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Data Center Needs, Virtual Production Desires on May 23 HITS Agenda

The state of data center infrastructure and the reality of virtual production will be discussed in a collection of presentation at the May 23 Hollywood Innovation and Transformation Summit (HITS), at the Culver Theater in Los Angeles.

First up is the panel “Infrastructure Transformation: You’re Going to Need a Bigger Boat” featuring a collection of experts discussing the way overall technology and data center infrastructure is evolving (and required) to enable the entire global supply chain of content creation and distribution.

Driven by the popularity of VFX-heavy theatrical and episodic, increased competition for consumer media spending in media and entertainment, and the impact of virtualization during the pandemic, significant advances are occurring within the infrastructure of traditional production and distribution.

Connected stages (coined to highlight the emerging connectivity needed for successful virtual production), state-of-the-art, interconnectivity for hybrid and multi-cloud resources and more are transforming to meet the needs for rapid and agile support of time-sensitive workflows, fluid collaboration, and heavy data motion.

Sean Tajkowski, technical director of the Media and Entertainment Data Center Alliance (MEDCA) will moderate the panel with Manny Aguilar, business development executive with Iron Mountain; Nader Balady, account executive with GPL Technologies; Chrissy Olsen, senior manager of strategic accounts for Wesco; and Derek Powell, director for Altman Solon.

Ken Bamberg, sales director for Coresite, is set to deliver the presentation “Transforming Collaboration through Data Centers.” Broadcast, media and entertainment is a highly collaborative, content-centric industry. CoreSite, with 28 highly connected data centers in 10 key markets and a digital ecosystem of 775-plus network, cloud and IT service providers, is ideally positioned to foster collaboration throughout the content journey, optimize monetization and deliver the infrastructure solutions organizations require to be future-ready.

And, in the panel “The Reality of Virtual Production,” technologists who helped pioneer the medium takes the audience through the early-days of virtual production, providing a high-level overview about what creators should consider when evaluating next-generation VP for their content. They will also discuss the scale of the present industry, including unique applications across all of media and entertainment while looking to the future-state of the medium (and market). Sinan AlRubaye, CEO of ICVR, will moderate with Henrique “Koby” Kobylko, director of on-set virtual production for Fuse; John Canning, director of developer relations for creators at AMD; and Juan Nader, director of virtual production and on-set technology for Technicolor.

The annual Hollywood Innovation and Transformation Summit (HITS) Spring event is the industry’s largest gathering of media and entertainment’s CIOs and top technology minds, bringing together the IT, data, and security communities of the industry.

Held as a “hybrid” in-person and virtual event, those not in Los Angeles can attend via Zoom or the MESAverse, MESA’s virtual work environment for its members and communities to watch live presentations, network, and step on the stage to share opinions.

The MESAverse uses ICVR’s RendezVu, a proprietary, interactive 3D-world application that will allow for hybrid live and virtual events and regular day-to-day interactions that go far beyond video conferencing.

The Hollywood Innovation and Transformation Summit event is produced by MESA in association with the Hollywood IT Society (HITS) and presented by Amazon Studios Technology, with sponsorship by Fortinet, Genpact, Prime Focus Technologies, Signiant, Softtek, Convergent, Gracenote, Altman Solon, AppTek, Ascendion, Coresite, EPAM, MicroStrategy, Veritone, CDSA, EIDR and PDG Consulting.

To register for the event, click here.

To find out more about upcoming MESA events or to get involved as a sponsor please contact sales@mesaonline.org.