Mike Arthur, Wazee Digital, VP, Sports and Live Events

Mike Arthur leads the expansion of Wazee Digital’s already successful Sports and Live Events business — a division that is anchored by several significant North American golf and tennis events including three Majors, in addition to international power players such as the National Rugby League of Australia. Arthur focuses on expanding the reach of Wazee Digital’s Live Event Services solution, which offers live-event capture, metadata tagging, and content packaging.

Arthur spent nearly six years at Harris Corporation and Imagine Communications leading a global sports practice in technology. He also held a leadership role at Avnet Services as the global senior director of sports and entertainment. A veteran of the sports industry, Arthur has held senior positions at NASCAR and at the MLB, NBA, and NHL franchises. His entire professional career and personal life have been characterized by his love of sports, and he brings that passion to Wazee Digital.

Arthur has participated on many boards and steering committees for organizations related to professional sports, including the Sports Business Institute, National Sports Forum, NBA team sponsorship consortium, Sports Executive Leadership Conference, and the Metro Denver Sports Commission. He also negotiated the business agreement between the Colorado Avalanche and the NHL for the 2001 All-Star Game. Arthur has participated in the development of five professional sports venues, as well as several smaller projects across the globe. He has executive relationships with the majority of teams and venues globally, and a strong understanding of the industry’s business drivers and ROI models, including strategic planning and monetization tactics.

Arthur holds a B.A in communications from Colorado State University.

Dave Belt, Irdeto, Technology Evangelist

Dave Belt currently serves as product marketing director for Irdeto where he is defining the next generation of content security solutions. Belt has been a specialist in cryptography and content protection technologies for the past 20 years. With a strong foundation in the intelligence and defense communities, Belt has spent the last decade leveraging his security skills to deliver superior video experiences to the cable consumer.

Prior to Irdeto, Belt was heading up important industry security initiatives as principal architect at Time Warner Cable and security architect at CableLabs. He was also engineering manager at EchoStar leading set-top box security and home networking technologies. Belt holds a master’s degree in systems engineering from Wright State University.

Scott Bounds, Microsoft, Media Industry Lead

Scott Bounds is Microsoft’s U.S. industry lead for media, engaging with enterprise customers in the media and entertainment sector. In this role, Bounds is responsible for identifying trends and opportunities in the industry and working with customers on solutions using Microsoft technologies. Bounds is a 20-year veteran of Microsoft, spending over 10 years in the media industry in a variety of management and technical roles.

Thomas Burns, Dell EMC, CTO, Media and Entertainment

Tab Butler, MLB Network, Senior Director, Media Management and Post Production

Tab Butler joined the MLB Network in June of 2008 as part of the Engineering and IT Department, chartered with the facility build-out and the January 1, 2009 MLB Network launch.  Currently, Butler manages the Media Management team, editor manpower, software development, and post-production engineering and operations for the MLB Network and the NHL Network. In September of 2015, Butler’s department designed, built, and launched the NHL Network from the MLB Network broadcast facility, utilizing the MLB Network production core infrastructure, which utilizes the latest IT technologies.

Butler has a unique background in problem solving and convergence within the broadcast media space, with over 28 years of experience in network TV broadcast operations, and 11 years of sales and marketing management with IT and broadcast manufacturers. He specialized in sales to broadcast networks, station groups, government, and global 2000 clients. Butler spent 18 years at the NBC Network. He worked for NBC News, NBC Sports, and NBC Operations and Technical Services. Butler received two Emmy Awards while at NBC, and seven Emmy Awards and one Edison Award while at MLB Network. In June of 2012, the DIAMOND System, which is an in-house developed enterprise-wide media asset management system, led by Butler, was nominated for a Sports Technology Emmy.

While in manufacturing, Butler has worked in various capacities for Tektronix (Grass Valley), EMC, VideoBank, SeaChange International, and IBRIX.

Jason Dachman, SVG, Chief Editor

Jason Dachman oversees all aspects of SVG’s North American editorial operations, including the thrice-weekly SVG Insider newsletter and SVG’s annual print publications. A member of the SVG team since 2009, Dachman also serves as program director for SVG’s Sports Content Management & Storage (SCMS) Forum, Sports Graphics Forum, and TranSPORT event. Prior to joining SVG, he spent three years covering local sports for The Patriot Ledger in Quincy, MA, and spent two years on the production staff of SiriusXM Satellite Radio’s The Ron & Fez Show. Dachman began his career in the Sports Information Department at Northeastern University in Boston, where he also earned a B.A. in media communications and cinema studies. A native of Denver, CO, Dachman currently resides in Brooklyn, NY.

Guy Finley, CDSA, Executive Director

In 2008, Guy Finley founded the Media & Entertainment Services Alliance (MESA) as a coalition of service providers to the Hollywood studios, independent content creators/holders, video game publishers, software publishers, and music labels.

Finley started his career in the entertainment industry as a successful performer and producer, making music with industry giants such as Phil Ramone, Elliott Scheiner, and Dave Grusin, among others. His New York City based group was signed to Larry Rosen’s N2K Encoded Music, the first record company to distribute music via digital downloads. He joined the home entertainment industry as President of LFA, providing home video brand and business consulting services for a worldwide clientele. His firm represented JVC in North America, licensing the loading and duplication of VHS videocassettes bearing the VHS logo trademark. In 2005, Finley joined the Content Delivery and Security Association (then IRMA, International Recording Media Association) where he pioneered the CDSA Daily News Portal and co-chaired the accountability sub-committee of the EPCglobal Item Level Tagging Public Policy Steering Committee. CDSA is currently managed by MESA.

Through MESA’s media, events, communities and association management, MESA facilitates ongoing discussions about collaboration and innovation in the entertainment industry along four key verticals: information technology, content security, data/analytics, and second screen technologies. With over 125 member companies and branches in the U.S. and Europe, MESA is a leading voice in the global media & entertainment industry.

Dave Frederick, Quantum, Senior Director, Media and Entertainment

Dave Frederick is the senior director of media and entertainment at Quantum. For the last 30 years, Frederick has focused on leveraging technology to improve media production and delivery. Since joining Quantum in 2014, he has been working to bring the benefits of multi-tiered, high-performance shared storage to use cases ranging from entertainment, corporate video, imaging, video surveillance, and more. Frederick’s approach is that infrastructure is important, but it must never come between the user and their applications.

Matt Gleason, CoreSite, General Manager - Northeast

Matt Gleason is the general manager for CoreSite’s Northeast markets, responsible for the overall business performance and operation of CoreSite’s New York, Boston, and Chicago facilities. In his 7 years at CoreSite, Gleason has also held the position of vice president of facilities, and was responsible for all electrical, mechanical, and building systems associated with CoreSite’s national data center portfolio. Prior to CoreSite, Gleason served as the senior technical manager at Switch and Data, overseeing the company’s infrastructure maintenance and uptime programs. He was also a noncommissioned officer in the U.S. Navy and honor graduate of the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program, operating and maintaining nuclear power plants on the USS Connecticut, a fast attack submarine.

Anne Graham, Turner Sports Library, Assistant Manager of Media Management

Anne Graham is the assistant manager of media management at Turner Sports, joining the company in January 2017. She was previously at the archives at Kennesaw State University in Kennesaw, Georgia, where she served as the digital collections archivist from 2008 to 2016. While at KSU, Graham specialized in audio-visual formats, as well as digitized and born-digital materials. She has a master’s in library and information studies from Florida State University and a master’s in information systems from Kennesaw State University.

Keith Horstman, NBA, VP, Digital Media Technology

Horstman currently oversees the technical and operational planning, and management for NBAE. Horstman also oversees all information technology functions around digital media and the real-time courtside statistics system that services media outlets around the world. He has been instrumental in the launch of the NBA digital media archive, the first major professional sports league to unveil such an initiative. The digital media archive is currently in the process of digitizing the entire video library of the NBA — more than 500,000 hours of games, highlights, and programming — and provides all 30 teams, the league’s Basketball Operations Department, and referees with online access to view video of every game throughout the season.

