CDSA

One event is media and entertainment’s premiere localisation event, bringing together the industry’s top language service providers, content creators, artificial intelligence and machine learning companies, and network executives.

The other sees top minds in content protection discuss the ongoing — and ever-changing — security demands caused by the pandemic, covering production security, post-production workflows and the growing ecosystems of platforms and connectivity.

On the 22nd March, both the sixth annual Content Workflow Management Forum and the eighth annual Content Protection Summit Europe events will come together at the Cavendish Conference Centre in London, and as virtual events via the MESAverse, allowing for remote attendance worldwide.

Here’s a look at what attendees of the event can expect:

• Following conference introductions from the Content Localisation Council, Paul Hastings, SVP of global sales for Whip Media, will deliver the opening keynote of the day, “The Global Binge Boom – By the Numbers.” Binge-watching drives streaming adoption and streaming services are driving tremendous growth in the localisation business. In the world’s biggest binge-watching survey ever conducted, with answers from over 32,000 respondents across 7 countries, Whip Media has the data on “everything binge” and is presenting it for the first time here at CWMF. How do they define a binge session? What genres do they binge? Who are you bingeing with? Did lockdown have an effect? With answers directly from a panel of over 20 million global users who actively use Whip Media’s TV Time app, important implications from the data become clear as the future of content development in a world of streaming continues to evolve.

• “Localisation: The Never-Ending Story” will see Jan-Hendrik Hein, VP of media operations EMEA for A+E Networks UK, Luke Robinson, director of dubbing at Sony Pictures Entertainment, Amanda Smith, VP of languaging strategy for Discovery, and Justin Walton, global content operations manager for ITV, discuss the key developments impacting the sector, from the stratospheric growth in streaming services, to technology innovations through to maintaining and encouraging new talent to enter the sector. This panel session will discuss some of the pain points the industry is facing, in addition to looking ahead to review how technology and human creativity will co-exist to ensure that content of all types can continue to be enjoyed by global audiences.

• Björn Lifvergren, co-founder and executive chairman of LinQ, will take a deep dive into the competitive localisation landscape, which is a constantly moving target. One of the constants in the localisation market is that it is always changing. So what does that entail for vendors, freelancers, and content creators etc.? Find out in the presentation “Localisation Market – A Moving Target.”

• “Intelligent Cloud I/O: Lessons Learned in Moving Petabytes to and From the Cloud” has Jon Finegold, chief marketing officer for Signiant, covering key learnings and considerations to help make your journey to the cloud a successful one. There are many tools available for moving files into and out of the cloud. In an industry that deals with huge files, complex supply chains and growing security challenges, there are several factors to consider when choosing the right tool for the unique challenges of M&E.

• Whip Media’s Vicky Albon, partnership relationship manager, and Dan Andrews, VP of sales engineering, will lead the discussion “Transforming Content Licensing Through Data-Driven Localisation Decisions.” In a borderless global content environment, media and entertainment companies need the ability to evaluate content and make impactful data-driven decisions. With predictive insights on hundreds of thousands of titles, distributors can make more meaningful selections on what to invest in and localise. The travelability and success of this content to new markets is what will accelerate deals and increase revenue. Buyers and sellers now have the innovative tools to make connections that are more profitable than ever before.

• Volker Steinbiss, managing director of applications technology for AppTek, will talk about how collaborative industry initiatives can help find talent across multiple regions and countries and how the growing use of machine aided translation will impact the existing talent pool, in the presentation “Automatic Dubbing – The Next Frontier.”

• “The Talent Crunch – Does it Exist and can it be Addressed?” will see a discussion on how the localisation industry relies on a small pool of talent, with the best translators all used by a multitude of language service providers. Finding talent and understanding the capabilities of the people you choose to work on your titles is more important than ever as the amount of content requiring localising continues to grow exponentially. During this session we will talk about how collaborative industry initiatives can help find talent across multiple regions and countries and how the growing use of machine aided translation will impact the existing talent pool. Yota Georgakopoulou, director of Athena Consultancy will moderate a panel consisting of Mazin Al-Jumaili, VP of talent management and business development for ZOO Digital, Max Deryagin, academic liaison for AVTE, and Jorge Diaz-Cintas, professor of translation studies for University College London.

• The closing keynote of the Content Workflow Management Forum main programme — “Innovation in Dubbing Technology – Friend or Foe?” — will come from Francesca Panetta, curator of the Sheffield DocFest Alternate Realities Programme and Alex Serdiuk, chief executive officer, Respeecher.  With the continued growth in new content, we see greater innovation in technologies to make the localisation process faster, more streamlined and more cost efficient. Whilst many of these technologies are more orientated towards subtitling. there is huge innovation in the dubbing sector. Technologies more widely used in the gaming sector are being evaluated, such as synthetic voices. New lip sync technologies which synchronise the lips of an actor on the original video with their dubbed voice are now available. While deep fakes are becoming ever more realistic is it time to talk about the ethics around some of this innovation, in addition to reviewing the positive impact of many of these technologies?

