President of Technology.

Currently he is at Sim in Hollywood as VP Engineering and Technology. Responsible for running an engineering team supporting operations in the Hollywood facility, and choosing technology for that facility.

He is a past SMPTE Governor, and current board member of both HPA and STE.

Wileen Charles

Skilled production executive with command of all aspects of production.  Produced over 3,600 hours of live-to-tape broadcast programming from concept to completion.  Extensive experience in hiring key staff and negotiating with vendors to fulfill creative vision on time and under budget.  Enjoys developing personnel at all levels and varying backgrounds for a positive and powerful production environment.

Like many of her peers in production, Wileen began at the bottom.  The journey from production assistant to Line Producer overseeing 250 shooting days annually for the last eight years was anything but a straight line.  Having played every position on the floor, Wileen has very keen insight into what it takes to keep the wheels turning, even during a pandemic.

Mark Chiolis

Mark Chiolis is the Director of Business Development for Mobile TV Group (MTVG), which provides facilities for over 4,500 live professional and college sports and entertainment events annually, with more than 35 mobile units, and dozens of remote Cloud Control facilities, based throughout the U.S., and the new Mountain Media Center in Englewood Colorado. MTVG has been leading the 4K/UHD/HDR/Cloud live event production with key broadcasters, networks and distribution companies.

Mark is currently working to interface with customers and partners to develop and support MTVG’s entertainment, awards, corporate, concerts, egames, and esports events with current and new mobile units, using both broadcast and cine workflows.

Prior to MTVG, Chiolis worked in marketing, business development, and sales for Grass Valley, Thomson, Technicolor, Philips, and BTS as well as at television stations KMUV, KRBK and KVIE in Sacramento California.

Chiolis is a past board member of the HPA, an associate member of the American Society of Cinematographers, member of the NAB Cine Consortium, member of the SciTech group at the Television Academy (Emmys), member of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS), member of International Association of Aviation Photographers, past section manager of SMPTE, member of STE, SBE and California Broadcasters Association.

Michael Cioni

Michael Cioni celebrates 25 years as a recognized pioneer in storytelling technology. A four-time Emmy Award winner who was named as one of the Hollywood Reporter’s most influential figures in tech, Michael has founded and led multiple successful ventures including Light Iron, a trailblazing post production company acquired by Panavision. As Panavision’s SVP of Innovation, he led the team that built the groundbreaking Millennium DXL 8K camera system. At Frame.io, an Adobe company, Michael spearheaded their camera-to-cloud program, igniting an entirely new standard of cloud-based cinema acquisition and workflow.

As both a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) and an associate member of the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC), Michael thrives at the intersection of creativity and technology. With his 3rd startup, Strada, Michael continues to push the technological boundaries within media and entertainment, combining expertise as an entrepreneur, innovator, team builder, and mentor.

Steven B. Cohen

A seasoned, innovative M&E exec with 20+ years of experience and a background in developing, managing, delivering and marketing B2B technology, strategic business development, product development and creative solutions for Broadcast, Film and other content creation industries.
Starting as a Video Projectionist & TV Cameraman in the early 70’s, Steven joined IATSE as a freelance Studio Projectionist, Sound Engineer and Rerecording Mixer. After a few years this led to a position at Lorimar Studios heading up Audio QC. When the Studio was purchased by Sony (with their acquisition of Columbia Studios), he became part of an engineering team to convert the lot from photo-mechanical to digital. This collaboration with Sony Electronics, led to a role as a Technologist supporting filmmakers with technology that streamlined production, post production & distribution. Motion Picture Innovation included: 1^st Studio Non-Linear Picture Editing Department, early remote collaboration systems and some of the first Digital Cinema Trials (both on satellite and on terrestrial connections).   After leaving Sony Pictures Entertainment, Steven founded Cohen Communications, Inc., developing and deploying unique solutions for the motion picture industry, Some of these solutions included: digital dailies, digital cinema projection, remote collaboration, digital cinema previews with audience response sound & video recording and cloud deployments for content creation while optimizing, automating and streamlining production and post workflows.

Steven is currently Industry Principal, M&E North America for HCL America where he heads up six Centers of Excellence (COE) Media Labs developing and incubating new technologies and workflows for content creators and guiding HCL America’s offering for Media & Entertainment Companies.

Margaret Craig

Margaret Craig is an experienced business leader in the media technology space.  She currently serves as CEO of Signiant, a venture-backed enterprise software company that provides advanced technology for transferring large data sets over public and private IP networks.  Under her leadership, Signiant developed an innovative SaaS platform that drove rapid top-line growth, established the company as the market leader, and enabled a business model transition from licensed software to SaaS.

Prior to assuming the CEO role at Signiant in late 2011, Margaret served as COO of Ascent Media Network Services, a provider of managed services for content distribution. There she led the technology transition to file-based delivery platforms and oversaw contract negotiations with some of the world’s largest content owners. Prior to Ascent Media, Margaret was the CEO of publicly-traded Leitch Technology, a global provider of technical infrastructure for television production and transmission; and served as President of Snell & Wilcox, a supplier of video image processing software and hardware.

Ms. Craig holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Iowa State University.  She began her career as a design engineer at Tektronix, where she contributed to the development of television test equipment and RF products.

Poppy Crum

Poppy Crum works to bridge the gap between technology and insightful, effective human interaction. As a multi-dimensional advocate of empathetic technology, she builds technologies that best leverage human physiology to enhance our experiences and how we interact with the world.

Poppy serves as the Chief Scientist at Dolby Laboratories and as an Adjunct Professor at Stanford University in the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics and Program in Symbolic Systems.

Poppy is dedicated to the development of immersive technologies that leverage human physiology and perceptual realities to enhance our experiences and interactions in the world. She has advanced a mission to democratize the way people of all abilities benefit from sensory technologies – and how effectively technology communicates back to each of us. She believes the power of intelligent technologies is only realized with dynamic optimization and learning of as much of our personal and contextual data as possible.

At Dolby, Poppy directs the growth of internal science. She is responsible for integrating neuroscience and sensory data science into algorithm design, technological development, and technology strategy. At Stanford, her work focuses on the impact and feedback potential of new technologies including gaming and immersive environments such as Augmented and Virtual Reality on neuroplasticity and learning.

Bruce Devlin

Founder Mr MXF; Standards Vice President, SMPTE. Bruce Devlin is well known in the media industry for his work on files, compression and systems; particularly MXF and IMF. In the last 3 decades his presentations and Bruce’s Shorts videos have become a go-to resource for CFOs, CTOs and students wanting to figure out the business of technology. Bruce has designed everything from ASICs to algorithms to industrialisation processes. He tweets as @MrMXF, he wrote the book on MXF and is now responsible for international standardis activities at SMPTE. Bruce is an alumni of Queens’ College Cambridge UK fellow of the SMPTE and member of the DPP, IABM, The IET and IMIS recipient of SMPTE’s David Sarnoff Medal & the IMIS Achievement award recipient of numerous technology awards including Techncal Emmys passionate about makeing media technology accessible to everyone and a rider of bicycles (occasionally quickly).

Nigel Edwards

Nigel Edwards is a London based re-recording mixer with 40 years’ experience of mixing drama for TV. Having worked at several major London Post Houses, he became a founder member of The Farm Group which, over the last 20 years, has grown to over 20 audio studios including 4 Dolby Atmos suites.

The Farm group supply high end TV Drama and Documentaries to all major broadcasters world-wide including to all the main streaming platforms. The Farm Group was acquired by Streamland Media in 2019, giving it access to Ghost VFX as well as to all the studio services of the group world-wide. In January 2021, Streamland Media signed an agreement to acquire the Post Production Services’ division of Technicolor.

Eric Einhorn

Eric Einhorn is the co-founding General & Artistic Director of On Site Opera, the country’s only opera company dedicated to site-specific productions. His immersive, site-specific productions have performed to sold-out houses and critical acclaim since thecompany’s founding. Mr. Einhorn has created partnerships with venues and institutions throughout New York City that range from community gardens, historic homes, restaurants, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He has also forged partnerships with social service and educational organizations to further involve the community in the creation and impact of On Site’s productions. Mr. Einhorn has become an industry-recognized leader in site-specific opera, often speaking at conferences and teaching masterclasses. He has also spearheaded a technology initiative with the company that has led to the world’s first use of Google Glass for supertitles, as well as the implementation of a mobile app for supertitles and digital programs.As a stage director, Mr. Einhorn has directed at many of the country’s leading opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera, Glimmerglass Opera, Pittsburgh Opera, Ft. Worth Opera, Wolf Trap Opera, Florentine Opera, Austin Opera, Utah Opera, and Michigan Opera Theater.

Danielle Feinberg

Danielle Feinberg began her career at Pixar Animation Studios in February 1997, and since then, she has worked on nine of Pixar’s 14 feature films – “A Bug’s Life, “Toy Story 2,” “Monsters, Inc.” and the Academy Award^®-winning “Finding Nemo,” “The Incredibles,” “Cars,” and “Ratatouille.” Feinberg was the director of photography-lighting for the Academy Award®- winning features “WALL•E,” “Brave,” and “Coco.” Recently she was the supervising technical director and director of photography-lighting on the SparkShort “Loop” and is currently the supervising technical director on “Turning Red,” set for release on March 11, 2022.

At the age of 23, Feinberg’s first role at Pixar was as lead render technical director on “A Bug’s Life,” where she in charge of a team of nine people, eight of whom were older than herself.  She quickly discovered her love for lighting because of the unique combination of technology and art.

Feinberg went on to work as a lighting artist on many of Pixar’s feature films, where she quickly moved up in the ranks – from master lighting artist on “Toy Story 2,” and “Monsters, Inc.” to lead lighting artist on the “The Incredibles.” On “Finding Nemo,” Feinberg took on the role of ocean unit CG supervisor, where she was responsible for the  teams creating the scenes in the depths of the ocean, the field of pink jellyfish and the rollercoaster ride with the turtles.

For “WALL•E,” she returned to her passion of lighting as the director of photography-lighting. In that role she led a team of over 30 lighting artists to design and execute the photo-real “filmic” look envisioned by the film’s director.

Feinberg was once again in a lead creative role as director of photography-lighting for “Brave,” which stars Pixar’s first female protagonist. She has continued that role on several Pixar features until stepping into a new challenge as supervising technical director on the SparkShort “Loop” and an un-announced Pixar feature currently in development.