Eric Iverson, Creative Artists Agency (CAA), CIO

As the CIO of Creative Artists Agency (CAA), Eric Iverson currently oversees the Information Technology department. His responsibilities include cybersecurity, infrastructure and operations, help desk, applications and development, analytics, and strategic technology alignment with the business globally. Previously, Iverson was the SVP and Divisional CIO at Sony Pictures Television where he was responsible for the global systems portfolio and led strategic technology change initiatives for television production, distribution, and networks channels.

Bryson Jones, North Shore Automation, Founder and CIO

As founder and CIO of North Shore Automation, Bryson Jones brings to the table over 20 years of post-production, asset management, IT, and web consulting experience.

Starting in nonlinear editorial support and storage system design, Jones quickly gained a reputation for providing innovative solutions to television and film production clients. As storage systems got larger and file counts increased, he was introduced to the world of asset management. In 2007, Jones began redirecting his efforts to address what he saw as a coming wave of clients needing digital asset management solutions.

Today, North Shore Automation has completed over 150 DAM deployments and their products are integrated into systems for 11 professional sports teams, including World Series and Super Bowl Champions, seven NCAA athletics programs, 17 Fortune 500 companies and nine broadcast networks, as well as dozens more regional broadcasters, production companies, corporations, and organizations that vary from the world’s largest YouTube networks to life-saving NGO’s.

At NAB 2017, North Shore debuted integrations with the four largest cloud AI providers, adding visual content analysis capabilities to their already powerful product line, thus leading the charge to fully automate all aspects of asset management.

Jones’ Southern twang and flamboyant Western dress belie years of in-depth study of how users interact with media and how data moves into, through, and out of organizations. He is happily married, has a family full of rodeo champions, and splits his free time between the surf breaks of Los Angeles County and the high desert of Joshua Tree, CA.

Dan Keene, WWE, VP, Systems Architecture

Dan Keene is the vice president of systems architecture at WWE and oversees the design and implementation of large scale systems that support day to day content production.

Keene’s principle is to pursue cost effective technical solutions that balance innovations in technology with business needs. Utilizing his “tell the story” philosophy, Keene strives to ensure that both technical and non-technical participants understand the rationale and implications of any project he’s involved in.

Prior WWE accomplishments include overseeing the build out of their new Virtual Reality Studio, the design and integration of talent training systems at the WWE Performance Center in Orlando, and the development of systems to complete a mass ingest of their massive video tape library.

Keene previously served as a systems engineer for Grass Valley designing and implementing tapeless productions systems for clients such as MLB Network, NBC, and CBS.  He was also the digital assets manager for KYW-TV in Philadelphia.

Keene currently resides in Monroe, CT with his wife, Lisa, toddler twins Sam and Emily, and dog, Maggie. In his spare time, he is an active member of the Rotary Club of Monroe and serves as the club’s immediate past president.

Victoria Kelsey, VICE Media, Rights Management Specialist

Victoria Kelsey started with VICE in May of 2015, joining the company’s new Rights and Clearances Department initially as a clearance temp and gradually progressing to her current role as rights management specialist / R&C department manager in August of 2016.

Kelsey is responsible for all licensing of VICE content and footage, as well as maintaining the rights component of the company’s proprietary internal database across VICE digital, news, and TV productions. She is the current lead on configuring and implementing a more robust rights management software for the company as it expands content production across a variety of platforms and moves toward a global framework for distribution.

Christy King, Industry Consultant

Rishika Korada, Cisco Systems, Strategic Systems Engineer, GSP - Media and Entertainment

Rishika Korada is a systems engineer, who has worked with Cisco for over five years supporting the sports vertical within the broader GSP Media and Entertainment team. Korada holds an engineering degree in IT from VIT University and has worked across different industry markets and countries within the computer networking realm. Her passion lays in cyber and network security for enterprises and service providers. Her current focus is on virtualization and IP-enabled architectures for digital media workflow. Korada holds multiple Cisco certifications.