Content Protection Summit Europe

• Following Content Protection Summit Europe welcome remarks from Convergent Risks CEO and president Chris Johnson​, the second-half programme kicks off with the panel “Innovating Localisation Workflows though SaaS,” moderated by Convergent Risks’ EVP Mathew Gilliat‑Smith. Recent technical advances, spurred on by the need for remote working, have spawned a new era of application technology that enables complex workflows to be simplified and automated. But the combination of new technology and sensitive pre-theatrical post-production is naturally under more scrutiny to ensure that content remains secure. This panel discusses the opportunities and challenges involved. Jacques Barreau, dean of dubbing and VP for Transperfect, Allan Dembry, CIO for Iyuno-SDI, and Rick Soto, VP of global IT and security for Pixelogic, will be on hand.

• “Using Zero Trust to Protect Intellectual Property in M&E” will feature Dave Matthews, technical solutions manager for archTIS. Intellectual property (IP) protection is vital to your bottom line. A leaked script, clip or game design can be disastrous to the success of any project. While today’s collaboration tools have made it easier than ever to exchange ideas and information—it’s also all too easy for deliberate and accidental data leakage to occur. Learn how applying a zero trust methodology to data access and sharing can help safeguard your most vital assets and ensure they don’t accidentally or deliberately walk out the door.

• Convergent Risks’ Johnson will lead the panel “Voice Casting Databases and the GDPR: a Ticking Time Bomb?” featuring Michel Golgevit, president of Keywords Studios in France, Stephanie Iyayi, SVP of legal affairs and data protection officer for Convergent Risks, and Nicole Quilfen, COO of Mediartis. As content localisation continues to skyrocket, dubbing and voiceover service providers are in higher demand than ever. As part of this process, voice-data is circulating globally, often non-secured and unmonitored, in different in-house departments. These databases are rarely cleaned and often contain thousands of voice recordings. The GDPR considers an individual’s voice to be personal data and companies must respect voice actor rights and process voice personal data in full compliance with its requirements – failure to do so can lead to penalties of up to 20M€ or 4 percent of the last fiscal year’s turnover, risk of litigation from a high profile individual or damage to a companies’ reputation should a breach arise. This session will dive deeper into key issues around compliance, co-responsibility, actor database management, security and client casting delivery on a global scale.

• “In-Conversation with CDSA’s European Based Security Executives” will see attendees hear from some of our European-based security executives who are taking an active role in CDSA’s working groups. Find out why they get involved, what the objectives are for these groups and the roadmap ahead. Listen to the challenges they are facing in their day-to-day roles, in light of how the M&E landscape is shifting. We will discuss how the explosion in streaming platforms and the multitude of ways that consumers can access content is impacting the evolution of security strategies and how the collaborative efforts of the volunteers involved with the CDSA are helping keep pace with the continued growth in security threats by sharing knowledge and intel and developing best practises for the benefit of the entire industry. Richard Atkinson, president of CDSA, will moderate a panel with Caroline Baines, senior director of client services for MESA, Mark Greatorex, confidentiality officer with LEGO Group, and Andy Lucas, SVP of global distribution technology for NBCUniversal.

• Gabe Elton, director of sales for BuyDRM, will lead the discussion “Is DRM Flawed? Closing the Gaps in Your Content Protection Strategies. While consumer DRM has been a mainstay in content protection since the early days of the streaming industry, preventing the piracy of premium studio content remains a challenge. One might think that as DRM technologies matured so would their capabilities. However, over the same time, the technological landscape has become even more fragmented. The lack of a centralised platform to “lock down” creates opportunity zones for pirates. We have all heard the mantra “every screen and every device” it’s a rallying cry for marketers in almost every segment of the video industry, but some of those screens and devices are much more secure than others. In this presentation we will explore some of the past flaws in DRM, how your current approach to DRM might be flawed, and how improvements in DRM technology combined with watermarking can help close the gaps in your content protection strategy.

• “The Harder the Battle the Sweeter the Victory – The Fight to Protect Sports Rights” has James Clark, GM of M&E for GeoComply, Lee Kent, content protection manager for beIN, and David Wurgler, senior director of business development and anti-piracy for NAGRA, talk about how the sports sector has been impacted over the last two years and what the threats are as we emerge from the pandemic. They’ll talk about some of the technology solutions and enforcement methods which are being deployed. While there isn’t a silver bullet there are certainly many defensive strategies which can be utilised.

• The final discussion of the day — “The Great Xcape!” features Xcapism Learning’s co-founder and CEO Meera Mehta and CTO Bob Bryden. People are crucial to any company’s security. Giving them the confidence to know what to do can only be achieved through compelling learning which will increase how much information they’ll retain. Through storytelling, interaction and discovery, Xcapism Learning will show you how!

The sixth annual Content Workflow Management Forum is produced by MESA in association with CDSA, the Hollywood IT Society (HITS), the Smart Content Council, the Content Localisation Council, and presented by Convergent Risks, with sponsorship by archTIS, NAGRA, Signiant, Whip Media, AppTek, BuyDRM, LinQ Media Group, OOONA, ZOO Digital, EIDR and Titles-On.

To register for the event, click here.

The eighth annual Content Protection Summit Europe event is produced by MESA in association with the Content Delivery & Security Association (CDSA), and presented by Convergent Risks, with sponsorship by archTIS, NAGRA, Signiant, and BuyDRM. To register for the event, click here.

To find out more about upcoming MESA events or to get involved as a sponsor please contact… Evie Silvers at [email protected], or Garrett Finley at [email protected].