SIGGRAPH 2013 Releases Snapshot of Business Symposium Sessions

SIGGRAPH 2013, 21-25 July at the Anaheim Convention Center in California, released its initial list of sessions for the 2013 Business Symposium. The SIGGRAPH Business Symposium offers attendees an intense, productive day with this year’s focus on disruption and innovation in the content creation industries. Unlike any other conference, SIGGRAPH provides a unique forum where leaders from film, games, and broadcast cross paths and share ideas with NASA scientists and world-class researchers.

Evan Hirsch

“In both of the Symposiums to date, we had incredibly honest, unfiltered, and foretelling conversations with some of our speakers,” says Evan Hirsch, SIGGRAPH 2013 Business Symposium Chair and Executive Creative Director, Engine, Co. 4. “We have worked diligently to create an environment where our attendees and speakers can talk off-the-record, with no-holds barred to make incredibly rewarding connections and build a community of leadership within the industry.”

The Business Symposium is a day of dialogues, inspiration and networking for approximately 250 studio leaders and executives in the production and creative communities, investment bankers, lawyers, and various government representatives who want to move beyond the constant disruption happening all around us.

SIGGRAPH 2013 Business Symposium Sessions Include:

Keynote: Disruption in the Battlefield
Over the last 15 years, it is the rare SIGGRAPH attendee who has not been involved in creating content with military themes. Throughout production, the terminology of war and combat is used constantly, and as leaders we constantly talk about aligning objectives, situational awareness, dealing with ambiguity, and adapting to unpredictable conditions. In reality, when things go wrong, as significant as our losses may be, they are limited to shots, sales, and money.

Captain Thomas Chaby, an active-duty US Navy SEAL officer, talks about the reality of developing and training the very best of our military’s special operators to be successful in situations where the environments are all but guaranteed to be dynamic and disrupted, and the deadly serious implications of failure. While failures in our production environments may not result in the consequences faced by our military special operators, we can draw on lessons from them on how to lead successfully in fast-moving, hyper-dynamic conditions with limited predictability.

Speaker: Captain Thomas Chaby, Executive Officer, Naval Special Warfare Center

Panel: Innovating Business Models
Despite the major contractions in our traditional markets, competition from foreign markets, and the effects of tax credits that rarely directly benefit content creators, entertainment still lives by the mantra "Content is King". The studios may be releasing fewer tent poles and AAA games but there have never been more platforms, venues, and formats hungry for high-quality, compelling content. These panelists offer their insights on how they will connect with audiences that are enthusiastic yet diverse in how they consume content, how they will monetize it, and where opportunities lie for linear and interactive content creators.

Moderator: Don McGowan, General Counsel, The Pokémon Company International
Panelists: Meredith Amdur, VP Digital Strategy, DirecTV; Phil Ashcroft, Independent Producer;
Matthew Cohen, Director of Business Development, Machinima

Panel: Creative Deal Structures for Growth and Survival
In an environment where creative work is more and more often produced outside the US and acquired for global distribution, business executives need to know the cultural expectations that IP creators bring to the table. How much can business realities enter into creative decision-making, what expectations will creators have for how they will be treated by foreign businesses, and other issues have usually been considered from the perspective of US content going overseas. This session provides valuable insight into the realities that US-based companies face in acquiring content and working with developers, and informs those creative developers by providing some perspectives that their US-based partners will likely hold.

Moderator: Don McGowan, General Counsel, The Pokémon Company International
Panelists: Steve Goldstein, Partner, Stubbs Alderton & Markiles, LLP; Joleen Winther Hughes, Principal, Hughes Media Law Group; Justine Kasznica, Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis LLP

Panel: The Role of R&D In Production (and Profit)Complex CG behaviors and effects such as crowds, water, fire, and cloth have found their way into most software packages, leading companies of all sizes to the belief that CG research is the domain of universities. This panel explores the notion that if you outsource innovation and rely on the same software as your competition, you are guaranteeing that you will compete on little more than price and date. These panelists discuss how companies large and very small use research and innovation as a key part of their strategy for success and, ultimately, longevity.

Moderator: Carl Rosendahl, Carnegie Mellon University
Panelists: Lincoln Wallen, CTO, DreamWorks Animation SKG; Scott Cronce, VP Technology, Electronic Arts; Joe Alter, Principal, Joe Alter Inc.; Farchad Bidgolirad, Head of Film R&D, Ubisoft Entertainment

Talk: Pre-Visualizing a Road for Financing and Expansion
For most leaders in our community, offshore competition and tax credits have already affected their traditional business models. Meanwhile, for those who want to pivot or grow their businesses, the scarcity of financing has presented an additional set of ever-growing challenges. The Third Floor’s Chris Edwards describes his decision to expand the pre-viz company into the Chinese market along with his expectations for that venture and the lessons learned so far. He also explains how his team has turned rapid prototyping into a tool for his clients to raise capital and pre-sell films (and other entertainment projects).

Speaker: Chris Edwards, CEO & Creative Director, The Third Floor, Inc.

To view biographies on any of the participants, please click here.

Q&A with Evan Hirsch, SIGGRAPH 2013 Business Symposium Chair

Following is a brief interview with Evan Hirsch, SIGGRAPH 2013 Business Symposium Chair from Engine Co. 4.  Evan has served in various volunteer SIGGRAPH roles over the years and this year marks his 22nd consecutive SIGGRAPH.  He has worked with industry leaders throughout the US, