Digital Hollywood Spring, 2016

Monday, October 19th, 2015

11:30 AM - 12:30 PM

Track II: Poolside Tent I

Broadcasting without Borders: Players in the New Guard of Broadcasting, Branding and Content Networks

Oren J. Katzeff, Head of Programming & Network, Tastemade

Eric Shuss, Serial Entrepreneur

Ted Mico, COO, Mirriad

Shannon Gans, Co-founder and CEO, New Deal Studios

Ashley Crowder, CEO, VNTANA

Tom Morgan, founder and CEO, Net2TV

Ann Greenberg, Founder & Chief Tinkerer, Hugging Company, Moderator

based sitesAs founder and CEO of BlackArrow Corporation, Morgan pioneered a new era of digital TV (VOD) advertising system used by Comcast and other multiple system operators (MSOs) for dynamic, profile-based, on-demand advertising. He also co-founded the DiMA Group, a digital TV consulting and research firm. Early in his career he held executive positions at America Online, BroadVision, IDG Interactive Services and MTV/Nickelodeon.

Shannon Gans, Co-founder and CEO, New Deal Studios: CEO & Co-Founder, New Deal Studios: As Co-founder and CEO of New Deal Studios, a dynamic 21st Century visual effects and Media Studio, Shannon started her career with 2 projects and 2 partners straight out of the USC Entrepreneur Program. Since then, Shannon has carefully guided the evolution of the company over the past twenty years into a 21st Century Studio which develops and produces film, commercials, TV, web, mobile and virtual reality projects. Though best known for her below the line career in visual effects on over 100 of the biggest films and over 50 commercials, Shannon has crossed the line and has been a co-producer on 4 motion pictures, in addition to shorts, digital media projects, web TV shows and commercials. Shannon is a member of the Producers Guild of America, the Entrepreneur’s Organization (EO), and the Visual Effects Society.

Ashley Crowder leverages her engineering and event production experience to guide VNTANA’s overall direction and technology development. She co-founded VNTANA in 2012 with the goal of allowing artists to play multiple venues at the same time. Since then VNTANA has created the first scalable, affordable and interactive hologram system, which has been used by major brands including Microsoft, Mercedes-Benz and Universal Pictures. Prior to co-founding VNTANA she graduated from USC with a bachelors and masters in engineering and gained valuable manufacturing experience at Gulfstream, Northrop Grumman and BP. She also gained experience in event production at MTV Networks in Los Angeles and INCA Productions in London, planning events to be executed in multiple countries. As VNTANA’s CEO, she continues to push the boundaries of virtual reality to create innovative brand experiences.

Oren Katzeff, Vice President and General Manager, Demand Media Entertainment: where he runs the day-to-day operations of Cracked.com and Mania.com. His responsibilities include overseeing the creation of high quality, intelligent text and video content, and identifying, evaluating and structuring content monetization and distribution opportunities. Prior to joining Demand Media, Oren was Senior Director of Business Development for the Yahoo Media Group, where his primary focus was negotiating all business deals for Yahoo News and Yahoo Finance. Within this role, Oren negotiated and managed over fifty key partnerships, including those with The Associated Press, Reuters, ABCNews, FOX, USAToday, The Weather Channel, CNN, Gawker, Huffington Post, and many others. Prior to joining Yahoo, Oren practiced law at a small firm in San Mateo, California, gaining experience in both the litigation and business transactions side of the profession. Although he no longer practices law, it still makes him smile when his grandmother proudly tells her friends that her "grandson is a lawyer". Oren holds an undergraduate business degree from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, and a JD from Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. He has written over ten short screenplays, seven of which were filmed and submitted in film competitions (a few of them were award winning), and sometimes feels the itch to give stand-up comedy one last try.

Ted Mico is Chief Operating Officer of Mirriad. Based in Los Angeles, Mico is a seasoned operations executive with more than 20 years of media, advertising, and digital experience. Most recently, he was CEO of MixedMediaWorks where he consulted for established media clients and start-ups. He was previously Executive Vice President Strategy & Operations responsible for brand alliances, sales, marketing, digital, and business development for the Interscope/Geffen/A&M label group. He was part of the four-man team which launched the Beats by Dre consumer electronics brand, recently acquired by Apple for $3 billion. Mico has also held senior positions at Launch/Yahoo, EMI and IPC Media. He began his career in the U.S. as head of a successful multimedia branded entertainment company whose diverse client roster included Peter Gabriel, David Bowie, the Society of American Historians, Lollapalooza, Cricket.org, and The Rolling Stones, whom he worked with for almost two decades.

