Ken Adelson, Sports Media Consultant (Former NHRA Chief Content Officer & EP / NBAE SVP Production Operations)

Ken Adelson has a long history of successful network startups and building premier sports media brands. He was a leader in the history-making launch of NBA TV, the first sports league owned network that changed the way sports properties marketed and distributed their products, and played a pivotal role in the NBA’s pioneering efforts in digital media, live production, and content management. Adelson spent nearly two decades at NBA Entertainment, becoming the SVP of production, operations, and planning. He developed and implemented the organization’s day-to-day strategies and also helped drive the global expansion of the NBA.

Adelson was tasked to create the broadcast, digital media, and arena operations for the Oklahoma City Thunder from the ground up, in less than two months when the team relocated from Seattle to OKC. As SVP and EP, he led the broadcasts and original programming that launched Fox Sports Oklahoma, Thunder TV, and the Thunder Radio Network, winning a Heartland Emmy for best game telecast.

Adelson developed and was EP for live broadcasts of The Jockey Club on Fox, a horse racing series airing on FS1, and Summer at Saratoga, produced for NBC SN. He started-up the America’s Best Racing website and digital marketing platforms.

Most recently, he launched and oversaw the National Hot Rod Association’s in-house broadcast and digital media operations, managing the transition from ESPN to Fox Sports, building facilities, creating an OTT Network, and handling content strategy and the EP’s role, as well as shattering viewership and digital media engagement records across broadcast and digital platforms.

Brent Angle, Cinesys-Oceana, CTO

Current CTO Brent Angle helped form CineSys-Oceana with the goal of focusing on strong engineering services and consulting to support broadcast, post-production, VFX, animation, and film customers. That has remained the focus of the company to this day.

Brent Angle currently manages a team that includes engineering support staff and data system integrators, as well as custom engineering design and software development. He realized early on that the ever-changing standards and formats of manufacturers would create a demand for a higher level of expertise in the implementation of infrastructure to support the networking, workflow, storage, and archiving of massive digital files. It would be an important part of the industry’s future; thus began a focused effort to build relationships and partnerships with the key partners and vendors that influence this business sector.

Mike Arthur, Veritone, SVP, Sports and Licensing

Mike Arthur leads the expansion of Veritone’s Sports and Licensing business, a division that is anchored by leading rights holders, and lands their content in powerful documentaries, award-winning films, and memorable advertisements around the world.

Arthur focuses on expanding the reach of Veritone’s content licensing offering, which offers services such as full monetization for rights holders and end-to-end project management for creatives licensing content.

Arthur spent nearly six years at Harris Corporation and Imagine Communications leading a global sports practice in technology and held leadership roles at Avnet Services and Wazee Digital, now a Veritone Company. A veteran of the sports industry, he 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 Veritone.

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. He has participated in the development of five professional sports venues as well as several smaller projects across the globe. Arthur has executive relationships with the majority of teams and venues globally and has a strong understanding of the industry’s business drivers and ROI models, including strategic planning and monetization tactics.

Arthur holds a Bachelor of Arts in communications from Colorado State University.

Vince Auletta, SwiftStack, Director of Media Solutions

Vince Auletta is the director of media solutions at SwiftStack and a lifelong fan of visual storytelling, technology, and the many ways they intersect. Based in Los Angeles, Auletta focuses on helping SwiftStack’s media clients get the most out of their solutions through a combination of on-site consultations and meticulous testing in SwiftStack’s high performance Media Solutions Lab.

Prior to joining SwiftStack, he was the director of technology and security at Premiere Digital, where he helped introduce the use of scale-out ‘cloud’ techniques and technologies on-premises for extremely high volume workflows. Auletta holds a B.A. in film and media studies from the University of California at Santa Barbara, where he honed his skills as a cinematographer and colorist during the transition from celluloid film to digital cinema cameras.

