The Entertainment Technology Center @ USC will host a 3-day Virtual NAB Cloud Conference, featuring more than 35 speakers, panelists and keynotes, on March 2, 3 & 4 at the YouTube Space LA. A very limited number of seats are still available. The conference is an extension of the Media Management in the Cloud track that ETC leads at the NAB Show and provides a forum for a deeper discussion of Media & Entertainment and the Cloud. The entire program will be recorded and videos will be posted on the ETC YouTube channel in advance of NAB to provide a lasting repository of perspectives and experiences in this rapidly evolving sector.

Erik Weaver, who manages Project Cloud for ETC and organizes the Media Management in the Cloud sessions at NAB, said that he received over 100 qualified presentation proposals, too many to include in the April proceedings but worthy of attention and a platform. He conceived the Virtual Conference not only to provide a forum for presentation of this work but “very importantly to create an opportunity to elaborate on some subjects more than the panel format at the NAB show provides.”

“There are stories that need to be told and my goal is to tell those stories,” said Weaver. “Now anyone interested in these zones has a forum and a place where these stories can heard.”

The idea of recording and posting the sessions was a response to the ephemeral nature of the more traditional conference track and a desire to make this knowledge and experience more widely available and build a reference resource. This is very much in keeping with the ETC@USC mission to convene industry leadership, provide a neutral setting for ideas and issues to be presented and discussed, and to share the results.

The program is crafted around various key topics and structured with related subjects scheduled together. Day 1, on March 2, has a production orientation addressing matters of post in the Cloud, security and workflows. Day 2 looks closely at Media Asset Management, Digital Asset Management, Second Screen and OTT (Over The Top). The third day dives into analytics, open source, and Big Data.

Keynote speakers promise to set the tone for each day:

Faster, Better, Cheaper: Pick All Three! is the title of opening day remarks to be made by Miles Ward, Google’s head of global solutions.

Denise Evans, vice president of Miramax, will share her experiences in her presentation, Digital Asset Management in the Cloud: Lessons Learned from Miramax.

Day 3 will be the most technical with presentations on the Cinema Content Creation Cloud framework, OpenStack & TV Everywhere, Data Gravity, Object Storage, Effective Data Solutions, open source data science deployment, and media analytics.

The full program can be viewed on the ETC@USC site. To register, please visit the Eventbrite page.