Networking Education Technology

Networking Education Technology: NET Roundtables

• Thursday, March 26, 2026
• 4:30 pm – 7:00 pm

This is a pre-paid event

• HPA Members – $60
• Non-Members – $90 (Not a member? Join Now!)

Schedule

4:30 pm – Check-in Opens
4:30 pm – 5:15 pm – Networking and Drinks
5:15 pm – 5:20 pm – Welcome Remarks
5:20 pm – 5:45 pm – Roundtable #1
5:45 pm – 5:50 pm – Rotate to a new roundtable
5:50 pm – 6:15 pm – Roundtable #2
6:15 pm – 6:45 pm – Networking Break, Refresh your drink while you’re up
6:45 pm – 7:10 pm – Roundtable #3

Sheraton Universal

• Starview Room
• 333 Universal Hollywood Dr, Universal City, CA 91608
  

Get Directions

Jade McQueen
Box

Table Topic: Secure Collaboration in a Global Content Ecosystem

Jade McQueen is the VP & Managing Director of Media & Entertainment at Box, where she leads the company’s global strategy for the Media & Entertainment industry. A founding member of Box’s industry vertical program, Jade has spent more than 16 years at Box helping the world’s most influential studios, gaming companies, music labels, and media organizations modernize how they create, manage, protect, and distribute content in the cloud.

Jade began her career as an A&R executive at DreamWorks Records and Interscope Records, working closely with artists and producers at the forefront of the music industry. After more than a decade in music, Jade transitioned into film and television where she wrote, directed, and produced projects across studios and independent productions.

Her passion for storytelling, innovation, and emerging technology ultimately led her to Box, where she now works at the intersection of Hollywood and Silicon Valley. Jade partners with many of the world’s most recognized entertainment companies helping media organizations leverage AI-powered intelligent content management to transform production workflows, creative collaboration, digital asset management, and global distribution while protecting valuable intellectual property. She is passionate about helping the entertainment industry unlock the value of unstructured data and accelerate the future of storytelling through technology.

Jason Fotter
BIND Studio

Table Topic: Studio in the Cloud: Making the 2030 Vision Real

Jason Fotter is a technology leader working at the intersection of creative production and scalable infrastructure for media and entertainment. His career has focused on designing systems that enable artists and studios to work faster, smarter, and at global scale.

In 2008, Jason co-founded FuseFX, where he served as CTO and led the design and implementation of the studio’s technology platform, including the proprietary Nucleus system. Under his technical leadership, FuseFX grew from a small startup into an award-winning visual effects studio delivering work across film, television, and streaming. Following a private-equity partnership with EagleTree Capital in 2018 and a series of acquisitions, the company rebranded as Pitch Black and now operates worldwide.

Jason’s expertise spans visual effects workflows, cloud and hybrid infrastructure, application development, automation, and team leadership. In 2024, he founded BIND Studio, a technology platform that allows productions to assemble distributed creative teams while leveraging a complete, production-ready VFX pipeline from ingest through delivery.

Jason is passionate about building practical, production-tested technology that removes friction from creative work.

Casey Spellman
Paramount Global

Table Topic: Innovation and Integrity: Shaping the AI Era Responsibly (presented by Young Entertainment Professionals)

Casey Spellman is a Tech Strategy professional at Paramount Global, where she identifies and evaluates emerging technologies that help productions work faster, smarter, and occasionally with a hint of auto‑magic. She began her career at the company as an Executive Assistant in the Futurist department, supporting initiatives in immersive and interactive entertainment. Casey then advanced to Production Tech Innovation, collaborating directly with creative and technical teams to explore tools that streamline workflows and enhance on‑set efficiency. Now part of Corporate Tech Strategy, she focuses on bridging innovative solutions with organizational needs, translating forward‑looking ideas into practical, production‑ready capabilities. She is driven by curiosity, thoughtful collaboration, and a commitment to making complex technology both accessible and impactful.

Alan Pao
Tunnel Post

Table Topic: VFX Supervision and Budgeting in the World of Generative AI

Since pivoting from tech to film in 2000, LA native Alan Pao has established himself as a prolific filmmaker with more than 200 feature film and television credits to his name. A true multi-hyphenate, Pao excels in both the creative and technical spheres—serving as a producer, director, and writer while also mastering editorial, VFX and post-supervision. Notable highlights from his deep industry tenure include the modern classic It Follows, Under the Silver Lake, and The November Man as well as the upcoming films Family Movie and The Dreadful.

Pao founded Tunnel in 2005, where he pioneered a groundbreaking proprietary digital intermediate workflow for comprehensive end-to-end picture finishing. Under his leadership, Tunnel has evolved into one of the leading full-service production and post-production companies in the industry. Today, Pao oversees a diverse range of operations, from film financing and visual effects to color correction and post-production sound as well as continuing to innovate by architecting supply chain automation solutions for the world’s largest studios.

In 2024, Pao expanded his influence at the intersection of technology and cinema by establishing New Hollywood and Scriptini. This suite of AI-powered filmmaking tools and resources is designed to democratize the creative process, empowering both emerging and established filmmakers.

Pao is graduate of UCLA and currently resides in Santa Monica with his cat Link.

Irad Eyal
Quickture

Table Topic: The Most Creative Era in Entertainment History is Here!
AI is dramatically lowering the barriers to creating high-quality film, television, games, and digital media, unlocking a new wave of storytellers and ideas from around the world. This panel explores how AI is accelerating creativity, empowering the rise of the “one-person studio,” and shifting the industry’s most valuable skills from technical execution to vision, taste, and storytelling.

