Thursday, May 23rd, 2019

11:00 AM - 11:50 AM

ThinkTank I: Herscher Hall, 3rd Floor, Room 305

Anti-piracy: Protecting Creativity in Hollywood

Susan Johnston - Founder/Director, New Media Film Festival

Ken Gerstein, Senior Sales Director, NAGRA

M.F.(MicheLe) Fogel, Founder and CEO, Your Moral Compass Counts, LLC

Lima Mora, founder and Managing Director, The Last Star

Rob Holmes, Founder & CEO, IPCybercrime

Dennis Yu, Chief Technology Officer, BlitzMetrics

Newton Lee, Author, Educator, Futurist - ‎Institute for Education, Research, and Scholarships, Moderator

Rob Holmes, Founder & CEO, IPCybercrime: Raised in New Jersey in a family of private investigators, Rob worked his first case at the age of twelve. While aspiring as a comedian in Los Angeles in the early 90s, he was employed at a premiere investigative firm. Here, he found himself assigned to a new breed of faceless perpetrators: cyber criminals. Rob conducted some of the world’s first cyber investigations, and pioneered the study of the “virtual crime scene”. Over the last decade, Rob and his company have led the charge against the growing trend of data leaks, piracy and online threats for their many regular VIP clients,

many of whom are featured on the Forbes® list The World's Most Valuable Brands. Rob is a private eye, funny guy, blogger, Calvinist, Freemason, Prius owner, and a Gene Hackman Fan.

M.F.(MicheLe) Fogel, Founder and CEO, Your Moral Compass Counts, LLC: M.F. Fogel (or Michele) is affectionately known as ‘the one L michele®’ or ‘the 1L michele®’ or as she sometimes says, “one L-no hell.” Michele recently launched online her own mother board, more correctly and commonly known as the e-commerce website of her company, Your Moral Compass Counts®, LLC to provide hope, happiness and humor regarding the internal compass about people. She wants to be the woman over 50 invited to one day grace the cover of Time Magazine, as the thought leader for moral leadership, and the interrupter/disrupter and name-changer/game-changer. Her ingenuity, creativity and positivity meshed with her empathy, her flair with words and a keen sense of humor, make her a diamond in the rough. Formerly, a judge pro tem, and a practicing attorney with admission to the U.S. Supreme Court, Michele is transitioning to become a best-selling author, national speaker and apparel entrepreneur. While Michele has developed and achieved an expertise as a specialist about online removal of Personally Identifiable Information (‘PII’)--one reason for her invitation as a panelist on the “Hollywood and Cybercrime” panel (and a current hot topic in today’s society), she is most proud being told several years ago by the former Chief of Pediatrics at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, of the “exceptional job” she did raising her two children—a male and female, now in their mid-to late twenties. Michele invites you to follow her company on Twitter (@YourMoralCC) and on Instagram (YourMoralCompassCounts) and also maybe on Facebook too!

Ken Gerstein, Senior Sales Director, NAGRA: After working in advertising/eCommerce for AOL/Time Warner in New York, Ken moved to Los Angeles to work on primetime TV and film productions at ABC/Disney/Fox/Paramount/Warner Bros.  He later joined Thomson/Grass Valley to expand team developing DMAM software products for migration to file-based media workflows. Ken transitioned to a sales role by leveraging experience at Hollywood studios, production companies, post-production facilities, and pay-TV operators. This includes his role at Ateme selling video compression products into M&E market, then at Civolution as VP of Sales managing the NexGuard suite of forensic watermarking products for the West Coast. After the acquisition of NexGuard by NAGRA in 2016 expanded role to head global sales of  NAGRA Anti-Piracy Services and NexGuard watermarking.

Dennis Yu is the Chief Executive Officer of BlitzMetrics, a digital marketing company which partners with schools to train young adults. Dennis’s program centers around mentorship, helping students grow their expertise to manage social campaigns for enterprise clients like the Golden State Warriors, Nike, and Rosetta Stone. He’s an internationally recognized lecturer in Facebook Marketing and has spoken in 17 countries, spanning 5 continents, including keynotes at L2E, Gultaggen, and Marketo Summit. Dennis has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, LA Times, National Public Radio, TechCrunch, Fox News, CBS Evening News and is co-author of Facebook Nation – a textbook taught in over 700 colleges and universities. He’s a regular contributor for Adweek’s SocialTimes column and has published in Social Media Examiner, Social Media Club, Tweak Your Biz, B2C, Social Fresh, and Heyo. He held leadership positions at Yahoo! and American Airlines and studied Finance and Economics at Southern Methodist University as well as London School of Economics. He ran collegiate cross-country at SMU and has competed in over 20 marathons including a 70 mile ultramarathon. Besides being a Facebook data and ad geek, you can find him eating chicken wings or playing Ultimate Frisbee in a city near you.