Tony Barbagallo, Caringo, CEO

Throughout his 30-year career, Tony Barbagallo has leveraged his extensive experience to establish and grow hardware, software, and service organizations. He has held a mix of leadership roles at small and large companies, including VP of marketing and product management at Skyera, WildPackets (now Savvius), and EVault; VP of marketing and sales at Dantz (acquired by EMC); and senior management positions at Microsoft, Mentor Graphics, Sun, and GE. Barbagallo holds a B.S. in computer science from Syracuse University and has also completed the Stanford University Executive Program.

Eric Bassier, Quantum, Senior Director of Products

Eric Bassier is senior director of products at Quantum and has over 15 years of experience designing, managing, and marketing enterprise storage products. Bassier’s writing has appeared in Wired, Business Solutions, Data Center Post, Data Center Knowledge, and more. Follow him at @ericbassier.

Belinda Binkley, MSG Networks, VP, Engineering

With over three decades of experience working in the broadcast, sports and entertainment industry, Belinda Binkley is considered today to be one of the most respected and accomplished female executives within the technology sector. She currently serves as vice president of engineering at MSG Networks, where she is responsible for all engineering and maintenance activities related to MSG Networks’ technical facilities, which include MSG Networks owned facilities inside 11 Penn Plaza, Madison Square Garden, Prudential Center, Nassau Coliseum, and Barclays Center.

In this role, Binkley is responsible for managing relationships with all vendors, contractors, and consultants related to all technical support, projects, and engineering needs. She works closely with all internal teams as well, including production, technical operations, and facility operations, to ensure all technical requirements are consistently met. This includes assisting in in all areas related to the technical infrastructure of the plant, as well as all home broadcast venues, inclusive of technical administration, engineering and technical maintenance personnel management, and equipment management.

Previously, Binkley served as director of project operations at The Systems Group, a broadcast engineering and systems integration firm servicing broadcast, media, recording, and Fortune 500 clients worldwide. In this role, she was responsible for developing, monitoring and managing all internal processes and procedures, as well as performance, budgets and schedules for domestic large‐scale independent and corporate projects. While at The Systems Group, Binkley worked closely with MSG Networks during its relocation from Madison Square Garden. She was integral in building the network’s new technical facilities inside its new headquarters at 11 Penn Plaza on 7th Avenue, across the street from Madison Square Garden.

Before her time at The Systems Group, Binkley spent 12 years in the Broadcast Communications Division at Harris Corporation, an international communications technology company providing innovative solutions to commercial and government customers. As manager of broadcast systems, she was instrumental in reorganizing, developing, and managing a new business unit that successfully met financial goals and optimized overall project requirements, as well as business unit utilization efficiencies. Binkley also served as vice president of Kent Green Video Group for 12 years, where she led company efforts in design, CAD, purchasing, and project management, in addition to overseeing contract negotiations.

Binkley graduated from Nashville State Technical Institute with a Bachelor of Arts in engineering. She is also very involved in various industry organizations, including SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers), WICT (Women in Cable Telecommunications), and the Alliance for Women in Media.

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, software development, and post production engineering and operations for the MLB Network. He oversaw the migration of the NHL Network to the MLB Network broadcast facility in 2015, 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 26 years of experience in network TV broadcast operations, and 11 years of sales and marketing management with IT and broadcast manufactures. 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.

Jonathan Carr, Levels Beyond, Solutions Architect

Jonathan Carr is a solutions architect for Levels Beyond. In this role, he is responsible for developing the technical solutions and reference architectures for media orchestration for many Enterprise clients. He is also responsible for educating and enabling delivery teams to successfully deliver these projects.

Carr joined the Levels Beyond team in 2017 after nine years in various solution architecture, solution design, and engineering roles across a variety of industries and sectors. He has a degree in mechanical engineering from Tufts University in Medford, MA and a master’s degree in engineering management from the Tufts Gordon Institute in Medford, MA.

Carr currently resides in Denver, Colorado.

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 RSN Summit, Sports Content Management 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 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.