A native of Boulder, Colorado, Feinberg’s love of combining computers and art began when she was eight years old, and first programmed a Logo turtle to create images. This eventually led her to a Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science from Harvard University. Now, in addition to her Pixar work, she enjoys photographing the real world with its ornery, non-virtual light, and works with teenage girls, encouraging them to pursue math and science by demonstrating to them the same beautiful simplicity she found with the programmed art of the Logo turtle.

Julián Fernández-Campón

Julián has been working in computer-related companies for 25 years. With a degree in Computer Science Engineer at the University of Málaga and a strong IT and Software Development background now is Chief Technology Officer at Tedial leading the transition over the last years to meet the new Challenges in the market with the adoption of the latest technologies in the Tedial Products, Solutions and Services and the enterprise transformation to DevOps.

John Footen

John is a leader in Deloitte’s Core Business Operations and Systems Engineering Practices for TMT (Technology, Media & Telecoms) and has over 25 years of experience in the Cable, Broadcasting and Entertainment industries. He is an industry technology expert who has received numerous awards including technology Emmys. He was named a Fellow by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. He is a regular speaker at industry conferences and author of numerous books and articles on the subject of media systems design and development.

Paul Franklin

Paul Franklin is one of the world’s leading visual effects designers with over 30 years of experience in filmmaking, two Academy Awards, and two BAFTAs to his name. Paul started out by making short films with his friends at university whilst studying fine art in the 1980s. Paul became one of the first 3D computer animators working in the British video games industry before moving into television, where he worked on a wide variety of television commercials and broadcast shows. Paul supervised visual effects for all three films in Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight” Trilogy, earning his first Academy Award nomination for his work on “The Dark Knight”. Paul then went on to design and supervise the visual effects for Nolan’s “Inception” and “Interstellar”, winning Academy Awards for both films. He has also received five BAFTA nominations for his work, resulting in two wins. Paul serves as DNEG’s creative director, overseeing a wide range of projects within the company. His work as a visual effects supervisor and designer can also be seen in films such as “Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix”, “Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince”, and “Venom”.Currently, Paul is also directing ‘Fireworks’, a high-profile virtual production project in collaboration with Dimension and DNEG, produced by BAFTA Award winner Annalise Davis for Wilder Films and written by acclaimed screenwriter and playwright Steven Lally.

Carolyn Giardina

Carolyn Giardina is senior entertainment technology and crafts editor at Variety Intelligence Platform (VIP+), a division of Variety that operates a digital subscription offering analyzing the media and technology industries; and entertainment news leader Variety.

She took on that role in February 2024, following more than a decade at The Hollywood Reporter, where as tech editor she covered everything from artificial intelligence to the Academy Awards. She also has worked in the U.S. and aboard, as an editor, reporter or columnist, on titles including Cinema Editor, SHOOT, The IBC Daily and SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal.

No stranger to the community, Carolyn served multiple terms on the HPA Board of Directors, during which time she co-founded and was founding chair of the HPA Awards; and more recently helped plan and moderate a series of remote panels as part of the HPA Industry Recovery Task Force amid the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak.

For her industry contributions, Carolyn has been honored with American Cinema Editors’ Robert Wise Award for journalistic illumination of the art of film editing, the International Cinematographers Guild’s Technicolor William A. Fraker Award for journalistic contributions to cinematography, and the Advanced Imaging Society’s Distinguished Leadership Lumiere Award.

With a commitment to education, she also co-authored Exploring 3D: The New Grammar of Stereoscopic Filmmaking (Focal Press, 2013) and is a lecturer at Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film & Media Arts.

Nick Garvin

Nick Garvin is Chief Operating Officer and Managing Partner at Mobile TV Group (MTVG). Nick
oversees all of MTVG’s operations, which includes over half of all NBA, MLB, and NHL
broadcasts across the country and over 4,000 live events annually. Based in Denver, MTVG
has offered high quality broadcast engineering for nearly 30 years. In 2020, the company
introduced Cloud Control, the first fully remote production managed service, in response to the
evolving industry and its needs. Cloud Control allows clients to go live from over 3,000 miles
away from the on–site event without making any production sacrifices, and maintaining their
complete production staff. This technology is reshaping the way that events are produced and
Cloud Control has been an overwhelming success for MTVG and all of its clients. Nick is a
member of Forbes’ 2018 30 Under 30 class and continues to lead and inspire MTVG as it
innovates the live production industry.

Ben Gitenstein

Ben Gitenstein runs Product at Qumulo. He and his team of product managers and data scientists have conducted nearly 1,000 interviews with storage users and analyzed millions of data points to understand customer needs and the direction of the storage market. Prior to working at Qumulo, Ben spent five years at Microsoft, where he split his time between Corporate Strategy and Product Planning.

Barry Goch

Barry Goch, Product Marketing Manager, AJA Video Systems, supports the company’s global marketing efforts by contributing to AJA’s website, product marketing across a range of platforms, trade show product roll outs and other go to market items as well as being an AJA evangelist in the LA area.

Previously Barry was a feature film and television finishing editor in Hollywood with credits including Spiderman: Homecoming, Passengers, Money Monster, Eye in the Sky, and Game of Thrones. He is also a creative editor, cutting the SXSW 2020 Award Winning Short, Stucco. Barry was also a journalist for many years reporting for Post Perspective and Post Magazine.

Barry is a member of the Television Academy, the Visual Effects Society, The Hollywood Professional Association and the current Chair of SMPTE Hollywood.

Josh Gold

Matthew Goldman

Matthew Goldman is Vice President Strategic & Technical Initiatives at Sinclair, Inc. He has been actively involved in the development of digital television systems for over 30 years. In the 1990s, he was a prominent participant in the Moving Picture Experts Group where he helped create the MPEG-2 Systems standard, the baseline transport technology used in direct broadcast satellite, digital cable, and terrestrial broadcasting. Mr. Goldman was a co-developer of the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) Program and System Information Protocol (PSIP) standard. In the mid-2000s, he defined the broadcasting industry’s first compressed-domain program splicer. Four of his projects were later recognized by Technology & Engineering Emmy® Awards. A technical paper on high dynamic range video that he co-wrote received the Best Paper Award of the 2015 National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Broadcast Engineering Conference. He is an author of the 2007 and 2017 editions of the NAB Engineering Handbook, and has been published in the IEEE Proceedings and the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) Motion Imaging Journal. Mr. Goldman received Bachelor (high honors) and Master of Science degrees in electrical engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He holds six patents related to digital video transport. A SMPTE Fellow and past President of the Society, he is also a senior member of the IEEE, and an inductee of the Academy of Digital Television Pioneers. Mr. Goldman currently is Chairperson of the North American Broadcasters Association Technical Committee.

Lakshmanan Gopishankar

Rory Gordon

Rory Gordon is a supervising colorist based out of Los Angeles since 2010, with recent credits Rapsh!t for HBO Max, Unstable for Netflix, and Parish for AMC. She has finished over 130 episodes in HDR10 and Dolby Vision. Her work has appeared on HBO, Starz, Amazon, Netflix, Fox, and others. In 2021 she was nominated for an HPA award for her work on HBO’s Lovecraft Country. She has done independent research in applied color science/color communication and has been published in the SMPTE journal three times, in addition to speaking at many events including international audiences. She is a painter in her life away from digital image processing.

Tom Graham

With over three decades immersed in Hollywood’s post-production landscape, Tom Graham, Head of Dolby Vision Content Enablement at Dolby Laboratories, brings unparalleled insight into the world of audio-visual content creation and delivery. An early pioneer of Avid Pro Tools, now at Dolby, Tom champions the transformative power of Dolby Vision, collaborating closely with content creators, studios and post facilities to unlock the full potential of high dynamic range storytelling.

Darin Grant

Darin joined Animal Logic in 2018 as the Group Chief Technology Officer. Darin is responsible for the company’s technology strategy, with a focus on content management, production pipelines, and workflows across Animal Logic’s multiple locations. Darin has over 20 years of experience in the industry, holding a variety of senior positions as a technologist across both Visual Effects and Animation.

Prior to Animal Logic, Darin was the Global CTO at Method Studios and Digital Domain where he drove innovation and operational excellence across engineering and operations. He has also spent considerable time consulting both in and outside of the industry for companies such as Autodesk, Foundry, Solid Angle, Chaos Group, Google, and TouchCast.

Darin also worked for six years as DreamWorks Animation’s Head of Production Technology. During this time, Darin was responsible for providing guidance to key departments to maintain and enhance the unified pipeline across multiple projects during the various stages of production.

Darin is a member of the Visual Effects Society as well as serving on its Technology Committee. He has been a frequent contributor and organizer of SIGGRAPH. He is the Treasurer of the Academy Software Foundation and he is currently serving as Co-Chair of the Digital Imaging Technology Sub-Committee of the Scientific and Technical Awards Committee for the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.

Darin’s credits include The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part, Kung Fu Panda, How To Train Your Dragon, What Dreams May Come, and Fight Club.

Kari Grubin

Kari Grubin is a distinguished executive with over 25 years of leadership experience in studio divisions, global post-production facilities, and corporate departments. She is recognized for her expertise in technology, strategic consulting, and post-production services.

Kari is currently the President of the Hollywood Professional Association (HPA), where she has served on the Board of Directors and volunteered for many years. She co-founded HPA Women in Post in 2011, an initiative providing leadership and visibility for women in professional content creation. Alongside board member Loren Nielsen, she also helped launch the HPA Young Entertainment Professionals (YEP) program, which has mentored nearly 200 young professionals. In 2021, Kari and Renard Jenkins initiated HPA All, a program to foster diversity in the media and entertainment community by promoting career pathways and visibility for underrepresented groups. She led the 2022 HPA Tech Retreat Supersession and is currently planning the 2025 Retreat with the HPA Program Committee.

Currently, Kari serves as Membership Services Director for the Motion Picture Association’s Trusted Partner Network, where her focus is on enhanced security preparedness and best practices at all stages in the digital media supply chain.  Committed to industry innovation, Kari previously served as project director for SMPTE’s Rapid Industry Solutions on Set Virtual Production Initiative. In 2021, she joined the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Production and Technology Branch.

Kari’s career includes executive roles at Universal Studios, Paramount Studios, Global Entertainment Partners (GEP), Deluxe Entertainment Services Group, NSS Labs, and Walt Disney Studios. She has contributed significantly to media technology and is listed as a co-inventor for three U.S. patents in media and entertainment technology.

Seth Hallen

Seth Hallen is Founder and Managing Partner of Hallstone Ventures and is a visionary leader in media and entertainment technology with over 25 years of global executive experience across the emerging media technology landscape. Now an active investor and advisor, Seth supports AI-driven startups bringing his expertise and vast network to the founders.

Former President of the Hollywood Professional Association for 9 years and a current member of the Television Academy’s AI Task Force, Seth is helping shape the future of content creation. He champions AI as a creative partner-an accelerator for human imagination-and continues to drive innovation by bridging technology and storytelling.

Through decades of leadership, Seth has built high-performing teams, forged strategic industry relationships, and consistently delivered transformative growth. His mission is clear: empower creators, anticipate disruption, and inspire ethical, tech-enabled progress in the entertainment industry.

Ian Hamilton

An innovator and entrepreneur in Internetworking infrastructure and applications for more than 30 years. As a founding member of Signiant, Ian leeds the development of innovative software solutions to address the challenges of fast, secure and reliable media distribution and management leveraging private and public Internet, intranets and cloud infrastructure for many of the media and entertainment industries’ largest (and smallest) companies. Prior to Signiant, Ian was Chairman and Vice President of Product Development at ISOTRO Network Management. He was responsible for launching ISOTRO’s software business unit and created the NetID product suite before the company was successfully acquired by Bay Networks. Ian held senior management positions at Bay Networks and subsequently Nortel Networks, from which Signiant emerged. Previously Ian was a Member of Scientific Staff at Bell Northern Research performing applied research and development in the areas of Internetworking and security.

Mark Harrison

Dr Mark Harrison
Founder and Chief Content Officer, DPP Ltd

Mark began his career as an Historian before moving into the media industry as a Director, Producer and Executive Producer. He won numerous awards for his filmmaking, including an International Emmy and a BAFTA nomination.

Mark ran an independent production company, before joining the BBC as Head of Arts, and then Head of Multiplatform Production. He was leader of the BBC’s End-to-End Digital programme, before becoming Director of Transformation for BBC Design & Engineering.

In 2015 Mark founded the DPP – the international network for media and technology – and became its CEO. In 2024 Mark passed the CEO role to Rowan de Pomerai, and is now Founder and Chief Content Officer.

Daryl Heinis

As a student of data protection, shared network file systems and server technology, Daryl has researched, developed and sustained innovations for networking, storage, and archive products covering the media and entertainment, digital security, healthcare and general IT markets. With an understanding of the industry and all the players, Daryl has developed a distinct knowledge of digital media workflows during his current tenure as CTO of Scale Logic.

Matthew Herson

Matt Herson is a Sr. Content Production Specialist enabling global media customers to successfully run production workflows on AWS. With over 10 years of experience, Matt as a passion of innovation in the post production space. Prior to AWS, he held roles as the Director of Technology, Post IT Manager, DIT, and Chief Architect roles managing a large number of teams around the word.

Robert Herzan

As Founder and President, Bob brings more than 30 years of expertise in the media and entertainment industry to his role at Scale Logic. Under Bob’s leadership, Scale Logic empowers many of the world’s biggest names in post-production, broadcast, sports, video effects, religion and corporate with high-performance solutions for video data storage, archiving and retrieval; advanced media workflow solutions; and enterprise support services for optimizing client infrastructures from design to installation and beyond. Since 2013, Scale Logic has experienced 30% growth year-over-year—and today boasts a client roster including Prometheus, ShowTime, Scripps Network, CNN, Scanline VFX, Titmouse, Latter-day Saints (LDS), Target, and Walmart.

Hiren Hindocha

Hiren brings 25 years background in management and IT to Digital Nirvana, including more than 12 years of experience in a variety of technology based applications. Prior to co-founding the company, he served as Vice President of eCommerce at Go.com.

Katie Hinsen

As Senior Vice President, Post Production at Sphere Entertainment Co., Katie oversees all post production operations for Sphere Studios – the immersive content studio dedicated to developing multi-sensory entertainment experiences exclusively for Sphere. In this role she leads a team of digital artists and technicians specialized in large format and high-resolution production who are delivering first-of-its-kind visual and audio content leveraging Sphere’s next-generation technologies. This includes the venue’s exterior – the “Exosphere” – the world’s largest LED screen; the interior display plane – the world’s highest-resolution LED screen; and the world’s most advanced audio system, Sphere Immersive Sound, powered by HOLOPLOT.

Katie is an international award-winning executive with credits on over 125 major productions, and has spent much of her career focused on the development and implementation of emerging technologies that are transforming the entertainment world. Prior to joining Sphere Entertainment in 2024, Katie served as Director of Technology for Marvel Studios, where she worked to reimagine the content creation process. Her early career experience includes roles as a finishing artist, engineer, editor, VFX artist, and colorist.

She is the co-founder of Blue Collar Post Collective, a grassroots initiative supporting emerging talent in post production. She is also a recipient of a Leadership Award from Women in Technology Hollywood, an organization that inspires, empowers and educates to create an equitable and inclusive Media and Entertainment technology community.
Katie is originally from Aotearoa, New Zealand.

J David Hoffman

As Business Development Manager for the Americas at Blackmagic Design, David focuses his efforts on expanding the use of the creative tools for visual media production. His passion for innovation and technology are paired with his respect for craft and storytelling.

David’s career spans over 25 years in visual arts and media production.

David started his professional journey in the early 1990’s as a documentary filmmaker working on various projects in and around the high performance military aircraft industry. The experience exposed him to the full gamut of the production workflow from cameras to post production.

David saw new and exciting prospects to visual storytelling through the emerging computer aided production technologies in the mid 1990’s. He worked on industry leading productions utilizing advanced composting and green screen technology in both broadcast and motion picture pre-visualization while working for Discreet Logic, later Autodesk Media & Entertainment.

In the early 2000’s David was the project lead on the implementation of real-time graphics technology at CNBC and later NBCU, where in 2008 the use of fully immersive virtual set production was highlighted by NBC News coverage of the Presidential Election.

David established his own technology and production company in 2010 and worked to provide the real time visual effect technologies he had help pioneer at the studio and network levels to a broader audience of users. He continued to innovate techniques and technologies in the virtual production market leading up to his current role with Blackmagic Design.

Renard Jenkins

Renard T. Jenkins is the President and CEO of I2A2 Technologies, Studios, and Labs. A software development and consulting firm specializing in the creation of ethically responsible tools, solutions, and experiences for the M&E, Marketing & Research, Education, and Healthcare industries, utilizing both emerging and traditional technologies. Jenkins is an experienced executive in the Technology, Film, Television, and Radio industries. Jenkins also currently serves as Vice President of the Hollywood Professionals Association, Immediate Past President of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, and sits on the board of Exceptional Minds. He is
also an active member of the Television Academy and The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. He has held Executive roles across the Technology, Media, and Entertainment industry.

Prior to rejoining WarnerMedia and Warner Bros., Jenkins served as Vice President, Operations, Engineering, and Distribution at PBS, where he designed and led the strategic direction, technology development, engineering, and operational management of PBS’s entire media-supply chain. He has also worked for TV One, Discovery, ESPN, NBA Ent., MLB, NFL, and Turner Broadcasting.

Jenkins is a recipient of numerous awards, including two national Emmys, a Peabody, two Headliners, and a 2020 Broadcasting and Cable Technology Leadership award. In 2017, Jenkins was recognized as an Innovator of the Year award recipient for his groundbreaking contributions to the fields of Ultra High Definition (UHD), High Dynamic Range (HDR), Next Generation Audio (NGA) technologies, and supply chain management through his work at the PBS Advanced Format Center and various industry initiatives. Jenkins is a steadfast advocate for ethical conduct, inclusivity, innovation, diversity, equity, acceptance, accessibility, and the elimination of discriminatory biases within the technology and media sectors. Additionally, he holds certifications as a sound engineer, AI/ML engineer, and application designer among others. Jenkins holds a deep passion for the visual arts and, when time permits, offers pro bono services in location sound recording, live mixing, studio recording, post-production, and finishing for
aspiring filmmakers, animators, and musicians. His family’s guiding principle is “In all things, integrity, and integrity in all things.”

Navneet Kaur

IT Services and Digital Advisory professional with more than 15 years of extensive experience in Program Management, Business Analysis and Innovation.

She has led complex digital transformation engagements across geographies and worked with global organizations in several industries. She has the right mix of domain, people skills and technology competency.

Navneet is currently working as an Innovation lead for HCL, driving innovation across M&E customers.

Passionate about using innovation to solve complex and practical business problems. Delivered multiple operational and customer experience improvements through digital or analytics led interventions. Proven ability to develop a vision, achieve consensus and deliver results across functions and teams.

Logan Ketchum

Logan Ketchum was an early influencer in the practical application of Artificial Intelligence in Media and Entertainment, working with organizations like NBCU, Bloomberg, ViacomCBS, San Francisco Giants and many more. At Veritone, Logan’s focus is on helping enterprise customers effectively implement AI work streams within their day-to-day businesses to impact workflow automation and content activation, resulting in increased audience engagement and boosts to associated revenue streams.

Sharif Khan

Sharif Khan is the Presales Solution Architect for the West Coast of US and Canada with Dalet Digital Media Systems. Sharif joined Dalet Digital Media Systems during a time when the industry is going through many changes with the introduction of cloud platforms, more evolved artificial intelligence platforms, and machine learning in media distribution workflows. He works closely with Dalet’s customers to design solutions that integrate enterprise media asset management with existing production toolsets and utilize artificial intelligence, automated supply chains, and virtual infrastructure in private/public cloud platforms.

Fereidoon Khosravi

As a 35+ year veteran in Information Technology, Digital Media, and Business Development, Fereidoon brings in-depth technology and business experience to Venera Technologies. Responsible for the global reach of Venera’s products and services, Fereidoon works closely with Hollywood Studios, Post Production Houses, Broadcasters, Content Aggregators and distributors worldwide, as well as technology partners, worldwide. He also participates in and contributes to various Digital Media industry forums and Standards bodies. Fereidoon holds a Master of Science degree from University of Michigan, USA.

Olga Kornienko

Olga Kornienko is a co-founder and COO of EZDRM, the original DRM as a Service specialist. Since 2001, Olga has driven the growth of this very international enterprise and established its strong market branding as both a business and a technology leader. Olga is an expert on video security, security industry history, and a frequent contributor to industry publications and conferences.

Adam Krentzman

Adam Krentzman is the CEO of Ouvert Media Group!, a film/television consulting firm. He is thought of as one of the most well-respected executives in the motion picture business. For 35 years involved with packaging, producing, and arranging the financing on over 50 feature films. For 20-years served as a motion picture agent at CAA representing Hollywood’s top directors, producers, and writers. Clients included: Michael Bay, Alex Proyas, Francis Ford Coppola, Michael Mann, Antoine Fuqua, Jerry Bruckheimer, Sundance Films, and National Geographic to name a few. He has participated in transactions ranging from traditional talent employment and production arrangements to the territorial sales of motion picture distribution rights worldwide, as well as the structuring of international co-productions.

Has taught Hollywood business practices and film financing at: Beijing Film Academy, USC, UCLA, Loyola Marymount, University of Hawaii, University of Arizona, American Film Institute, Academy of Art University, National Film School of Florence, Boston University, Chapman and Columbia College.

A member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), Society of Motion Picture & Television Engineers (SMPTE), Hollywood Professional Association (HPA), past 18-year member on the Board of Advisors of the Telluride Film Festival.

Barbara Lange

Barbara Lange is an entrepreneur and accomplished executive business leader. Her career includes serving as executive leader for prominent global not-for-profit professional associations. Barbara is renowned for her leadership skills, effectively collaborating with Boards to optimize organizational performance and ensure enduring success.
In 2022, she founded Kibo121, a consultancy committed to guiding industry towards sustainable solutions, encompassing environmental, social, and
governance (ESG) considerations.

In 2023, together with Dovetail Creative, Kibo121 co-founded the Media Tech Sustainability Series (MTSS), a non-commercial program to aid the media tech industry on sustainability issues through webinars, training, and industry events.

Barbara’s achievements include executive leadership role at SMPTE and the HPA, with previous roles in business development and product management at the IEEE. Presently, she serves on the board and chairs a working group of the Greening of Streaming industry initiative and is sits on sustainability committees for ATSC and SMPTE. She is a member of the International Society of Sustainability Professionals (ISSP), SMPTE, and the HPA.

Jaisica Lapsiwala

Jaisica has over two decades of experience in digital and live-event content. She has worked at world-class brands including Informa, Retail Week, IBC and The Telegraph. She is currently the founder of content agency Purple Ripple and is also the co-founder of Soho Media Club, a networking club for media professionals.Armed with heaps of experience in creating, managing and delivering global content strategies and campaigns across multiple channels including live events, social media, print and in-house TV, Jaisica is skilled at bridging the gap between digital and live event content and working collaboratively with editors to create structured media campaigns. She is passionate about diversity and inclusion and launched the D&I initiative at IBC and regularly speaks on panels on this subject. Her focus is on empowering individuals and organisations no matter their background, status or gender to be the best version of themselves.

Ammar Latif

Ammar Latif is a solutions architect at Amazon Web Services (AWS). His current focus is on help customers with implementing their workflows in the AWS cloud. Ammar has supported a number of large media customers in North America with a focus on advanced IP routing technologies.

Ammar is a member of SMPTE and holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering New Jersey Institute of Technologies. He also holds many cloud as well as CCIE certifications.

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Cédric Lejeune

Cedric started in 2000 as a visual effects assistant on Discreet Smoke, working on TribalX, a complex full CG/MoCap production for children and setting the network infrastructure in the small post-production facility.

In 2000 he becomes application engineer for Post Logic, a French VFX system reseller and supports a wide range of products: animation, infrastructure, effects, colour grading. He was in charge of the implementation of the first industrial digital intermediate pipeline at Éclair Laboratoires in 2002 and different setups in Paris and Europe.

In 2006 he starts his first company, Workflowers, to develop consulting and training services, accompanying film labs in the transition to digital and helping post-production to step into the cinema world. He specializes in digital cinema and video workflows, infrastructures and colour science. His work on online collaborative environment and content management tools have made him an expert of cloud technologies for media. Workflowers’ image processing tools are used by major studios in the world.

In 2015 he joins the European cinema group Ymagis to supervise the technology for post-production and mastering labs in the group (New York, London, Liège, Berlin, Barcelona, Paris). The integration of Eclair Laboratoires extends the delivery of content to broadcasters and OTT and gives an opportunity to develop a century old brand as an innovative one. He then assembled the technology and innovation team to create more efficient and global workflows across the group. He led the development of EclairColor, the HDR solution for cinema (www.eclaircolor.com).

In 2020, while continuing R&D efforts for EclairColor and developing HDR and HFR image technologies for the Chinese market, he reboots Workflowers to help media industries in their transition to a more sustainable model. With his team of media engineers, he helps studios in building and implementing organization and technical strategies with sustainability in mind. He Is a member of the EBU Sustainability group, the SMPTE Cloud Sustainability working group and a founding member of La Cartouch’Verte, an association to promote good environmental practices in animation movies production. With Workflowers he partners with Perfect Memory for the development of their semantic technology toolset for the movie studio environment.

Cedric is the co-head of the postproduction department at CST and is a member of VES, SMPTE and HPA.

Phil Lelyveld

Philip Lelyveld runs the Immersive Media (VR/AR/MR/LBE) Initiative at the University of Southern California’s Entertainment Technology Center (ETC@USC), a think tank within the School of Cinematic Arts. He also runs the Executive/Student Coffee program which creates structured, casual discussion and networking opportunities around topics of interest to the industry.

The ETC@USC is funded by the major Hollywood studios, Verizon, Microsoft, and related service, technology, telco/internet, and consumer electronics companies to advise them on emerging technology-related opportunities, project out where entertainment will be in the 3-5 year timeframe, connect them with start-ups and communities of interest, help accelerate adoption of promising technologies, and work to drive standardization and avoid format wars. Learn more at www.ETCenter.org and www.PhilipLelyveld.com .

Chris Lennon

Chris Lennon serves in Ross Video’s Office of the CTO as Director, Standards Strategy. He is responsible for Ross’ activities in standards and trade organizations, as well as its global thought leadership program.

Chris also serves as Executive Director of the Open Services Alliance (OSA), a global industry organization focused on interoperability among microservice oriented media systems, now a part of SMPTE’s Rapid Industry Solutions. The OSA produced the media industry’s first microservices standards and continues to lead the way in this rapidly evolving area.

Chris has held a variety of leadership positions in the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), including Standards Director, Western US Governor, Local Section Chair, and Chair of multiple Technology Committees. He is a SMPTE Fellow and recipient of SMPTE’s prestigious 2008 Citation. He currently is a manager of the SMPTE Rocky Mountain Section and serves on the IABM Board.

Cerise Lim Jacobs

Cerise Lim Jacobs (Creator and Librettist) creates new American opera from her chequered past in multicultural Singapore and her sojourns around the world. Her original libretti are inspired by the myths that live in our imaginations and the excitement of current events and people she encounters.

Cerise was born in colonial Singapore under British rule into a traditional Chinese family. She grew up absorbing the disparate influences of Chinese, Malay, Indian and Western cultures and the world religions of Christianity (indeed, she was educated by American Methodist missionaries), Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. During the turbulence following Singapore’s independence from Great Britain and its secession from Malaysia, when fear of the “yellow peril” was rampant in Southeast Asia, her family managed to emigrate to Australia, despite its “White Australia” Policy. She dropped out of school at the age of nineteen to follow her heart, and began a sojourn that took her from Melbourne to Oxford, England; East Lansing, Michigan; Vancouver; and Pittsburgh, until she finally settled in Boston, Massachusetts.

Cerise graduated from the University of Pittsburgh, summa cum laude and from Harvard Law School, magna cum laude. She spent 20 years practicing law, including serving as a trial partner at Goodwin Procter LLP, one of the largest law firms in New England, where she specialized in criminal defense and patent litigation. She also served for five years as a federal prosecutor at the US Attorney’s Office in Boston as part of her commitment to public service. She was sworn in as a citizen simultaneously with being sworn in as an Assistant United State Attorney, one of the proudest moments of her life.

Cerise is a lifelong student of living creatively as a means of achieving success across many disciplines. Since retiring from law, she has returned to her creative voice in opera, music, art, and food. She is the President of the Charles and Cerise Jacobs Charitable Foundation and has endowed the Charles M. Jacobs Fund for Equal Rights and Social Engagement at the University of Chicago Law School and College. She is a founder of White Snake Projects, (formerly, the Friends of Madame White Snake), a company which commissions, develops and produces original opera of the highest production values, combined with social activism; a co-founder, with her son Pirate Epstein, of the mobile gaming company SqueePlay; and, is a founding member of Evidox, an e-discovery company.

Cerise has been named a 2017 Mover & Shaper by Musical America, an award given to music professionals for driving the performing arts towards a future shaped by their vision, and one of Boston’s 100 Most Influential People of Color in 2018.

Per Lindgren

Per Lindgren is CTO of Net Insight and is a founding member of the company. He spearheaded the development of Sye, the low latency OTT streaming platform that was acquired by Amazon in 2020. In addition, he is an inventor of more than fifteen patents. Previously, Lindgren was an assistant professor at the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology and holds a Ph.D. in telecommunications from the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm.

Joaquin Lippencott

Joaquin is a modern technology veteran. Throughout his career he has built successful digital strategies with a wide assortment 
of transformative technologies and platforms, helping clients identify a clear path for success. Over the years he has worked with industry leaders such as DC Comics, the Television Academy, Intel, Technicolor, Verizon Wireless, Habitat for Humanity, Limewire, the Linux Foundation, Sony Pictures Television, Mercy Corps, and Cisco as well as numerous small businesses, advertising agencies and internet start ups.

With over 14 years of experience in his field, he is still as passionate about technology as ever. Joaquin is a graduate from UCLA with a degree 
in design and has also served on the AIGA Portland chapter board as President.

-As CEO & founder of Metal Toad – an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner, Joaquin provides the vision and mission for a company with big goals to transform the way enterprises use software

-Joaquin serves as a Board Member on the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce and Beverly Hills Chamber of Commerce

Payton List

Payton List is a leader in entertainment technology who helps build workflows, R&Ds software and technology, and manages a team of media workflow specialists and creative editorial professionals. Working collaboratively with her team, she is dedicated to problem solving and technical consulting with the goal of enabling creatives to focus on producing their best work. She also strives to create an equitable and inclusive environment at work and throughout the M&E industry. Outside of her day job, she is the co-chair of the HPA Women in Post group, which is committed to building a diverse and supportive community of media professionals.

