The challenges facing the entertainment industry today go far beyond reaching and retaining audiences. And that’s where we come in: at #mthcon22, we showcase topics highlighting both the stepwise incremental as well as the massive quantum leap changes that power the ongoing media revolution.

For example, on September 28, Day 1 of the conference, we devote the afternoon to thought-provoking sessions in the track “Production and Distribution: The Next Level”.

Among others, there will be talks by streaming guru Evan Shapiro on the future of streaming, as well as an illuminating discussion on the changing requirements in producing for streamers – both tech and content – as Paramount+ advisor Marko Massinger and Netflix expert Frank Piazza will outline for us. You can find out more about Frank below. And find out more about the programme here on our website. 

Frank Piazza has a comprehensive and multidisciplinary background in post-production. From budgeting and scheduling right through to overseeing training in local markets in advanced colour management, his remit is to improve and uphold quality in post production across the full range of post production activities. At Netflix, this means staying at the forefront of a tremendously competitive industry, and as Director of Post Production Management for the EMEA region he leads a team that is intricately involved in the creative process. Frank and his team are literally involved right from the development stage all the way to launch, and over the past four years since he joined Netflix in 2018, he has taken more than 300 titles from script to screen.

On stage 1 on the first day of the Conference, in the session “How to produce for Streamers – Tech & Content Requirements” Frank will be talking about how Netflix is adapting to the streaming wars challenge, and share his vision of the future of streaming. 

After years as a cognitive scientist, working at IBM, Beth decided this year to strike out on her own, and started her own company, Bast.ai with the intent to make a contribution to the world using her skills in AI. Her aim is that every human should have access to, grow and train their own AI, and she is especially interested in what personal AI could look like in the intersection of education and healthcare. But as much as novel approaches fascinate her, she is also aware of the danger of bias in the programming, and how it impacts outcomes. “I see many people […] using algorithms without an understanding of the data that the models have been trained on. […] If people understood more about the pipelines, pre and post processing, that always makes a significant difference in the space of Natural Language Understanding.”

On Day 1, stage 2, in the panel “AI-driven language in New Virtual Worlds: Are You Talking to Me?” Beth will be discussing the importance of getting that language programming right if we or our avatars are to be instantly intelligible to everyone else in the Metaverse.