Ethan Dreilinger, IBM Watson Media, Client Solutions Engineer

Ethan Dreilinger is a leader in applying AI to media workflows to enable unique customer experiences. His background is built ground up, starting in radio and television learning the content creation side of the business. For more than 15 years, Dreilinger has worked with some of the largest media brands around the world to bring content to customers – no matter what platform they are using.

Robert Gilkes, Sony, Project Manager, Media Backbone NavigatorX

As an expert in media workflows, software development, and product management, Robert Gilkes has spent the last seven years implementing media workflows and products at professional sports organizations. He has also managed a product portfolio spanning video production, OTT, web, and mobile apps.

Kendall Ginsbach, NFL, Digital Media Architect

Nick Gold, Catalog DNA, VP of Marketing

Nick Gold spent 15 years with systems integrator and consultancy Chesapeake Systems, where he held roles as chief revenue officer and most recently lead technologist. During this time he developed an expertise in data storage, workflow automation, and information management (MAM) systems. He was actively involved with designing technology solutions for customers in media and entertainment, government, corporations, political campaigns, NGOs, and non-profits.

Gold is an active member of the Association of Moving Image Archivists, and serves as the conference chair for AMIA’s annual New York City-based Digital Asset Symposium. He is a published author on service-oriented architecture and contemporary microservices-based approaches to system design in the Henry Stewart Journal of Digital Media Management, and serves as a member of the publication’s editorial board.

In April of 2019, Gold joined the team at Boston-based startup CATALOG, which is commercially developing DNA-based data storage and biocomputing technologies.

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

Darryl Jefferson, NBC Sports and Olympics, VP, Post Operations and Digital Workflow

Darryl Jefferson was named VP of digital workflows at NBC Sports Group in January, 2013. In this role, he oversees the post production and asset management teams, which focus on the development and execution of automated file-based ingest, production transcode, long-term archive, and remote delivery. In addition, Jefferson is responsible for transitioning the NBC Sports film/tape archive to a wholly file-based system. He reports to Dave Mazza, SVP and CTO, at NBC Sports Group.

Previously, Jefferson served as director of post production operations. Most notably, he oversaw the Highlights Factory/Asset Management System from conception through implementation at all Olympic Games between the 2008 Beijing Games through the 2018 Pyeongchang Games. In addition to Olympics, his daily portfolio of production includes Sunday Night Football and Thursday Night Football, Triple Crown events (8 years of Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Belmont Stakes), NASCAR, NHL, Premiere League, and the 2018 FIFA World Cup.

Jefferson was also involved in the construction and systems integration process for NBC Sports Group’s state-of-the-art production facility in Stamford, CT. He formerly oversaw technical operations at the NBC Olympics Landmark Plaza facility.

Prior to joining NBC Sports Group, Jefferson was director of post production at Lifetime Networks. He oversaw post production scheduling, duplication, media management, and digital media coordination. Jefferson was a key member of the Operations/IT task force responsible for the transition to a tapeless environment, and was a primary architect of the tapeless digital workflow.

Jefferson is a fourteen-time Emmy Award Winner for New Approaches in Broadcasting, Short Form 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014; New Approaches in Event Coverage 2014; Technical Emmy Award (Set Top Box Delivery); Tech Team, Studio 2010, 2012, 2014; Tech Team, Remote 2014, 2016; and Transmedia 2016. He is also a 2012 & 2014 George Wensel Technical Achievement Award Recipient.

Dave Klee, A+E Networks, VP, Media Infrastructure

David Klee is the vice president of media infrastructure at A+E Networks, a global entertainment and media company with cable television channels including A&E, History, FYI, Viceland, and Lifetime, which broadcasts the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL). He is building a new technology team based in New York focused on media engineering and strategy for media supply chain systems, with an eye toward leveraging the cloud to drive agile transformations.