Chase Logan

Chase Logan is a professional with years of experience managing post production teams for digital studios. He’s overseen thousands of hours of content creation across feature films, digital tv shows, and youtube channels as well as marketing content and digital distribution.

Thomas Lund

Originally of a medical background, Thomas Lund worked in healthcare before diving into pro audio. Thomas is senior scientist at Genelec, engaged in standardisation, and author of a number of papers on perception and measurement. He is active in AES, EBU, ITU, WHO and CTA; and chairman of a working group under the European Commission, tasked with the prevention of recreational hearing loss.

Jody Madden

Jody Madden was appointed CEO in July 2019 to lead Foundry’s next stage of growth. Since joining Foundry as Chief Operating Officer in 2013, Jody has been responsible for the overall customer strategy and product line ensuring our customers’ needs remain at the heart of the business. Prior to joining Foundry, Jody spent more than a decade in technology management and studio leadership roles at Industrial Light & Magic, Lucasfilm, and Digital Domain. Jody graduated from Stanford University.

James Mathers

James Mathers is a veteran Cinematographer, and the President of the nonprofit educational cooperative, The Digital Cinema Society, a group dedicated to the industry’s informed integration of new technology, as well as a regular contributor to a number of industry trade journals. He began his career in the entertainment industry as a child actor appearing in many films and TV series of the 1960’s. Behind the lens professional work started after he attended film school and a wide variety of staff and freelance assignments led to a specialization in cinematography and the founding of his own business, The Migrant FilmWorkers. James has been the Director of Photography on over forty feature films and MOWs and has seen six TV series from inception thru their first season. He has recently been specializing in shooting “filmstyle” digital, and while still active as a Cinematographer, James also regularly produces, writes, and directs a variety of projects.

George Meek

With two decades of experience selling broadcast technology and almost as long operational experience in scaling high-growth technology companies, George Meek is CEO of InPlayer, the leading monetization and subscriber management platform trusted by over 700 customers worldwide.

Jonathan Mills

Over the last fifteen years Jonathan has focused on growing revenue and clients for a number of Los Angeles based advertising and brand agencies with a focus on the automotive, entertainment and technology sectors. His clients have included some of the world’s most recognized brands, including Michelin, Ferrari, ABInBev, Chopard, Belstaff, and Porsche. At Metal Toad, Jonathan’s focus is creating and nurturing client relationships and he is happiest when working in a values-driven organization. Select Experience: – Managed multiple account stakeholders to launch a Super Bowl Advertisement in support of ABIInBev’s e-commerce initiative-Developed and account-managed digital campaigns for Ferrari, Michelin and Pirelli Tires-Developed the business sales cycle for a popular automotive content channel-Worked cross-collaboratively with in-house team members of various disciplines including product, software, and executives-At Metal Toad Jonathan holds key account space with SONY, ABC, The Golden Globes, The Television Academy and more. Extensive B2B partnership experience from start-ups to Fortune 500.

Jonathan Morgan

Jonathan Morgan is the CEO and founder of Object Matrix. Jon has a long history in grid and the clustered computing technologies, stretching back to the early 90s and including leading the largest development team on the EMC Centera product. As the founder of Object Matrix, Jon put together a team of storage technology experts, largely drawn from other storage technology companies, to realise his view of intelligent, scalable, and searchable object storage technology storage technology. Prior to Object Matrix Jon worked as the CTO in Agathos Software, Procis Software Limited and as a senior architect/consultant for Ubiquity, AT&T and Accenture. Well travelled, Jon studied grid computing at Texas Christian University and worked for 10 years in Brussels. Jon now lives in Wales and has a keen interest in rugby, football, college basketball and travel.

Steve Morris

Steve Morris is a 30-year veteran in the audio engineering industry and has worked in every facet of the media business, including music, film and video post-production, as well as broadcast television. Steve is a member of SMPTE, AES, and the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.

Michelle Munson

Michelle Munson is the co-founder and CEO of Eluvio (https://eluv.io) and co-creator of the Content Fabric protocol, an open and decentralized Internet protocol for owner-controlled streaming, storage and monetization of digital content at scale. The Content Fabric provides premium content distribution and management for tier1 sports, studios, and artists globally, and has won multiple product awards from leading organizations at global industry events including HPA, IABM, IBC, NAB, and SEIcon. Eluvio users include Amazon Studios/MGM, Cricket Australia, European Professional Club Rugby, Red Bull, SONY Pictures, Telstra Broadcast Services, UEFA, Warner Bros., WPALiveTV, WWE, and others

Michelle previously co-founded Aspera in 2004 and led the company as CEO until May 2017, including through acquisition by IBM in 2014. She co-invented the Aspera FASP™ transport technology used in the digital media supply chain for high-speed, low-cost secure digital content transport, replacing satellite and traditional tape-based delivery technologies, and won an engineering Emmy.

Michelle holds fifteen US patents in the areas of content networking, machine learning, block chain and distribution infrastructure. She is also the recipient of the SMPTE 2019 David Sarnoff Medal for technology innovation with lasting impact in film and television and the SMPTE 2025 Workflow Systems Medal for video workflow innovation. She holds dual B.Sc. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Physics from Kansas State University and was a Fulbright Scholar at Cambridge University where she received a postgraduate diploma in Computer Science. In 2022, she became the youngest person inducted into the Kansas State University Engineering Hall of Fame.

Sam Nicholson, ASC

Sam Nicholson, ASC, is CEO and founder of Stargate Studios, a state-of-the-art visual effects production company founded in 1989, with studios in South Pasadena, California and Vancouver, British Columbia. As Stargate’s CEO, principal director and cinematographer, Sam draws from his thirty years of expertise in film, television and visual effects production to lead his company of over 125 talented artists and technicians. A graduate of the UCLA graduate school of Fine Arts, Sam has been involved in film andtelevision production for over thirty years. From his first experience as on-set visual effect supervisor on ‘Star Trek I’ and the groundbreaking ‘Max Headroom’, to his recent Emmy Awards for best Visual Effects for TNT’s “Battlegound” and NBC’s “Heroes”,Sam Nicholson has led his company, Stargate Studios, to become a leader in digital imaging for high concept television and feature films. Currently working on multiple television series, national commercials and feature films, Sam has overseen the visual effects for numerous series such as “Heroes”, “24”, “Grey’s Anatomy”, “CSI: New York”, “Ugly Betty”, “ER”, “The Event”, “Pan Am” and “The Walking Dead”. Some of his motion picture credits include supervising and producing the visual effects for feature films such as ‘Ghostbusters II’, ‘Highlander II’, ‘Naked Gun 33 1/3′, 40 Days and 40 Nights’ and ‘White Noise’.Sam Nicholson is a member of the American Society of Cinematographers, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, an IA Director of Photography, a member of the Directors Guild of America, an award-winning member of the Visual Effects Society and he serves on the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Technical Awards committee.

Zach Oscar

Zach Oscar is a writer and lecturer on the gaming and esports industries. As the Gaming/Esports consultant for HocusFocus, he has delivered lectures to clients like AMC Networks, Comscore, E.W. Scripps, Fox Networks, Sinclair Broadcasting, and USIM. He has also been a featured speaker at the Secret Society, in which 200+ media industry executives get together biannually, on BIA Advisory Services webinars, and venture capital firm Needham & Co.’s panels. On top of this, Zach writes as a frequent columnist to MediaPost, serving as the publications’ gaming and esports contributor.

Taesung Park

Taesung Park is a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at UC Berkeley, advised by Prof. Alexei Efros. He studies computer vision and learning-based computational photography. He received his B.S. in Mathematics and M.S. in Computer Science, both at Stanford University, where he was advised by Vladlen Koltun and Sergey Levine. He is a recipient of Samsung Scholarship and Adobe Research Fellowship. He has previously worked at Adobe and NVIDIA.

Del Parks

Delbert R. Parks, III is the Executive Vice President / Chief Technology Officer of Sinclair Broadcast Group. Del has been serving Sinclair since 1972 and has held various operations and engineering positions with Sinclair over the last 48 years. In his role, he supports the company’s current and future Engineering, Technical Operations, and Facilities for Sinclair.

Currently, he is responsible for the deployment of the new broadcast standard, the Next Generation Broadcast Platform, and co-leads Sinclair’s technical and operational integration of the twenty-one recently purchased FOX Regional Sports Networks, the Marquee Sports Network (Chicago Cubs), the Tennis Channel’s new IP digital facility in Los Angeles, and the transformation of the company’s media and broadcast operations as they migrate to the cloud and their future state.

Del is a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel who has held various commands during his 26-year reserve career. Retiring in 1998 as the Battalion Commander of the 175^th Infantry (5^th Maryland), Maryland Army National Guard.

He is a member of the Society of Motion Pictures and Television Engineers and in 2015 was honored as a SMPTE Fellow. In 2007, he was the recipient of Broadcasting and Cable’s Technology Leadership Award and is a member of the Society of Broadcast Engineers. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Baltimore Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America and has been active in the scouting program for many years with his two Eagle Scout sons.

Favorite sayings: “Never suffer in silence” and “If you want something done…give it to someone who’s busy.”

Carol Payne

Carol Alynn Payne started her career in visual effects, working for almost six years at Industrial Light & Magic, a Lucasfilm Company, most prominently as Color & Imaging Engineer. It was there she found her passion – in how we capture, create, digitally manipulate, and display imagery to make content shine. At ILM, Carol worked on over 30 films, including The Irishman, Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Avengers: Infinity War. In May 2019, Carol joined Netflix as Imaging Specialist on the Creative Technologies team, focused on standards of the future and how we can best utilize imaging technology to preserve creative intent. Carol is a Virtual Working Group chair for the Academy Color Encoding System (ACES), as well as a Technical Steering Committee member of OpenColorIO, and a chair of the Academy Software Foundation’s Diversity & Inclusion Working Group. Active in SMPTE and ACM SIGGRAPH, she’s also a founding member of Women in Visual Effects.

Janice Pearson

Janice is an experienced media professional with an established background in content security, production, business strategy, risk management and compliance. She previously served as Director, Content Protection Strategy & Operations at Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.Janice is highly regarded for creating and implementing supply chain security procedures from production through distribution for motion picture, television and games content. She also has expertise in policy development, building security training programs, providing direction to business units when workflow concerns arise and investigating content leaks within the supply chain. Janice has a leadership role within Convergent, overseeing the Americas territory. She currently serves on the CDSA’s Technology Committee and previously served on the MPAA’s Content Security Working Group which writes/maintains the MPAA Best Practices. Janice is CISA and CISM certified and teaches ISACA exam preparation classes in her spare time.