Arun Krishnaswamy, Vizrt Americas, Director of Technology

Arun Krishnaswamy has worked with Vizrt’s MAM division as a system engineer and solution architect, and is currently a director of technology with the internal R&D group. Prior to joining Vizrt, Krishnaswamy earned a Ph.D. in computational biology from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh.

Jason Marshall, YES Network, Project Manager, Broadcast Systems

Jason Marshall joined the YES Network in July of 2012. As senior systems engineer, he designed and implemented backend virtualization and storage for the YES Graphics team. Shortly after, he started to collapse the walls that existed between corporate IT security and the then exponentially growing broadcast IT environment. Utilizing the corporate virtual infrastructure, Marshall designed and created workflows that would sustain intensive broadcast functions while providing elasticity for the growth of these digital workflows. In the winter of 2014, YES faced a challenge of onboarding the entire YES corporate IT infrastructure to the multinational IT infrastructure of Fox Networks. The experience prepared Marshall for the upcoming challenge of migrating the mostly digital broadcast environment to a new IT security environment and the impending migration of YES Master Control to The Woodlands, TX.

In June of 2015, Marshall was appointed project manager of the broadcast IT environment at YES Network. His projects currently include MAM, archive, virtualization, storage, and MPEG transmission for the YES Network.

Chris May, Spectra Logic, M&E Business Development Specialist

Chris May is a proven leader in the media and entertainment market with more than 18 years of network broadcast experience on both the client and vendor side. May was involved in the successful building, management, deployment, implementation, and selling of complex digital media solutions for networks and digital media companies. These complex solutions included playout to air, workflow automation, ingest, curation, logging, edit, archiving, metadata schema, and distribution of media assets to networks, digital platforms, and mobile devices. May currently serves as a media and entertainment development specialist at Spectra Logic corporation, where he oversees the biz development for all of North America.

Scott McBurney, ACC, Associate Commissioner, Advanced Media

Scott McBurney is entering his 20th year with the Atlantic Coast Conference overseeing video production and distribution in the league office. Hired to impact ACC awareness in local and national sports programming, McBurney has been involved in developing distribution methods to meet the ever expanding role that video can have in spreading the message of the conference and its 15 member institutions.

The Advanced Media department is responsible for disseminating daily content received from the league institutions through its Aspera Faspex platform, known as the ACC Video Clip Service. The platform (AVCS) has over 300 subscribers made up of digital, local, and national sports outlets. Additionally, McBurney has been heavily involved in the league’s live streaming efforts over the past 10 years, producing many of the conference’s championship events not covered by the ACC’s television partners. McBurney has implemented 3 AVID Media Composer edit bays and uses AVID Interplay and Telestream Vantage within the post production workflow. Archiving and asset management workflows are also in place to handle the league office’s video archives.

Before his move to the ACC, McBurney served as the executive producer of sports productions at WGHP-TV in High Point, North Carolina. He spent 11 years at WGHP and prior to that earned a Bachelor of Science degree in radio, television, and film from Northwestern University and received a Master of Fine Arts in broadcasting/cinema from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro.

John McKenna, YES Network, Director of Engineering and Technology

John McKenna joined the YES Network just prior to its March 2002 on-air debut. As director of engineering and technology, he oversaw the construction of the network’s technical plant on an accelerated schedule – including master control, live production, and editing facilities – which were built and on-the-air within two months. In 2004, McKenna directed the upgrade of key facilities to enable high-definition video and 5.1 surround sound audio – one of the first regional sports networks to make the transition. In 2007, with the maturation of IP and computer-centric video technology, McKenna transitioned both the plant’s remaining SD components to HD and built cost-saving “produce-at-home” live production facilities.  Soon thereafter, he migrated the remaining linear workflows to a tapeless, non-linear solution.

McKenna’s 58-year career has been recognized through numerous Emmy awards and nominations, including for ABC’s production and distribution of the 1988 Winter Olympics.