Before joining A+E, Klee was the director of media management technologies for Univision Communications (UCI), the largest Spanish-language media company in the U.S. with a portfolio of broadcast, cable, and digital properties. There, he built a new engineering team focused on software development for media supply chain tools, along with optimizing workflows for entertainment, news, and sports verticals.

Prior to Univision, Klee had the opportunity to work in media management, live production, creative, and operational roles for a variety of organizations including the Arizona Cardinals, ESPN, and most recently NBC News in New York where he managed a team focused on MAM and media software engineering. Klee holds a Master of Science in information management from Arizona State University and is an AWS Certified Solutions Architect.

Jon Kingston, Arizona Coyotes, Director of Production

Jon Kingston attended Arizona State University where he got his undergraduate degree in broadcast journalism from the Walter Cronkite School. He began his career at the local ABC affiliate in Phoenix where he developed relationships with people in the Coyotes organization, which eventually led to him taking a job with the team. In his current role as the director of production for the Arizona Coyotes, he leads the day-to-day execution and creative strategy of the organization’s content group, which is responsible for all of the team’s digital content.

Jason Marshall, YES Network, Project Manager, Broadcast Systems

Jason Marshall joined the YES Network in July of 2012. As senior systems engineer for corporate IT, he designed and implemented backend virtualization and storage architecture for the YES Graphics team’s immediate IT requirements. 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 throughput-intensive broadcast functionality while providing elasticity for the growth of these digital workflows. In June of 2015, Marshall was appointed project manager of the broadcast IT environment at YES Network. His projects currently include MAM, PAM, HSM, active archive, virtualization, storage, graphics automation, playout integration, and MPEG transmission for the YES Network.

Tom McGowan, IMT Global, VP of Business Development

Thomas F. McGowan is the VP of business development / principal consultant at Integrated Media Technologies.

McGowan is a professional with approximately 50 years of successful engineering, sales, sales management, and executive experience promoting hardware/software enterprise solutions and services focused on broadcast television, sports networks, leagues, teams, and M&E facilities.

McGowan has chaired numerous sub-committees for the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Technical Emmy Committee and serves on the SMPTE David Sarnoff Medal Selection Committee. He is active in the Society of Motion Picture & Television Engineers (SMPTE), the Sports Video Group (SVG), and similar organizations.

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. Nineteen-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.

Mike Palmer, Masstech, Chief Technology Officer

Mike Palmer is Masstech’s CTO, responsible for defining and overseeing the company’s technical strategies for developing new technologies that allow it to grow its position in existing and new markets. In his prior roles as VP of business strategy and VP and GM of the company’s News business unit, Palmer played a key role in driving the development of the first media asset management (MAM) system to deliver drag-and-drop inter-site sharing of news media between differing vendors’ production and newsroom systems, directly within the desktop interface of leading newsroom computer systems. This multiple award-winning change gives journalists rapid, easy non-disruptive access to content stored locally or at any bureau in their group.

Palmer is an active contributor to SMPTE standards and is also spokesperson emeritus of the MOS Protocol Group, an organization which he led for nearly 15 years and which was awarded a 2017 Technology and Engineering Emmy. Palmer is also a recipient of Broadcasting and Cable’s Technology Leadership Award. Both awards recognize the impact of technical standards and highly integrated systems on the work done every day by thousands of journalists around the world.

Palmer joined Masstech from the Associated Press, where he was director of ENPS design and integration strategy. Earlier, Palmer held both editorial and technical management positions at the local, group, and national levels in the U.S.

Nick Pearce, Object-Matrix, Co-Founder and Sales Director

Nick Pearce co-founded Object-Matrix, an early pioneer of object storage technology and evangelist for modernizing archive workflows. Pearce is currently responsible for all things sales, marketing, and alliances. He also co-founded GlobalWelsh that Object Matrix has proudly supported since its inception.