Tim Pipher

Tim’s career shifted from the financial industry to television when he founded a small independent television station in Fort Myers, Florida to promote his investment business in 1989.

Upon realizing he enjoyed show business more than the investment business, Tim added a second small TV station by founding and running WHHI-TV on Hilton Head Island, SC, until both stations were sold in 2001.

In 2008, the show business bug emerged again and Tim founded Southeastern Studios in Vero Beach, Florida, employing one of the first 3D HD virtual studio systems open to the public in America. In 2012, the studio moved to its current location in Burbank, and renamed itself L.A. Castle Studios, specializing in the production of television host wraps, talk, and news programs for various networks and entertainment companies, including Disney, Universal, Amazon, and many others.

Early in 2018, the studio acquired and/or patented technology that would allow it to facilitate the production of narrative programming, including scenes from anywhere in the universe, (past, present, or future) by tethering the Unreal Video Game Engine with cinema cameras and lenses, creating remarkable creative opportunities while saving producers substantial financial resources.

Tim has a bachelor’s degree in business administration with a minor in economics from Bethel University in Indiana, and an MBA with a specialization in financial investments from the University of South Carolina.

Rowan de Pomerai

Rowan de Pomerai leads the technology strategy and delivery for the DPP, the media industry’s international community. The DPP provides the insight and connections our members need to do business better.

Rowan has a strong background in media innovation. He has an MEng in Media Engineering, and has spent 15 years in the industry, working across broadcasters, production, and software companies.

Charles Poynton

Sarah Priestnall

Sarah Priestnall is the Director of Product Marketing at Pixelworks. Since starting as a runner and tape op at Molinare in London, she has been at the forefront of evangelizing new technologies throughout her career. She was deeply involved in the development of the digital intermediate process at Kodak’s Cinesite and also some of the earliest RED camera workflows at Hollywood Intermediate, which became Next Element by Deluxe. As digital acquisition became the norm, she was a key member of the Codex team as they became the standard for RAW in-camera recording, storage and workflow. Sarah is an associate member of the ASC, writing the chapter on Digital Post Production in the latest edition of the ASC Manual. She is also on the board of the Colorist Society International.

Peter Putman

Peter Putman is president of ROAM Consulting LLC in Doylestown, PA. A 44–year veteran of the commercial AV and home theater industries, Pete has authored hundreds of columns, tutorials, and feature articles for 35 years on topics as diverse as display technology, digital video, RF and wireless signal propagation, and signal interfacing; all for a wide range of magazines and media outlets.

He has presented, instructed, and moderated panel discussions multiple times at major trade shows and technical conferences, among them SMPTE, the NAB West and East trade shows, the Hollywood Professional Association Technology Retreat, CEDIA Expo, and Integrated Systems Europe.

Pete taught seminars and workshops annually at the InfoComm trade show for 20+ years and a Senior Academy member of AVIXA University™ faculty. He was one of the first candidates to earn InfoComm’s Certified Technology Specialist (CTS) designation, and was also named InfoComm’s 2008 Educator of the Year.

Pete earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in communications from Seton Hall University and a Master of Science degree in Television and Film from Syracuse University. He has also been a licensed Amateur Radio operator for 51 years, and currently holds Extra Class callsign KT2B. Pete is a Life Member of SMPTE and recently authored an online course on the fundamentals of ultra–high–definition television for the organization.

Josh Rizzo

Multi-disciplinary problem solver, Josh assists clients in workflow design and implementation, creating hardware and software solutions for modern digital workflows. He has assisted with the lead the engineering of large-scale facility deployments and workflow design for feature film and television clients. He enjoys exploring the edges of where technology and culture meet, preparing to address the challenges of tomorrow.

Andy Quested

Andy Quested started as a BBC Technical Assistant in 1978 becoming a video-tape editor in 1985 where he worked on many comedy, children’s and documentary series, editing all episodes of “Keeping Up Appearances”!

He also worked on the introducing of non-linear editing, stereo and widescreen production. In 1998 moved to a new BBC technology department working on the BBC’s first HD programmes including Planet Earth I and the first UHD programme, Planet Earth II.

Andy left the BBC in November 2020 after 42 years but is still active in international standards and accessible media for all. He is currently the Chair of the ITU-R Working Party 6C which works to deliver standards for programme production and international exchange including work on Advanced Audio Systems and High Dynamic Range Television. The Working Party also looks into advances in immersive media technologies including personalised and accessible content.

Andy is also Chair of the EBU Production Strategic Programme which works on all aspects of Programme Production including the use of AI in broadcasting and all aspects of content-based data applications, data management, archives and cloud production.

Both the ITU and EBU groups are looking a more holistic approach to making all media a more personal and accessible experience and how to achieve the goals of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Yuriy Reznik

Yuriy Reznik is a technology fellow and head of research at Brightcove. Previously, he worked at RealNetworks, InterDigital, and Qualcomm, and contributed to a number of well-known standards (ITU-T H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, ITU-T H.265/MPEG HEVC, MPEG DASH, etc.) as well as products in the domains of internet streaming and wireless multimedia. He received his PhD degree in computer science from Kiev University, Kiev, Ukraine, and was also a visiting scholar at Stanford University, Stanford, CA. He has co-authored more than 100 academic articles and co-invented more than 60 granted U.S. patents related to his studies and work.

Rachel Rose

Rachel Rose, an R&D Supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), drives technology that aids artists in the creation and animation of characters for feature films. In her 13 years at ILM, Rachel has worked on a wide range of films, including Rango (2011), Noah (2014), Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), and as a Virtual Production CG Supervisor for The Mandalorian (2019), specifically driving forward the technology for the show. Prior to her tenure at ILM, Rachel earned her Ph.D. in Computer Graphics Animation. Rachel is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), and her work on BlockParty, a visual, procedural rigging system, earned her a Technical Achievement Award from AMPAS in 2018.

David Rosen

David has global responsibility for leading Sony’s Ci Media Cloud SaaS business. As one of the original founders, he has grown the business from inception into the largest and most profitable SaaS company in Sony’s history. He is a valued technology thought leader within Media & Entertainment and has been a significant contributing force in bringing the reality of cloud based production and broadcast workflows to many of the largest media organizations in the world.Prior to launching Ci, David helped create the Digital Media Group within Sony Pictures where he was responsible for delivering solutions to enable the studio to transition from tape based to file based workflows. While at Sony Pictures, David also spent two years developing and bringing to market the Distribution Backbone, the industry’s first automated supply chain for post theatrical manufacturing and distribution.David started his career as a software developer and solutions consultant with Oracle Corporation where he consulted with fortune50 companies and multiple government agencies.

Tony Rost

Tony brings more than 20 years experience in people-first leadership of large and mid-sized public and private companies undergoing significant growth and change. He drives business value through strategic partnership with business leaders, unrelenting focus on talent development, and continuous improvement of processes and systems. Tony has shipped transformative tech products such as predictive analytics tools for energy and transportation clients, entertainment-industry innovations in distribution and audience engagement, and pioneering internationally-coordinated beta programs. Select Experience:-Led software and infrastructure teams to successful, on-time launches for hundreds of products-Oversaw successful transformation to cloud and mobile solutions for dozens of major corporations-Portfolio of work includes smart watches for Intel, big data analytics systems for Daimler and Siemens, streaming services such as Fandango NOW and Crackle, and hundreds of cloud-first digital properties for Sony, Warner Bros, Peace Health Hospitals, and many others-Launched three projects at CES-Managed dozens of agile teams internally and externally-Appointed by the governor to guide technology policy with workforce development in Oregon-Published articles with Industry Week and Smart Manufacturing-Public speaking on technology leadership with the State of Oregon, Technology Association of Oregon, and many others.

Pierre Routhier

Former Aerospace Engineer Pierre Hugues Routhier, Eng., M.Eng., is a specialist in advanced imaging technologies. He has developed innovative solutions and workflows for studios, post-production facilities and broadcasters in all fields of advanced imaging. He is credited with more than a dozen patents related to advanced imaging and is published in several industry papers. These days, Pierre designs advanced workflows for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, instructs the SMPTE online course on High Dynamic Range and collaborates to new video standards at the European Broadcasting Union.

Marty Sacks

Marty Sacks is the Executive Vice President of Sales, Support and Marketing for the Telos Alliance and contributes to publications like TV Tech and Radio World.During nearly two decades with Telos Alliance, Sacks has held a variety of roles in management and sales as well as business and product development. Marty has also had sales roles with some of broadcasting’s most storied brands including console manufacturer Pacific Research and Engineering (PR&E) and Electronics Research, Inc. (ERI), world-class supplier of tower and antenna systems. Prior to his roles with broadcast equipment suppliers, Marty enjoyed a career as a technologist for some of radio’s best-known stations, including highly respected NPR affiliate WAMU and the US’s first successful FM CHR station, WPGC, both located in Washington, DC. Marty also had project and technology consulting roles with group owners First Media and Greater Media for several years. Along the way, Marty led Streamline Publishing, home of Radio Ink magazine. Marty lives in Baltimore with his wife, Mary Beth. In his spare time, he teaches people to fly airplanes and is a search and rescue pilot with the Maryland Wing of Civil Air Patrol.

Tom Sahara

A technology manager and operations executive with four decades of extensive live production experience, from the smallest of digital social media activations to the largest of international sports events.

Previously, Tom was the Vice President of Operations and Technology for Turner Sports where for over twenty years, he was responsible for the production operations such as NBA on TNT, MLB on TBS, Inside the NBA with Ernie Johnson, Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith and Shaquille O’Neal, Inside March Madness and other sports productions.

Prior to Turner Sports, his experience includes serving as the Sr. Technical Manager for three Olympics, (2002 Salt Lake Winter, 2000 Sydney Summer, 1996 Atlanta Summer).  Tom started his career as the technical director for “The Don Ho Show” the renown Hawaiian entertainment star.