At the University of Wisconsin, he served as a staff engineer at the institution’s WHA-AM-FM-TV. As a draftee during the Vietnam War, the U.S. Army utilized McKenna’s skills at the Defense Information School (DINFOS) at Fort Benjamin Harrison, IN, preparing his fellow soldiers to produce content for the American Forces Network. In Indianapolis, he also worked as a staff engineer at WISH(TV) and for National TeleProductions. Upon discharge from the Army, he returned to Madison, WI and joined CBS affiliate WISC(TV) as assistant chief and acting chief engineer. In 1979, McKenna gained employment at the New York based headquarters of the ABC Television Network.

Grant Nodine, NHL, SVP, Technology

Grant Nodine started his career working as a systems librarian at Editel. He moved on to working as a web developer on sites like Rodale Press’s MensHealth.com. He later co-founded a web development firm called Mercury Seven where he worked as the firm’s chief technologist. Eight-plus years ago, Nodine arrived at the NHL where he has been involved in building a technology infrastructure that supports NHL.com and all 30 of the team’s websites, numerous systems to produce and deliver streaming media, and many other large technology implementations.

Keifer O’Connor, PGA Tour Entertainment, Manager, Footage Licensing and Media Asset Management

Keifer O’Connor is the manager of footage licensing and media asset management for the PGA Tour. He started working for the PGA Tour in 2012 under the Business Operations and Production Scheduling departments, and advanced to his current role in January of 2016.

O’Connor’s core responsibilities are to facilitate all footage licensing requests for PGA Tour owned footage and manage the PGA Tour’s media logging staff. He also reviews on-site filming requests at PGA Tour sanctioned events and has been fully involved with the creation of various PGA Tour media policies.

Will Pitt, Imagen, SVP, Sport and Media

Will Pitt has worked at the forefront of broadcast technology for more than 20 years, having held senior commercial positions at Globecast, BT, Zayo, and more recently, Aframe and Imagen. He has sold and managed broadcast infrastructures for some of the world’s most high profile sports broadcasters, events, tours, and leagues. The last few years has seen Pitt move from on-site / on-premise solutions to Cloud and SaaS models, firmly believing that asset management businesses that can provide agile, robust, and secure broadcast solutions in the cloud will be those most likely to succeed.

Michael Raimondo, PGA Tour Entertainment, Director, Media Asset Management

Michael Raimondo is the director of media asset management for PGA Tour Entertainment. Raimondo oversees the PGA Tour’s Media Asset Management system including the day-to-day operations of the ingest operators, loggers, and library personnel, as well as the media fulfillment division. Raimondo has over 20 years of experience in the broadcast industry. Prior to joining PGA Tour Entertainment, he worked in New York City at MTI – The Image Group (now NEP Studios) as a systems engineer wiring and building studios and edit suites. The company went from one studio in NYC in 1993 to seven studios by 1998. Following MTI, Raimondo was a staff engineer for rental companies (Bexel, Charter, and Duke City Video) working events for various television networks including ESPN, ABC, CBS, Channel 9 Australia, and Discovery Channel.

Walter Raps, CBS Sports Network, CTO

As a senior technology executive with over 25 years of experience in broadcast engineering and IT, Walter Raps has managed many complex projects with successful results. Utilizing the latest technologies to maximize efficiencies and realize ROI, he has built systems and workflows that are now standard for the creation and delivery of digital video and audio. Raps’ passion for keeping current with technological advancements allows him to address existing challenges and recognize new business opportunities. While he makes a living keeping up with technology, more importantly, he enjoys it!

Scott Rinehart, University of Notre Dame, Director, Broadcast Technology

Scott Rinehart is the director of broadcast technology for the University of Notre Dame, responsible for providing technical direction and oversight of Notre Dame Studios’ production infrastructure.

Prior to coming to Notre Dame, Rinehart worked in a variety of roles at NASCAR Media Group and PGA TOUR Productions.

In 2013, Notre Dame won the inaugural SVG/NACDA Technology Leadership Award.

