See below for a listing of all Roundtable Discussion Topics. More added each day so check back often!
All registration packages include the ability to participate in these discussions, but capacity for each is limited to just 20 attendees, to allow for discussion.
Please Note that our Program is displayed in the UTC Time Zone
| Date & Time | Timezone | Name | Description | Speakers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tuesday, November 10, 2020, 5:45 PM - 6:45 PM | UTC | Ask a Hollywood Expert: Leveling Up Your Media Career, hosted by SMPTE Hollywood | Join a casual conversation with successful, young professionals across a range of technical disciplines as they discuss strategies they used to thrive in their media careers. Our panel of experts will answer your questions and speak candidly about the challenges, successes, and lessons they've seen along the way. | Kylee Peña - Adobe |
| Tuesday, November 10, 2020, 5:45 PM - 6:45 PM | UTC | How At Home Production Has Evolved over the last 8 Months and Why Much of it is Here to Stay. | Join Rick Ackermans as he leads a discussion on what we have all learned in doing production at home. What are the challenges we have faced supporting talent at home? What innovations have we made to allow technical, creative and editorial production staff to work from their homes? What advantages have we found in at home production? What innovations’ do we need to make to increase the reliability of at home production (e.g. Power, Internet) to allow broadcast level reliability in the future? | Merrick Ackermans - CBS, Inc. |
| Tuesday, November 10, 2020, 5:45 PM - 6:45 PM | UTC | Academy Science and Technology Council Supports the Industry |
Join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' team and learn about some of the important projects of the Science and Technology Council, including the Academy Software Foundation (ASWF), the Academy Color Encoding System (ACES) and the Academy Spectral Similarity Index (SSI). This work is helping to support professionals in all areas of the motion picture and television industry. We'll let you know how to take advantage of these opportunities provided by the Academy, as well as how to get involved and help further these initiatives in the community. Bring your questions! | Andy Maltz - Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences George Joblove - Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Alexander Forsythe - Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences |
| Tuesday, November 10, 2020, 5:45 PM - 6:45 PM | UTC | Blockchain Applications in Media and Entertainment | While blockchain technology is most well known as the foundation of distributed ledgers used in cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, that is just one of many applications for decentralized, secure, data management. In the media and entertainment industries. Smart Contracts, where executable code can be embedded within blockchain transactions, have a variety of potential uses. As do the management of the chain of custody of media assets, the verification of authenticity of news stories, and the proper execution of royalty payments and fees to the myriad of workers in most television and other media productions. In this roundtable discussion, participants will have the opportunity to voice opinions, express concerns, propose ideas, and otherwise engage in fruitful dialog about the near-future application of blockchain technology to our industry. One objective of this session is to give those interested in this topic a voice in recommending standards efforts to SMPTE. So, if you want to have your opinions know. Join us! | Steven Bilow - BlueVolt |
| Wednesday, November 11, 2020, 12:00 AM - 1:00 AM | UTC | Blockchain Applications in Media and Entertainment | While blockchain technology is most well known as the foundation of distributed ledgers used in cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, that is just one of many applications for decentralized, secure, data management. In the media and entertainment industries. Smart Contracts, where executable code can be embedded within blockchain transactions, have a variety of potential uses. As do the management of the chain of custody of media assets, the verification of authenticity of news stories, and the proper execution of royalty payments and fees to the myriad of workers in most television and other media productions. In this roundtable discussion, participants will have the opportunity to voice opinions, express concerns, propose ideas, and otherwise engage in fruitful dialog about the near-future application of blockchain technology to our industry. One objective of this session is to insure that those in the APAC region who are interested in this topic have a voice in recommending standards efforts to SMPTE. So, if you want to have your opinions know. Join us! | Steven Bilow - BlueVolt |
| Wednesday, November 11, 2020, 12:00 AM - 1:00 AM | UTC | How to Better Diversify the Industry | The entertainment industry is diversifying but to what extent and how might it improve. Meet pros who are dedicated to diversifying the industry and strive to take it to the next level. Presented by SMPTE Hollywood. | Katie Hinsen - Blue Collar Post Collective Stacy Milner - Entertainment Industry College Outreach Program/HBCU in LA Internship Program Ryan Penny - 'Made in NY' Post Production Training Program Linda Rosner - Crystal Jones - The Ashe Academy |