Shunsuke Saito

Shunsuke Saito obtained his PhD degree at the University of Southern California in 2020. Prior to USC, he was a Visiting Researcher at University of Pennsylvania in 2014. He obtained his BE (2013), ME (2014) in Applied Physics at Waseda University in Japan. His work experience includes Facebook Reality Labs Pittsburgh, Pinscreen, Adobe, Facebook AI Research, and Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems as a Research Intern. His research focus is on human digitization from light-weight inputs by leveraging machine learning, which has been published in venues such as SIGGRAPH, NeurIPS,and CVPR.

Lina Sanchez

Lina is an experienced Post Producer, Producer and Filmmaker at heart. Her visionary perspectives and her ability to work in two different languages and countries have given her the opportunity to work on various prominent and global projects across a variety of formats with studios including Netflix, Disney and Fox Entertainment. Lina, with her passion for storytelling, works everyday to develop and execute projects with the highest standards of quality, with the purpose to inspire people to change the world through audiovisual means.

Lina’s ability to connect with different people and cultures make her a valuable asset to the industry. She currently works as a Marketing Post Producer for Fox Entertainment, and has served as a Co-chair of the Hollywood Professional Association (HPA)’s Young Entertainment Professionals (YEP) as well as their Networking, Education and Technology Program (NET), both of which have been designed to offer mentoring, education and community engagement for people of the entertainment industry. She also created a podcast focused on sharing important conversations and skills to navigate the ins and outs of Hollywood, and is currently in the post production phase of her latest short film.

Kamala Sankaram

Praised as “strikingly original” (NY Times) and “new voice from whom we will surely be hearing more” (LA Times), Kamala Sankaram writes highly theatrical music that defies categorization. Recent commissions include the Glimmerglass Festival, Washington National Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Shakespeare Theatre Company, and Opera on Tap, among others. Awards, grants and residencies include: Jonathan Larson Award, NEA ArtWorks, MAP Fund, Opera America, NY IT Award for Outstanding Production of a Musical, the Civilians, HERE, the MacDowell Colony, and the Watermill Center. Known for her work with emerging technologies, her recent genre-defying hit Looking at You (with collaborators Rob Handel and Kristin Marting) featured live data mining of the audience and a chorus of 25 singing tablet computers. Sankaram, Handel, and Marting also created all decicions will be made by consensus, a short absurdist opera performed live over Zoom and featured on NBC and the BBC3, and Only You Will Recognize the Signal, a psychedelic space opera created for remote performance. With librettist Jerre Dye and Opera on Tap, she created The Parksville Murders, the world’s first virtual reality opera (Samsung VR, Jaunt VR, Kennedy Center Reach Festival, “Best Virtual Reality Video” NY Independent Film Festival, Future of Storytelling, Salem Horror Festival and the Topanga Film Festival.) Also a performer, notable appearances include the LA Philharmonic, LA Opera, and the PROTOTYPE Festival, among others. Kamala is the leader of Bombay Rickey, an operatic Bollywood surf ensemble (recipient of two awards for Best Eclectic Album from the Independent Music Awards). Dr. Sankaram holds a PhD from the New School and is currently a member of the composition faculty at SUNY Purchase. www.kamalasankaram.com.

Mark Schubin

Multiple Emmy-award winning SMPTE Life Fellow Mark Schubin is the world’s greatest expert on the intersecting histories of media technology and opera. He helped create the hotel in-room movie business, the first live nationwide stereo simulcast network, the first live multi-language cinema subtitles, and what was probably the first HDR-to-SDR converter (though no one knew what HDR was at the time). He has worked on moving-image projects on all seven continents (including Antarctica), including news in Kazakhstan, cable TV in Hong Kong, and the television transmission system of Barbados. He also worked on the standardization of the VU meter. His bedroom was an official test site of the ATSC, his paper on aspect ratios was cited by the FCC, and his blog at SchubinCafe.com is archived by the Library of Congress. Most-recently, he received the Television Academy’s Charles F. Jenkins Lifetime Achievement Emmy Award. He once piloted the Fuji blimp and has been known to wear shoes.

Stephen Shapiro

After a 15-year career in freelance editorial as an assistant editor for major motion pictures and episodic television, Stephen transitioned to the Technology Development group at Sony Pictures Entertainment bringing his expertise in post-production and editorial workflows to the studio. Stephen enjoys workflow design and implementation for all aspects of production workflows including VFX, picture and sound editing, and post finishing.

Aline Shaw

Aline Shaw has been managing automated solutions for the media and entertainment industry for over 10 years. She started her career in media services, helping clients quickly grow their libraries in the streaming market for archival and distribution. She then moved her attention to post-production, where she is now Director of Product Innovation. As part of the post-production software team, Aline is focused on identifying industry trends while working with developers to create innovative software solutions to facilitate automation and drive efficiencies while providing a better working experience for post-production on a global scale

Leon Silverman

Leon Silverman is a pioneering executive with more than 40 years at the intersection of media, entertainment, and technology innovation. With leadership roles at industry defining and iconic companies like Kodak, LaserPacific, Disney, and Netflix, he has consistently driven groundbreaking advances in technology, fueled creative enablement, workflow innovation, and next-gen infrastructure.

He serves MovieLabs, the technology R&D Lab owned by the major Studios as Chair of the MovieLabs Industry Forum, where he spearheads an aligned global effort to literally define and invent the future of media creation.

As head of Strategic Perspective Consulting, he helps drive industry strategy at the intersection of creativity and technology.  His clients include major Hollywood Studios, industry services and creative technology organizations.

Silverman is a Venture Partner and Investor in Hallstone Ventures and serves as senior advisor to MediaBridge Capital, a Boston-based boutique investment bank focused on mergers and acquisitions and consulting for media and entertainment.

He was one of the founders and was the original and long-standing president of the HPA – the Hollywood Professional Association, where he continues to advise and serve as Program Chair of The HPA Tech Retreat Super Session.

Silverman serves as a member of the Executive Committee of the Production and Technology Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, where he also served a six year term on the Science and Technology Council. In addition, Silverman is a sponsor of and helped to design and launch the Academy’s talent development initiative, the Gold Rising program.

Silverman also serves on the Executive Committee of the new Science and Technology peer group at the Television Academy and is a long serving member of its Technology and Engineering Emmy Awards committee.

He has been honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the HPA, the Bob Lambert Technology Leadership Award from the Entertainment Technology Center at USC, has 2 Emmy Awards for his contributions to technology innovation, holds 10 issued patents and numerous Disney Inventor awards for his contributions to patent applications.

He has served multiple terms as Governor and is a Life Fellow of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), where he was awarded its Presidential Proclamation honoring his “contributions to the Society and the media entertainment industry as a visionary, innovator, and mentor.”

Serban Simu

Serban is a technology innovator and hands-on engineering leader in all things “data”. Serban has a B.Sc. degree in Computer Science from the Universitatea Politehnica Bucuresti in Bucharest, Romania, and a Masters degree in Telecommunication Networks from Ecole Nationale Superieure des Telecommunications where he finished first in his class. He came to the United States in the late 1990’s to join Cisco Content Networking group, as a lead software engineer at Digital Fountain, and founded Aspera with Michelle Munson in 2004 where he led technology and product development for 13 years.

Aaron Sloman

Aaron Sloman is Chief Technology Officer of OWNZONES Media Network. Since 2015, Aaron has managed the company’s enterprise systems and solutions, and oversees all aspects of technology architecture for the B2B and B2C lines of the business as well as device releases. Additionally, he pilots both the U.S. product development team and the technical team based in Romania, and coordinates operations between the two. Aaron, notably, was responsible for leading the technical development of the company’s OTT platform, OWNZONES Connect and the proprietary IMF cloud transcoder and is very active with the IMF User Group and SMPTe IMF PlugFests.

A serial entrepreneur, Aaron, as either a Founder or Co Founder, launched several startups prior to joining OWNZONES. Ventures include Nimble Software Systems, Inc., CrossFit Chalk and Veebit and speakTECH. During this time, Aaron served as Chief Strategy Officer at Veebit, a predictive analytics company employing advanced psychometrics in conjunction with big data. He directed the mapping and product development, designed with open architecture and flexibility, of Veebit’s proprietary measurement models to generate relevant value profiles.

Aaron, a former Microsoft alum, worked there during the surge of technological change in the late 90’s, marked by fierce competition for browser and platform domination and the evolution of data-driven user experiences. In 2005, Aaron left Microsoft to form speakTECH, a technology consulting firm, acquired by Perficient in 2010. Aaron grew speakTECH into a leading implementation partner for companies including Disney, Dell, MySpace and Microsoft. After the acquisition, Aaron spent two years at Perficient, where he led their Microsoft business practice, and helped drive M&A efforts and strategy and organizational restructuring.

Isaac Spedding

Isaac Spedding is a New Zealand based Dailies Colourist and Head of Training and Development at The Rebel Fleet. His 12 years working in digital production have included time in the USA as a Producer with Livestream (now Vimeo), Technical Direction of the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Weeks, Production Consultancy for Syrian Aid Organization HIHFAD, a TEDx Production from Antarctica and Data and Dailies Manager roles for Disney and Netflix Productions.

Muralidhar Sridhar

Murali has 23 years of experience in Technology, R&D, Product management and Product creation in the areas spanning from AIML to Mobility and Networking. He has lead large Engineering and Product management teams across many geographies including India, USand Europe. He has filed 9 patents with 4 in AI. He has been an Entrepreneur before being acquired by Prime Focus Technologies. At Prime Focus Technologies, his core responsibilities include Product management, Product Engineering and Innovation for AIand ML. He works with major clients like Star India, Hearst Television, Hotstar and Sony Music.  Murali holds a degree in Computer Science Engineering from Bangalore Institute of Technology and Executive Education in Management from Wharton.

Jeremy Stapleton

With over 18 years of experience in media and technology, Jeremy Stapleton is a seasoned professional dedicated to leading teams in creating software solutions that drive digital transformation and enhance users’ daily lives. Before joining Universal Pictures, Mr. Stapleton led a global team of software developers at Technicolor, focusing on building and integrating applications in the post-production space.

At NBCUniversal, Mr. Stapleton has been an integral part of the Creative Technologies team, spearheading innovation initiatives related to production cloud adoption. Recently, he has taken on the role of Director of Software Engineering within the NBCUniversal Operations & Technologies team, where he continues to drive technological advancements and innovation.