A native of Jacksonville, FL, Rinehart is a 1984 graduate of the University of Alabama, with a bachelor of arts degree in communications. While in school, he served as a student trainer under legendary coach Paul “Bear” Bryant. Rinehart and his wife, Karen, reside in South Bend.

Jason Saghini, MLS, VP, Video Content

Jason Saghini oversees video production, operations, and infrastructure for MLS Digital, as well as video servicing across the League and its partners. Among his primary responsibilities are developing the overall video content strategy, managing high-profile productions around marque league events (ex: All-Star Game, MLS Cup), and bolstering the league’s video infrastructure. In 2017, Saghini has spearheaded the development of and the operational plan for the league’s new digital studio facility, due in October 2017.

Now in his 16th year at MLS, Saghini started in MLS’s Broadcast department before joining the newly formed MLS Digital Group in 2010. Since then, he has built out a team that produces more than 10,000 videos annually across multiple channels, including the league website, social, and distributed platforms.

Saghini lives in Manalapan, NJ, with his wife and two young daughters.

David Sallak, Panasas, VP and CTO for M&E

As VP and CTO for Media and Entertainment at Panasas, David Sallak is focused on delivering the best performance-based storage technology experience, empowering customers to accelerate workflows and simplify data management. During his more than 15 years in the business, Sallak has successfully guided large media customers across the world through technology innovations in their file-based workflows to achieve significant efficiencies in production pipelines, leading to better creative results. Prior to joining Panasas, Sallak was CTO for Media and Entertainment at EMC Isilon. He also served as sales director and architect at VTP of Burbank, CA, the largest Sony and Panasonic professional products reseller in western North America, and as senior engineer at Midwest Media Group in Chicago, IL. At Midwest Media Group he leveraged technical certifications in Apple, Avid, and Autodesk/Discreet products to expand the largest media production agency in the central U.S. market.

Tom Scholle, AT&T Sports Networks, Chief Technology Integrator

Tom Scholle, the chief systems integrator at AT&T Sports Networks, specializes in building workflows connecting the best of breed technology to DAM/MAM systems, newsroom computer systems, and nonlinear editing systems such as Avid, Final Cut, and Adobe Premiere. In his eighteen years in the industry, he’s worked for CBS, Gannett, 5280 Broadcast, and Comcast Regional Sports Network in a variety of roles including systems integrator, newsroom systems administrator, broadcast engineer, and chief engineer. Scholle has expertise in networking, application development, field deployment, installation and support, media movement, encode, transcode, and workflow development and implementation. He is known for having a user/customer centric approach and works hard to design for current and future needs. Currently, Scholle is overseeing the design and rollout of Primestream FORK and Xchange systems across all four AT&T SportsNet facilities, along with several other next generation technology projects.

Ryan Servant, Square Box Systems, VP, Business Development, North America

Ryan Servant, the VP of business development – North America for Squarebox Systems has served clients in the media and entertainment industry for over 16 years. He has focused on building and fixing media centric workflows from ingest, transcode, organization, and delivery with every position he has held.

Previously, Servant was the North American sales manager for Imagen, where he directed sales efforts and localized product management with a focus on introducing the product line to the reseller channel. Servant’s other previous positions include North America Eastern region sales manager and sales support engineer for Digital Rapids, Northeast sales manager for JB&A, and audio/visual engineer for SuperNova Productions.

Dave Simon, Diversified, Director of Technical Operations, Media Workflow Group

At Diversified, Dave Simon is the director of technical operations for the Media Workflow Group – a group that focuses on media asset management, storage, file-based workflows, archive, and metadata management. He joined Diversified in 2011, bringing a wealth of knowledge in both the file-based workflows and baseband SDI worlds. Notable projects include MAM in sports (Miami Dolphins, Sacramento Kings, San Jose Sharks, Stanford Athletics), MAM in enterprise (Facebook, Kaiser Permanente, McKesson), scale-out storage and archive strategies (Sacramento Kings, Miami Marlins, Northwestern University, Stanford, Pulse Entertainment), and traditional systems integration (Microsoft, Apple, Pimco, McKesson, Workday Inc.).