Brandon Potter, Fox Sports, Director, Post Production

Brandon Potter signed on as director of post production at Fox Sports in October 2016, where he is jointly responsible for managing the day-to-day resources of the post production operations with a focus on developing efficient and innovative workflows with production, graphics, and technical operations teams. His group oversees content workflows from inception to archive, working between remote and studio productions, and providing a large role in production support including features, ENG crews, feed management, file transfers, production integrations, and broadcast management. Potter most recently led many of the media workflows for the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup in France, as well as the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia.

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 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.

Eric Siders, St. Louis Blues, Video Production Manager

Eric Siders is currently the video production manager for the St. Louis Blues entering his fifth season. His responsibilities include managing a team of three editors and all video/creative assets, as well as directing the in-house videoboard feed.

Siders graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with a degree in broadcasting production. His hockey career started with the Missouri Mavericks (ECHL) where he worked for four seasons.

Roger Singh, Nutanix, Chief Technologist, M&E

Roger Singh is the chief technologist for media and entertainment at Nutanix. Singh has over 15 years of experience architecting workflows and infrastructure solutions across post-production, distribution, news, sports, and entertainment environments for media companies like NBCUniversal and A&E Networks.

Singh has spent the last several years helping film and broadcast clients transform their business through modernization of workflows, infrastructure, and cloud strategy.

Bryan Staffaroni, WWE, VP, Media Asset Management

Jeremy Strootman, CatDV, VP, Business Development, North America

Jeremy Strootman has been a media workflow consultant for over 15 years with the sole mission to increase efficiency and productivity. From ingest to archive, his understanding of the challenges that content creators face has provided value to hundreds of media professionals across North America. Getting his start in storage and archiving, Strootman quickly understood that asset management, media processing, and automation are as important as the story his customers are telling. His belief is that the power of video is only matched by the understanding of where the media is and what the media contains.

David Taylor, IBM, Executive Cloud Architect, IBM Storage and Software Defined Storage Solutions

As an executive cloud architect for the IBM Storage business with worldwide responsibilities, David Taylor focuses on creating solutions for customers who are looking to modernize and transform their IT environments for today’s data-driven hybrid and multi-cloud world. He has held a number of IT technical and leadership roles – from engineer to CEO – with positions at Westinghouse, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), Micro Strategies, and Interactive Demand Solutions. Taylor joined IBM in 2007 as the worldwide architect for the media and entertainment industry. He has a wealth of experience with rich media and broadcast solutions, along with deep expertise in storage technologies. Working directly with customers and business partners across all industries, Taylor collaborates on high value solutions that deliver modern, agile, and secure IBM Storage offerings to help drive efficiencies and business success.

Xena Ugrinsky, Genre-X Consulting, Partner, Applied Data Science

Xena Ugrinsky specializes in all aspects of data science adoption. She works with clients to establish the organizational strategy to accelerate business solutions through advanced analytics. Ugrinsky frequently speaks on topics related to the application of advanced analytics to systems modernization and business transformation. She provides strategy and client advisory related to applying data science to solving business issues for finance, operations, sales, and marketing.

Ugrinsky currently engages directly in client initiatives to solve systems modernization challenges to drive broader value across the overall technology portfolio, and help clients link their data science strategy and activity to those initiatives, with specific focus on optimization based upon empirical data. Her areas of expertise include: advanced analytics and applied data science – strategy, staffing, and execution; technology portfolio rationalization; technology selection; product strategy; and cloud adoption.

Prior to founding Genre-X, Ugrinsky was a SVP in the Civil Commercial Group at Booz Allen Hamilton. In that role, she was part of the leadership team that led Booz Allen’s efforts defining a commercial strategy that translated offerings and services provided in the federal and civil markets to the commercial market.

Prior to joining Booz Allen Hamilton, Ugrinsky was a partner at KPMG’s U.S. Advisory practice. She served as the global CTO for the Enterprise Performance Management and Analytics practice and was part of a firm-wide foundational innovation initiative around data and analytics/big data.