Irad Eyal is an entrepreneur and veteran reality tv producer with 25 years of experience in the industry. He created and produced hit series like Southern Charm on Bravo and global phenomenon Floor Is Lava on Netflix before launching Quickture in 2023. Quickture is the AI video editing engine for pros. It revolutionizes the editing process, allowing editors and producers to work on the level of story, understand their footage, and get to a rough cut, fast.

Kylee Peña
Adobe

Table Topic: AI in Production and Post: Enabling Tool or Creative Thief?

Kylee Peña is a Principal Product Marketing Manager at Adobe, where she drives innovation for Premiere by championing the needs of creative professionals worldwide. With a background spanning post-production, product strategy, and industry advocacy, Kylee is a published thought leader and frequent speaker on the future of media workflows. She serves on the TV Academy’s Science and Technology Peer Group Executive, Innovation Advisory, and Advocacy Committees and the Junior League of Los Angeles Board of Directors. She is currently pursuing a doctorate focusing on AI and storytelling at Purdue University.

Bill Baggelaar
Rocketfrog Consulting LLC / Atlas Data Storage

Table Topic: DNA Storage – Preserve What Matters. Forever.

Bill Baggelaar is a distinguished entertainment industry technologist and visionary leader currently serving as the President of the UHD Alliance. In this role, he spearheads global efforts to elevate the consumer home viewing experience through cross-industry collaboration.

As the former Chief Technology Officer at Sony Pictures Entertainment, Baggelaar was a primary architect of the studio’s modern technical strategy. His leadership in research and development proved instrumental in the global adoption of 4K, High Dynamic Range (HDR), and the Emmy® Award Winning Interoperable Master Format (IMF). A pioneer of the “One Sony” initiative, he bridged the gap between hardware engineering and creative storytelling, notably as General Manager of Sony Innovation Studios, where he drove the evolution of Virtual Production and volumetric capture.

Baggelaar is a highly respected authority within the technical community, frequently collaborating with industry partners to shape the future of cloud-based production and post-production. He is a co-author of the influential MovieLabs 2030 Vision whitepaper, “The Future of Media Creation,” which provides a definitive roadmap for the next decade of content production.

His commitment to industry standards is reflected in his extensive leadership roles, including serving as co-chair of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) Science & Technology Council and the ACES Project. An active member of SMPTE and the HPA, and a contributor to the Television Academy, Baggelaar continues to provide the strategic vision necessary to navigate the rapidly shifting landscape of film and television technology.

Brandon Lindauer
AWS

Table Topic: Art in the Age of AI

Brandon Lindauer is a Global Specialist at AWS focused on Content Creation workflows in Media & Entertainment. Brandon has spent nearly two decades in the M&E industry and is passionate about raising the bar in post-production. He has worked at several studios both large and small creating innovative solutions to improve operations, and has extensive experience in cloud computing. Before coming to AWS he held positions such as Director of IT and Principal Architect.

Sarah Priestnall

Table Topic: AI: The Elephant in the Edit Room (presented by Women in Post)
(co-moderating with Melody Kellis, Vector Post)

Sarah is an experienced executive with a thorough understanding of production and post-production workflows gained by hands-on experience, combined with a deep knowledge of business strategy and technology development.

For 7 years she served as VP Market Development at Codex, where she evangelized the use of RAW workflows as digital acquisition became the norm. Previously, she was VP Operations at Hollywood Intermediate, a boutique DI facility, building on the pioneering work she did at Cinesite, a Kodak subsidiary, managing the team that worked on O Brother, Where Art Thou? for the Coen Brothers and Roger Deakins, ASC BSC, one of the first digital intermediates. In the nineties, she was Product Manager for the Academy Award winning Cineon compositing software. Most recently she worked at Avid, as the Director of Product Management for Media Composer.

Sarah is an associate member of the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) and a board member of the Colorist Society International.

Melody Kellis
Vector Post

Table Topic: AI: The Elephant in the Edit Room (presented by Women in Post)
(co-moderating with Sarah Priestnall)

Melody Kellis is a production technology leader who has spent two decades building pipelines that bridge the creative and technical worlds of film, television, and emerging media. What began as an MFA journey in Cinema and Digital Video Arts evolved into a career defined by solving complex production challenges through technical innovation and human-centered leadership.

Working in post-production during the industry’s tape-to-file transition, she pioneered hybrid workflows collaborating with engineers to transform how teams worked with image sequences and high-resolution deliverables. At Paramount Pictures, she led the studio’s rapid transition to file-based workflows, managing unionized teams through massive change via trust-building and customized training. Her leadership philosophy: work backwards from creative vision and architect systems that eliminate manual friction.

At Amazon, she built cloud-based pipelines integrating AWS infrastructure and AI tools, developing automated systems that established her as a crucial connector between engineering, creative, and business stakeholders—always focused on empowering artists through elegant technical solutions

Michael Gitig
iodyne

Table Topic: Making Capture-To-Cloud Cost-Effective, Secure, and Practical

Michael Gitig is a technology and media operator focused on how data moves through creative, technical, and business workflows. Over the past two decades, he has worked across media, technology, and commerce, including roles with Disney, Microsoft, and American Express. His background includes work as a music supervisor, co-founding Gobbler, and collaborating closely with studios and post teams at G-Technology on storage, data management, and workflow challenges. Today, as Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives at iodyne, he focuses on aligning people, workflows, and data across modern production and post environments.

He’s a proud girl dad, believes great products are built by people who care deeply about the problem they’re solving, and considers it a personal win that his daughters are equally fluent in Foo Fighters, Outkast, and the KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack. He’s still not convinced anyone enjoys writing bios in the third person, but experience suggests it’s a necessary evil.