Simon comes to Diversified with 18+ years in engineering and operations management experience. Prior to joining Diversified, he was working as the director of broadcast engineering at Current TV. During his time at Current, Simon oversaw the engineering team, managed the technology stack, helped develop the file-based production and broadcast pipeline, and was part of the build and startup of the Current UK and Current Italy studios and broadcast centers.

After spending most of his life in the Boston and New England area, Simon moved west to the Bay Area in 2005. He currently lives in Oakland California with his wife Jennifer, two children, and their rescued Pitbull Ellie.

Jack Skinner, Vice Media, MAM Manager, IT

Jack Skinner is in his third year with VICE Media’s Post-Production Tech team, and has developed and implemented VICE’s Media Asset Management (MAM) system – PrimeStream’s Xchange. Skinner and his team have worked to make the Vice MAM into a dynamic post-production hub. Since its inception, VICE’s MAM has reached over 1 million individual assets. This work has resulted in a multi-faceted system that handles transcoding duties through integrations with third party solutions, manages archiving to a proprietary cloud solution, and transfers material between offices while maintaining edit project integrity. One of the solution’s many features, which Skinner worked to develop, is an automated script-based metadata tagging workflow nominated for an IBC Innovation Award.

Prior to working at VICE, Skinner worked in video production and post in the Baltimore area. He has degrees in film and video production from Towson University and philosophy from University of Maryland. When not managing media, he can be found contemplating the trolley problem on his roof in Bushwick.

Janet Snowdon, IBM, Global Director, Media and Entertainment Industry Solutions

Janet Snowdon, an accomplished business leader, leads a team of experts and thought leaders focused on business development and complex sales for IBM Media and Entertainment Industry Solutions. She is a member of the IBM Industry Academy and has a passion for applying technology to transform the M&E industry to benefit the entire value chain. Since joining IBM in 1983, Snowdon has held a variety of sales, marketing, and engineering positions within IBM’s consumer electronics, transportation, manufacturing, and telecommunications industries. A graduate of University of California, Davis, Snowdon earned her Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering. She has completed IBM President’s class and International President’s class and received numerous sales awards and recognition from clients. Snowdon has also been awarded IBM President’s award for her work with semiconductors.

Jonathan Solomon, Aspera (an IBM Company), Senior Sales and Systems Engineer

In 2014, Jonathan Solomon joined Aspera, an IBM Company, bringing more than 20 years of system design, administration, and project management experience in media and entertainment. His vast experience in broadcast and IP allows him to routinely bridge the two worlds. Career highlights include architecting the WWE OTT Network, dark fiber network design, and project design and management for several multi-million dollar broadcast facilities.

Over his twenty years of broadcast engineering experience, Solomon has held a variety of roles with industry leaders. Prior to his role at Aspera, he was a senior engineering project manager at WWE, director of engineering for Mid-Atlantic Sports Network, and spent more than a decade as an engineer-in-charge, supporting remote television broadcasts. His travels as an EIC covered 45 of the 50 United States.

Rochanne Squire, IMG Replay, Marketing Manager

Rochanne Squire joined IMG in 2011 as part of the archive team and earlier this year led the rebrand of the archive division to IMG Replay.

Currently responsible for the ongoing management of IMG’s platform IMGReplay.com with technology partner Imagen, Squire oversees IMG Replay’s content output and works closely with clients to develop content marketing strategies.

Bryan Staffaroni, WWE, Senior Director, Media Asset Management

Bryan Staffaroni has been with World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) for the past 13 years and is currently the senior director of media asset management. The groups he oversees include Media Management, Central Ingest, and Media Library Services. He and his team built, manage, and continue to expand the WWE’s 150,000 hour Digital Archive. They also play an integral role supporting WWE’s elite production team which creates hundreds of hours of content each and every week for the WWE Network, social media outlets, and over 175 countries.