Sebastian Sylwan

Sebastian Sylwan is an industry veteran with 25 years of experience that has taken him from Italy to the U.S., New Zealand, and Canada. Sylwan has held numerous leadership positions throughout his career, including successful engagements at Weta Digital, Autodesk’s Media & Entertainment Division, and Digital Domain. He joined Technicolor from Félix & Paul Studios in Montreal, Canada, where he served as CTO & Creative Partner and led its growth from an eight-person startup to a team of 65 at a studio universally recognized as a leading producer of immersive storytelling experiences. He currently chairs the Technology Committee for the Visual Effects Society (VES), is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and an active member of its Scientific and Technical (Sci-Tech) Awards Committee and Digital Imaging Technologies Subcommittee (DITS).

Craig Todd

Craig Todd, formerly Sr. Vice President and Chief Technical officer for Dolby, is now a Dolby Fellow. In his 44 years with Dolby he has been highly involved with surround sound, both analog and digital, for both cinema and for consumer media. He contributed heavily to the AC-3 (Dolby Digital) system that was used on 35mm film prints and then adopted for digital television and DVD. He conceived of a video frame rate friendly audio codec that became Dolby E. He made contributions to Digital Cinema specifications, and then helped guide Dolby into video technology, identifying contrast and brightness as areas worthy of improvement; thus leading Dolby towards HDR.

Craig contributed to a number of Standards in SMPTE and in ITU-R where he led the activity to specify loudness metering (resulting in BT.1770) and spearheaded the effort to specify the HDR format (BT.2100).

He has a Degree in Physics from the California Institute of Technology, and is a Fellow of both the AES and SMPTE. He has received a technical Emmy for his loudness metering work, and the Samuel L. Warner and Progress Medals from SMTPE.

Mike Tsinberg

Mike Tsinberg is the Founder and President of Key Digital®-a digital video technology company dedicated to researching and manufacturing innovative solutions for digital HDTV connectivity control and distribution. Born and raised in Chernovsty, Ukraine. Mike obtained his MSEE degree from the RyabinskInstitute of Aviation Technology in Russia.For over thirty years Mike has helped to pioneer both DVD technology and HDTV technology for consumer and commercial use. He is an icon in the audiovisual industry and gained notoriety as an Adele De Berri Pioneers Award winner at InfoComm 2013, participant in anEmmy Award for DVD 1999, and SMPTE Fellow. Mike was defined by his groundbreaking work in creating the MPEG-2 based DVD authoring system as well as co-creating the necessary technology for viewing and transmission of digital HDTV signals. Mike has managedboth domestic and foreign technology development efforts by having worked for both Phillips and Toshiba. During his years at Philips (1987-1991) and subsequent years at Toshiba (1991-2000), Mike amassed 40 United States and International Patents for his HDTV and DVD work.Through Mike’s efforts, Key Digital has grown to become an eight-time CES award winning technology company and is now recognized internationally for its robust product portfolio of digital video connectivity, switching, and control products.

Mark Turner

Minh Vo

Minh Vo is a Senior Research Scientist at Facebook Reality Lab Research. He

is interested in developing large-scale dynamic human scene

understanding systems in order to create virtual environments that

are perceptually indistinguishable from reality. He is the recipient

of the Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship. He received his

Ph.D. from The Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.

Mandy Walker, ASC, ACS,

Australian born Oscar^® and BAFTA nominated cinematographer, one of the few female DPs working on big budget feature films today. Her latest work can be seen in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis, which marks the fourth collaboration between the filmmakers, the two also worked together on critically acclaimed video shorts Chanel N°5: The Film, Chanel N°5: The One That I Want and the Oscar^® nominated feature film Australia, which also earned her a slew of awards. Her cinematography on Elvis made her the first woman in history to receive: the ASC award for Best Theatrical Feature Film, the AACTA (Australian Academy Award) for Best Feature Film Cinematography, and the ACS Best Theatrical Feature Film awards. She was also granted the EnergaCamerimage Festival Director’s Special Award and ACS Cinematographer of the year Milli Award in 2022. She is also inducted into the ACS Hall of Fame and has received the Order of Australia medal from Queen Elizabeth II. She served as a Governor of the Cinematographers Branch of AMPAS for 6 years and is a sitting Governor on the Board for the ASC. She is a recipient of an Honorary Doctorate from the Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS) and is an accredited member of the ASC and ACS. Included in her twenty two feature film credits are Mulan, The Mountain Between Us, Hidden Figures, Tracks, Shattered Glass, Australian Rules, Lantana, The Well and Parklands. Currently, she is in production on Disney’s Snow White (2024).

Andrew Wallenstein

Andrew Wallenstein is President and Chief Media Analyst, Variety Intelligence Platform, a new extension of the Variety brand focused on market research. He has been with Variety since 2011, previously as Co-Editor-in-Chief. Wallenstein received the Luminary Award for Career Achievement from the Los Angeles Press Club in 2017. He was an on-air contributor for NPR’s All Things Considered for nearly a decade and also hosted the PBS series “Variety Studio: Actors on Actors” as well as TV Guide Channel’s “Square Off,” a weekly primetime series about the TV industry. Wallenstein has a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Boston Globe and Business Week. He was at The Hollywood Reporter from 2002 to 2010.

Sheng-Yu Wang

Sheng-Yu Wang is a Robotics PhD student at CMU advised by Jun-Yan Zhu. Previously, he obtained his BA in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at UC Berkeley, where he worked on studying and detecting artifacts generated by image manipulation and synthesis, under the supervision of Alexei A. Efros.

Dave Ward

Dave Ward is CEO of PacketFabric. Prior to joining PacketFabric, he was the Chief Technology Officer of Engineering, Chief Architect, and SVP at Cisco’s Networking and Security Business where he drove innovation for the company’s entire platform, product and solution portfolio. He led Cisco’s core innovation programs, unifying and advancing strategic co-innovation partnerships and programs with internal and external customers, partners, developers, academia, standards and open-source groups. He also led the portfolio trajectory Internet by creating new offerings and technologies inside and outside Cisco’s traditional product portfolio. His engineering teams built numerous hardware and software products as well as industry solutions, including automation, orchestration, workflow engineering, 5G cloud networking, and IoT-based solutions for smart cities, retail, transportation, healthcare, media and entertainment. He also led architectural governance, technology strategy and development, patent strategy and university research for the company. During his tenure at Cisco, he held the prestigious title of Cisco Fellow. He has served on the Boards of the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions, Advanced Imaging Society, Linux Foundation, Linux Foundation Networking, ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector, Governmental Advisory boards and Open Networking Foundation. He is a tireless advocate for the environment and conservation. He has been in several documentaries.

Rohan Warey

Rohan Warey is Vice President, Presales at Prime Focus Technologies. Prime Focus Technologies (PFT) offers customers AI first transformational solutions that help automate the media supply chain. In his current role, Rohan heads the Presales function for Prime Focus Technologies across US & Canada. Rohan has 15+ years of global industry experience in consulting, product strategy, product management and pre-sales working with clients in the media and entertainment & sports industries to streamline and automate their media supply chains.

Erik Weaver

Rich Welsh

Jack Wenzinger

I support technology partners in the Media & Entertainment Vertical for AWS, accelerating their adoption of AWS in media operations and services to support their customers. I’ve spend over 25 years defining contribution networks, digitization, MAM, and media workflow solutions for studios, broadcasters, sports, news, and government agencies. Over the last year, I’ve focused on how cloud technologies can advance content production workflows such as capture to cloud, production edit in the cloud, and virtual production. I’m also best known in the role as “Train Passenger #3” in last year’s HPA cinematic epic, “Lost Lederhosen”. I’m always ready to talk cloud, MAM, metadata, classic car restoration, big dogs, jeeps, Rush or other epic rock bands.

Peter Wharton

Peter Wharton is the Director of Corporate Strategy for TAG Video Systems which makes innovative all-IP monitoring systems, and also serves as an advisor to other industry-leading media technology companies.He is the founder of Happy Robotz LLC, a media technology engineering, development and consulting company that focuses on creating transformative cloud-based media operations through intelligent, cost-managed and highly automated end-to-end workflows. Peter has also held a range engineering, product management, live production and business development roles at Grass Valley, BroadStream Solutions, PanAmSat, Fox and ABC Networks.He is a SMPTE Fellow and has previously served as SMPTE’s Membership VP, Secretary/Treasurer and Eastern Regional Governor. He has produced the “Bits by the Bay” SMPTE technology conference in the Washington DC area since 1999.

Tomasz Witowski

Tomasz has 20 years’ experience in the global motion picture industry. He has held many positions in which he has been responsible for teams dealing with content from Hollywood studios, independent filmmakers and advertising, under extreme time pressure. He also has experience of working with postproduction workflows and processes, encoding, conforming and editing theatrical and TV content for mastering. He is well versed in handling digital cinema packages for high-profile screenings; as well as theatre and projector installation, calibration, and alignment for image and audio, including 3D, HDR, and Immersive audio projection. He has led many projects involving DCP/IMF mastering, distribution, and content versioning. Tomasz is a standards-member of the SMPTE, BSI, ISO, and DPP. Tomasz is Ex Sundog Dolby Ymagis, Eclair Visual Data –working on new technologies and standards.Not only Tomasz is tech savvy, but also possess T-shaped skills which enable me to build deep expertise and a wide knowledge base. My interest in others means I love to collaborate with experts and create projects with others. This passion for collaboration and inclusion led Tomasz to co-found Soho Media Club (a network for media professionals) 18 months ago, which now has 1800 members

Teddy Zeskind

Teddy Zeskind is the Partner Manager at Bitmovin based in Denver, CO. Teddy manages relationships with Bitmovin’s ecosystem of partners in the M&E, OTT, and Broadcast worlds—including developing new partnerships, building go to market strategies, and identifying joint sales opportunities between partners and Bitmovin’s sales teams.

Bolei Zhou

Bolei Zhou is an Assistant Professor with the Information Engineering Department at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He earned his Ph.D. in computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research is on machine perception and autonomy, with a focus on enabling interpretable human-AI interactions. He received the MIT Tech Review’s Innovators under 35 in Asia-Pacific Award, Facebook Fellowship, Microsoft Research Asia Fellowship, MIT Greater China Fellowship, and his research was featured in media outlets such as TechCrunch, Quartz, and MIT News. More about his research is at http://bzhou.ie.cuhk.edu.hk/.

Tinghui Zhou

Tinghui Zhou is the Co-founder and CEO of Humen.AI, a startup aimed at democratizing content creation. He previously graduated with a Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley under the supervision of Prof. Alexei A. Efros. He received an MS in Robotics from the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University and a BS in Computer Science from University of Minnesota.