Ugrinsky is currently authoring a book, Enterprise AI – Field Guide to the New Business Normal, which discusses enterprise AI adoption, implications for the c-suite operating model, and the re-skilling of the workforce necessary. The book covers the overall challenges for organizations as they attempt to embed a data driven approach at the enterprise level. More succinctly, it seeks to answer the question – What will define the winners in the “big data race to competitive advantage”?

Ugrinsky has an M.B.A. in information systems in data from New York University’s Stern School of Business and a Bachelors of Arts in finance from Hofstra University. She is a certified data scientist from Data Science Central, a Hackett-Certified advisor, and working on completion towards becoming a certified data scientist from Johns Hopkins University (est. 2016-2018). She is also a board member of Graham’s Foundation, a non-profit serving the needs of parents of premature infants, and the chief technology officer for a software company in Maryland called RocketDocs.

Erik Weaver, ETC / Industry Veteran

Erik Weaver is a specialist focused on the intersection of cloud and the media and entertainment industry, currently running strategy for Western Digital, 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 and archive.

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, ambisonic sound, and interactivity.

Weaver was chairman of NAB’s Next Generation Media Technologies Conference from 2014-2017, as well as chairman of vNAB from 2015-2017. He 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. Weaver has spoken at more than 25 M&E conferences and trade shows.

James Wilson, IBM Aspera, Director of Engineering

James Wilson leads engineering and product for IBM Aspera SAAS and private cloud offerings, including IBM Aspera on Cloud, a SAAS that delivers rich collaboration, delivery, automation, monitoring, and advanced infrastructure administration capabilities to the world’s largest content producers. His technical expertise includes scalable containerized microservice-based systems, multi-cloud architecture, systems engineering, networking, and continuous delivery. Most recently, Wilson has been working with industry partners in content production and delivery on the Digital Asset Trust Framework, a blockchain-based initiative designed to improve trust in cloud-based workflows for high value media. Outside of work, Wilson enjoys mentoring youth in pursuing STEM careers and collecting vintage computers.

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

Chris Witmayer is the director of broadcast, production, and new media technology for NASCAR. Throughout his 17 years in media and entertainment, Witmayer has focused on streamlining/transforming content management and delivery solutions through new technology and workflow improvements.

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

Witmayer is a renowned speaker having delivered presentations to the Sports Video Group (SVG), National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), International Broadcast Convention (IBC), Microsoft Build, Microsoft Ignite, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), and the United States Library of Congress. His personal approach to his presentations brings simplicity to complex topics allowing everyone to learn and contribute to the conversation.

Jay Yogeshwar, Media Translation, CEO

Dr. Jay Yogeshwar is a global media executive and a subject matter expert in the fields of broadcast, digital video, streaming, immersive, interactive, and over the top television. He is the founder of Media Translation, a high-tech venture helping media companies with non-disruptive transition from enterprise tape to object storage and cloud technologies.

Prior to founding Media Translation, Dr. Yogeshwar managed the technology alliance and solutions portfolio for Hitachi Vantara (formerly Hitachi Data Systems). As a global lead for their M&E practice, he was responsible for their media vision and direction that transformed Hitachi from a traditional Enterprise Storage and IT Platforms Company to a mobility, cloud, and big data analytics company. Prior to that, he was the founder and CTO of Front Porch Digital, a broadcast and video content storage management software firm.

Awards and credits include technical Emmy for DVD technology, ten U.S. patents in media technologies, presentations, and membership in prestigious professional organizations such as IEEE, SMPTE, IBC, and the International Emmy’s.

Hossein ZiaShakeri, Spectra Logic, SVP, Business Development and Strategic Alliances

Hossein ZiaShakeri is Spectra Logic’s senior vice president of business development and strategic alliances. ZiaShakeri is an executive on the company’s technology team tasked with maintaining the company’s leadership position in product innovation and business success. He has more than 30 years of experience in design, engineering, and management of storage subsystems, with a special focus on the M&E industry.