CDSA

During a special presentation on Feb. 17 inside the MESAverse — MESA’s metaverse virtual environment platform, using ICVR’s RendezVu — members of the MESA community were given an update on new MESA initiatives and a rundown of events leading up to April’s NAB Show in Las Vegas and the May 19 Hollywood Innovation & Transformation Summit (HITS) event in Los Angeles.

The presentation, “Meet in the MESAverse,” previewed the March 10 Intelligent Content Summit and EIDR Annual Participant Meeting at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, the March 22 Content Workflow Management Forum 2022 and Content Protection Summit EU events in London, the NAB Show April 23-27, and HITS Spring and MEDCA: Metaverse & Virtual Production May 19 at Universal Hilton Los Angeles.

All of the MESA-produced events will be held as hybrid in-person and virtual gatherings, allowing attendees globally to join in.

Those who attended the Feb. 17 presentation in the “MESAverse” or who viewed it online via Zoom heard that, while every company has a different approach to how they will take their first steps into a post-pandemic world, they must also be mindful of the psychological impact this change brings to the workforce and ourselves.

Providing the roadmap and update on what MESA’s going to be doing over the next few months, Guy Finley, MESA CEO and president, said: “That road is paved with data, IT and security, which are core communities inside of MESA.”

“This is MESA,” he went on to say, adding: “Really what we’re trying to do here is kickstart our engine back up.”

He recalled that, after MESA’s last in-person event, the Smart Hollywood Summit at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles on March 4, 2020, “I remember hugging everybody and joking and saying ‘this is the last time we’re going to hug’ and it all came true. It was certainly a rude awakening — not only for our industry but for the world. And here we are two years later.”

Explaining MESA’s strategy for the return to in-person events, he said: “Ultimately, this is about your comfort. This is your community and we want to make sure we’re not pushing too hard, not moving too quick in terms of coming back to in-person [events] but ultimately that’s what we’re talking about.”

But individuals will have the choice of attending MESA events digitally or in-person, he noted.

“At the heart of what we do is innovation and transformation,” Finley explained. 
“That’s what MESA is all about. We actually rebranded IT from information Technology, our Hollywood IT [Society], to Innovation and Transformation, and we speak to that regularly through all of our communities.”

‘Incredible’ Industry Changes

“We’re facing these incredible changes in our industry” and, at the same time, “we’re responsible for keeping everybody entertained as we crawl back and return to normal,” Finley said, adding: “As we face these revolutionary changes, the world has evolved. So have we. And so have you.”

MESA’s focus, meanwhile, is on data, IT and security, he told viewers before giving a rundown on each of the associations under the MESA umbrella.

The MESA association that focuses on data is the Entertainment Identifier Registry (EIDR), while its group that focuses on IT is its newest association, the Media & Entertainment Data Center Alliance (MEDCA), and the group that focuses on security is the Content Delivery & Security Association (CDSA), he noted.

The MESA communities and brands that are related to those associations are the Smart Content Council (EIDR/data), HITS (MEDCA/IT) and the new Media & Entertainment Information Sharing Analysis Center (MEISAC) (CDSA/security).

Building Data Centres at Scale

The new MEDCA is out to “teach Hollywood what a data centre really is,” said Finley, who serves as its secretary/treasurer.

Although some members of the Hollywood community may question why they need to know that, he explained: “Every single production facility, every single virtual production facility, every single facility that deals with the ins and outs of data and information is going to need a room.” Although some in the industry may not want to call it a data centre, he said, “technically it is.”

He was not referring to huge data centres.

Some of the data centres are classified as micro data centres and portable data centres, he noted.

But, he explained: “Ultimately, we as a business, need to know the best way to build these … thousands of tiny data centres that will emerge in the explosion of virtual productions” and also “build them at scale.”

During the pandemic, there were many data centres created that were poorly designed and poorly implemented because they were built “on the fly,” he said.

The Latest MESA Newsletter

MESA’s 501 (c)3 charitable organisation, meanwhile, is Women in Hollywood Technology (WiTH), which helps Los Angeles-area charities and helps educate young people studying science, technology, engineering, art or math (STEAM), supporting diversity, equity and inclusion “to make sure that these people have an understanding of what we do as a business and also a path to get engaged with our industry,” Finley pointed out.

WiTH also provides mentoring and networking opportunities, he added.

MESA is made up of over 160 member companies and more than 40 content advisors, and there are about 50 associations that it works with now, he said.

The newest MESA newsletter is MVP (Metaverse and Virtual Production), Finley told viewers. “This is a new emerging area…. This is also where our industry is going,” he said.

Meanwhile, “we’re up to a thousand users plus in RendezVu so we only expect that to grow by the end of the year,” he told viewers, adding it’s a free service and “we think this is the best way to present our events moving forward.”

MESA is testing the waters slowly to see how many people will come out to attend its coming events in person but members can view the events virtually also, he noted.

Last, every Thursday online in the MESAverse, starting March 3, will be MESA’s Lunch & Learn, hosted by Richard Atkinson, CDSA president and executive board member, at noon P.T., he told viewers.