NET Roundtables
Highlights From the HPA Tech Retreat
NET (Networking Education Technology) brings the HPA community together for accessible, expert-led conversations on the most pressing technology and workflow shifts shaping media and entertainment today.
Join us on March 26 as we unpack key themes from the 2026 HPA Tech Retreat — featuring perspectives directly from HPA Tech Retreat speakers and roundtable moderators themselves. From AI-assisted production and software-defined workflows to infrastructure resilience and evolving business models, this event continues the dialogue in a more focused, interactive format.
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 (Opens March 10. 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
Moderators
Here are a few of the interactive roundtables exploring some of the most pressing questions shaping our industry today.
Check back for more to updates to come!
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.