| Wednesday, November 11, 2020, 12:00 AM - 1:00 AM | UTC | For Section leadership: Keeping Sections Active during COVID | Join SMPTE Membership Vice President, Peter Wharton for a discussion about how Sections can remain active during COVID. | Peter Wharton - TAG VS |
| Wednesday, November 11, 2020, 5:45 PM - 6:45 PM | UTC | Use of AI or Machine Learning in Media Production and Delivery: Benefits, Challenges, and Alternatives | AI can be used in many different domains: production (like view extraction of a wide shot area), post production (dialog to text, trailer, …), asset management (archive sorting), censorship, distribution (compression), consumption (recommendation). In your domain, where do you see the AI making an impact? What are the benefits it brings or will bring? What are the challenges? If AI is not used, what alternative do you have? Join us for a roundtable discussion to contemplate these and other questions. | Jean-Louis Diascorn - Harmonic inc. |
| Wednesday, November 11, 2020, 5:45 PM - 6:45 PM | UTC | Remote Guest | TV Talk Show Workflows in COVID Times | The pandemic hit, and television producers, broadcasters, and talent were all sent home. Many television engineers quickly got creative using existing video conferencing tools- like ZOOM and SKYPE- while others created remote camera packages that could be sent-to and operated-by the talent at home. Technical Directors were now expected to bring video signals in from anywhere, while potentially throwing the entire show off their home internet connection. A lot of craziness happened and we’re continuing to see it happening today. In this session, we’re bringing together Technical Engineers to share their war stories- the challenges they faced operating shows in our new remote world. Flipping to a new workflow that works for the talent, your team, and the viewers at home. | John Ferder - Qvest US Jeff Sengpiehl - Key Code Media George Klippel - LiveU |
| Wednesday, November 11, 2020, 5:45 PM - 6:45 PM | UTC | Architecting Live Production Solutions in the Cloud | Faced with accelerating change, broadcasters and media producers are turning to cloud technologies to enable live production workflows that are more agile, flexible, and opex-driven. Claire Southey of AWS will lead a discussion on the key technical considerations for architecting live production systems in the cloud. Claire will discuss the state of the technology, survey the benefits that cloud promises to bring to live production, and describe architectural patterns for cloud video contribution, live video compute, application deployment, and performance optimization. | Claire Southey - AWS |
| Thursday, November 12, 2020, 12:00 AM - 1:00 AM | UTC | Reimagining SMPTE at the Section Level | Paul Whybrow, Chair of the Australia, New Zealand and Southern Pacific Islands Section and based in Sydney, shares the step by step story of how the local management team worked with members to create a strategy and plan to engage members and extend interest out of the traditional base. Paul will share what they have done and discovered along the way along with some of the findings and template documents that could be adopted by any section. | Paul whybrow - SMPTE - |
| Thursday, November 12, 2020, 12:00 AM - 1:00 AM | UTC | Mentorship Opportunities in the Industry | The industry has mentorship programs available to students and young professionals. Meet the leaders of a few of these programs and opportunities. Presented by SMPTE Hollywood and Entertainment Industry Professionals Mentoring Alliance (EIPMA) | Karen Dunn - KMD Productions and KMD Pro Speed Mentoring Bernard Weiser - Entertainment Industry Professionals Mentoring Alliance Samuel Ashe - ASHE ARTS & STEM ACADEMY, INC. Brian Gaffney - CODEX, an X2X Media Company |
| Thursday, November 12, 2020, 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM | UTC | For Section leadership: Hosting Section Town Halls with Zoom | Join SMPTE Membership Vice President, Peter Wharton for a discussion and demonstration of Zoom capabilities for Section events. | Peter Wharton - TAG VS |
| Thursday, November 12, 2020, 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM | UTC | Do Streaming and Compression Technologies Deliver on Current & Future Application Needs? | With so much infrastructure and compute resource now regarded as a commodity service within media distribution, what are the key media technology enablers? Standards are still being crafted with traditional media distribution applications in mind, what needs to change? Remote production is here to stay but poses unique challenges, what deployment schedule will be adopted when lock down restrictions ease? Join us for a roundtable discussion to address these and more questions. | Ian Trow - Sky UK |
| Thursday, November 12, 2020, 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM | UTC | IP Video - From Mobile Phones to the Olympics | Join Wes Simpson for a discussion on IP Video. | Wes Simpson - LearnIPvideo.com |