Lima Mora, founder and managing director of The Last Star: Director of Rehabilitation and Educational Technology, is a mixed reality experience designer specializing in cinematic Virtual Reality (VR) and stereoscopy with a focus on immersive educational content/concept development, 360 solutions and Digital Health. Cybersecurity and privacy are two major concerns in VR applications, especially when it comes to healthcare and patient data security. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of Moof Monster Tech, sharing her incite on VR/AR  software applications, top-rated hardware, cybersecurity and information security. Previously she was a health promoter and volunteer coordinator for the Canadian Blood Services, and cancer research assistant at MD Anderson Cancer Center integrating what she learned from both of these opportunities to concentrate on patient accessibility to healthcare providers and enhanced treatment options through Heath Tech and The Last Star.

Susan Johnston is the founder and director of the New Media Film Festival. Before launching the New Media Film Festival, she helped build three other film festivals, one of which is now Academy-accredited, founded and ran several production companies, and amassed over 50 credits on IMDB. Susan is the CEO of an award winning production company Select Services Films.  With a rich career in filmmaking which is still in mid-course, she also helped build the infrastructure for the Providence & Rhode Island Film Commissions including spearheading their 25% tax incentive. Her background is in the traditional film and TV industry, but has also become known in recent years as a pioneering new media producer.  She produced Mini-Bikers - the first series ever made for mobile phones – in conjunction with Fun Little Movies, as well as one of the first HD TV pilots and music videos utilizing the Panasonic Varicam.  She's a tester for the Panasonic Varicam and the DVX100, developed the SAG Internet contract with Pierre Debs of SAG and Frank Chindamo of FLM.  She speaks about New Media on panels, in schools, is a judge at the New Media Institute, a member of American Television Arts and Sciences (ATAS) Interactive Media, and a Daytime Emmys judge. A New England native, Susan worked with the Providence & Rhode Island Film Commissions over 5 years to build the infrastructure used by the Farrelly brothers, director Michael Corrente, NBC's hit TV series Providence, and the New England Screenwriters Conference.  She developed Context Media Studios International’s production capabilities as well as garnered funds before Senate Committee hearings and helped facilitate the 25% tax incentive for investors of films in Rhode Island. Upon relocating to Los Angeles, Johnston delved into international co-producing, talent producing, directing, TV development and collaborated on innovative projects with her award-winning production company, Select Services Films, Inc.  Some highlights include producing, for several years, The AMEC Awards and the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles Industry Leadership Awards, and winning the Imaginite Award from Australia for filmmakers who ignite the mind and a Maverick Filmmaker honor from Cinequest (one of the top 10 film festival in the world) in 2006. Susan's casting and producing credits include feature films, television shows, and commercials.  She has been interviewed for books such as Hollywood Drive-What it Takes to Break In, Hang In and Make it in the Entertainment Industry by Eve Light Honthaner; for Career Opportunities in the Film Industry; 2nd Edition by Jan Yager and for the successful Italian industry book Ciao Artista! by Fioretta Mari and Manuella Metri.  Susan has taught and/or spoken at USC School of Cinema and Television summer program, Sherwood Oaks College, during Sundance, Marina Del Rey Int’l studies, Van Mar Academy and Beverly Hills Adult Education, VIP Workshops, Young Actors Camp (Voted top 5 best summer camps by Travel Channel).

Newton Lee is an author, educator, and futurist. He is chairman of the California Transhumanist Party, president of 501(c)(3) nonprofit Institute for Education, Research, and Scholarships (IFERS), adjunct professor of Applied Computer Science at Woodbury University, and editor-in-chief of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Computers in Entertainment magazine. Previously, Lee was a computer scientist at AT&T Bell Laboratories, senior producer and engineer at The Walt Disney Company, and research staff member at the Institute for Defense Analyses. He was the founder of Disney Online Technology Forum, creator of Bell Labs’ first-ever commercial AI tool, and inventor of the world’s first annotated multimedia OPAC for the U.S. National Agricultural Library. Lee graduated Summa Cum Laude from Virginia Tech with a B.S. and M.S. degree in Computer Science (specializing in Artificial Intelligence), and he earned a perfect GPA from Vincennes University with an A.S. degree in Electrical Engineering and an honorary doctorate in Computer Science. He has been honored with a Michigan Leading Edge Technologies Award, two community development awards from the California Junior Chamber of Commerce, and four volunteer project leadership awards from The Walt Disney Company. Lee’s Total Information Awareness trilogy books (Facebook Nation, Counterterrorism and Cybersecurity, and Google It) has garnered rave reviews from Eleanor Clift of Newsweek and The Daily Beast, ACM Computing Reviews, AdWeek SocialTimes, and Choice Magazine, among others. Dr. Laura Wilhelm for The Hollywood Times applauded that “Newton Lee’s thorough and thoughtful analysis should please pacifists in search of lasting solutions to the planet’s biggest problems.” Veteran Staff Sergeant Andrew Price of the United States Air Force (USAF) remarked, “I am inspired by the prospect of world peace. I’d fully recommend following the author’s steps, reaching beyond our borders, making friends outside our norm, and helping to foster world peace and a better tomorrow.”