Starting out as the sole member of the WWE Media Management Department in 2006, Staffaroni found no shortage of opportunities to adapt and expand his department to meet the demands of production. He played a major role in WWE’s transition to HD in 2008 including establishing workflows for WWE’s first Digital Archive within their new Grass Valley editing environment. He also took the role of process manager on the WWE Digital Archive project in 2010 where more than 28,000 WWE show masters were ingested, archived, and fully logged within a year’s time. Today, Staffaroni’s teams support and maintain WWE’s Digital Archive and are responsible for all naming conventions, taxonomy, metadata entry, asset tracking, and disaster recovery strategies.

Prior to joining WWE, Staffaroni co-owned and operated Grey Sky Films. With every intention of pursuing his passion for editing and directing music videos, films, documentaries, and commercials, Staffaroni found himself gravitating more toward a technical role with researching and purchasing production equipment, building and supporting edit systems, and designing and modifying production workflows.

Andrew Tunall, AWS Elemental, Product Manager

Andrew Tunall brings years of technical expertise and product management experience to the AWS Elemental team as a product manager focused on storage and asset management. Tunall joined the AWS Elemental and Amazon Web Services team in January of 2016. He previously worked building distributed systems for a privately held global payments processing company, focusing on mobile payments and eCommerce. Before that, Tunall worked in product consulting building software primarily for telecommunications firms.

Tunall earned a B.A. in political science and economics from Willamette University, and has certifications in agile product management, coaching, and project management. Outside of work, Tunall enjoys spending time with his wife and daughter, but can often be found fishing mountain lakes and streams, or in the desert fishing, hiking miles in search of upland game birds, or camping and whitewater rafting.

Erik Weaver, HGST, Global Director, M&E Market Development

Erik Weaver is a specialist focused on the intersection of the cloud and the media and entertainment industry, currently running strategy for HGST, a Western Digital brand, one of the world’s largest storage companies in the world. Addressing the ever changing and evolving media landscape, he brings deep insights for every stage of the workflow from object storage and all-flash arrays, to hybrid cloud storage solutions.

Prior to this, Weaver’s experience includes “Production in the Cloud” for the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) at the University of Southern California, the world-renowned school of Cinematic Arts. This organization is a global project that unites senior leaders from major studios to develop next-generation cloud standards to support global studios of all shapes, sizes, and types, as well as major cloud vendors, to produce proof of concepts and deliver more efficient and productive workflows. The group encompasses many aspects of the cloud, including transport, security, metadata, long-term storage, and formation of an agnostic framework that unites key vendors and studios.

Weaver has fostered and achieved many accomplishments in the M&E market including: executive producer of “The Suitcase” CAA people choice award (Tribeca 2017), and a project focused on HDR, cloud based workflows, and Live 360. He was executive producer of the “Wonder Buffalo” SXSW Interactivity competition, in addition to being focused on an HRD first, cloud, and volumetric capture. The project was brought together by volumetric capture, photogrammetry, ambonisic sound, and interactivity.

Weaver was chairman of NAB’s “Next Generation Media Technologies” Conference 2014 – 2017, as well as chairman of vNAB 2015 – 2017. Weaver is also part of the SMPTE C4 MR30 Standards group, which oversees and helps educate the M&E industry on using C4, semantics, and NoSQL for managing motion picture data. He’s also spoken at more than 25 M&E conferences and trade shows.

Chris Witmayer, NASCAR Productions, Director of Broadcast, Production and New Media Technology

As the director of broadcast, production, and new media technology for NASCAR Media Group, Chris Witmayer has designed and implemented a completely file-based workflow using an easily expandable open architecture and introduced advanced color correction to the file-based workflow for both completed shows, as well as archival material. Witmayer has also managed the integration of EVS to the file-based workflow, designed and managed the expansion of the Archive and Production SAN to 1.8PB, and increased the efficiency of the Archival Ingest.

Prior to his current position, Witmayer served as the new media technologist, senior manager for NASCAR, during which time he transitioned NASCAR Media Group to NASCAR Plaza and Hall of Fame. He also designed the facility’s technological infrastructure for production, editorial, and archival operations.

Witmayer began his career with NFL Films in 2000 as a new media specialist and Avid Unity administrator.