Eric Shuss, Serial Entrepreneur: Mr. Shuss has been actively involved in running high-tech companies for over thirty years.  He has owned and managed successful companies from start-up to thriving on-going ventures including I.T./ERP sales and consulting firms, high-tech manufacturers, retail operations and distributors.  He has over 25 years of business management experience with a keen understanding of how technology impacts today’s business.  He has worked in mid-to-large companies in roles of Senior Industry Analyst, Managing Consultant, Director of Information Systems, Director of Operations, CEO, COO, Vice President and President. His in-depth knowledge of Enterprise software and business processes allows him to look at the big picture and understand that the technology is not the answer, but enabling people to access and benefit from the technology is the key to success.  He is producing a Broadway-style sci-fi comedy musical based on the music of geek rock icon, Jonathan Coulton called The Future Soon.

Ann Greenberg is a serial entrepreneur and inventor. Ann co-founded Gracenote, the leading metadata and Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) service and answers over a billion requests for data every day and is embedded in over a billion consumer electronic and software devices, (Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Samsung, LG, Amazon, Xbox, Roku, Tivo, Syfy, Toshiba) and over 65 million cars, over 20% of new cars sold today (Mercedes, BMW, Ford, Hyundai, Toyota, for example.) Gracenote was acquired by Sony in 2008 and is now owned by Tribune. Gracenote is headquartered in California, with offices all over the world, including Germany, South Korea, Argentina, Netherlands and Australia. Ann has multiple US and international patents for media identification, synchronization and automatic generation. At her new company, Sceneplay, Inc. Ann is building a cloud-based collaborative storytelling platform, taking the script format into the 21st century by merging scripts with code (SmartScripts) and making them accessible via a SmartScriptAPI. Ann also runs the Hugging Company, a 21st Century TinkerTank to house her other work, including: children’s book adaptations and architecture series in VR; an engine to automatically generate plotlines; a fan-articulated data analytics system (Fanpulse); and an AI-based marketplace (stealth) and a (hardware) viewer technology for spherical storytelling (stealth.)  In addition, Ann mentors Korea’s first accelerator, SparkLabs, including MangoPlate (Korea’s Yelp) and a new Korean BitCoin company, Blocko. She advises entertainment technology companies, Busby.io (invitation only social network for entertainment professionals) and Fem-Inc. (data-driven video recommendation platform, currently in the prestigious Disney Accelerator.) Previously, Ann advised and helped build TourWrist/Sphere, a 360 shoot and share panorama and VR company (winner of DEMO 2012 and Best-in-Show at MacWorld, and now PhotoSphere/Street and Business Views at Google.) Ann designed the original immersive story-mapping concepts for the Canadian documentary From the Four Corners of the Earth (about a lost tribe of Jews living in Ghana, West Africa) and she conceived of and produced the world’s first SongPano, (her concept of immersive album covers) which she produced for Interscope Records in 2012.  Prior to founding Gracenote, in 1992, Ann co-founded ION a pioneering digital studio to create “omnidirectional, interactive and immersive entertainment” which invented and patented early interactive cinema systems, the enhanced CD format (eCD) and groundbreaking intelligent media players. ION was a joint venture partnership with BMG and published artists including: David Bowie, Brian Eno, The Residents, Todd Rundgren, Primus and worked with companies including Apple, Sony, Microsoft, Macromedia, Phillips, Interscope, Disney Online, and House of Blues. Other projects developed were: “Robecca, a Digital Frankenstein” built from collective memory, “Immersive Digital Dante” and Ray Zone’s 3DWorld. Ann pioneered celebrity hosted chats and playlists, invented electronic presskits (EPKs) and worked on early Internet video broadcasts via CUSeeMe for House of Blues, JazzFest and others. Prior to ION, Greenberg headed marketing for the Edward R. Pressman Film Corporation whose 80 films include box office and Academy Award winning hits. Greenberg oversaw corporate publicity and film marketing and PR in coordination with all the major studios, including Warner Brothers, Paramount and Columbia. Greenberg managed all creative companies and venders, and coordinated all festival participation, including Sundance, Telluride, Cannes, Golden Globes, American and International Film Markets and the IFP (Independent Feature Project.) She managed the critical review process, ad buys, and materials distribution for new films, coordination of all PR, including celebrity approval processes, taste-maker, test and launch screenings, and catalog sales. Example films include: David Mamet’s Homicide, Alex Proyas’ The Crow, Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant, and Barbet Schroeder’s Academy Award winning, Reversal of Fortune. Ann is a frequent speaker, moderator, judge, startup coach and longtime proponent of women in films and technology, including: CES, SMPTE, SxSW, National Association of Broadcasters, Sundance, The Brink Institute, Stanford Future of Entertainment, AFI, University of California, NFTE, Digital Hollywood, SoGalBootCamp, and Women In Tech ThinkTank.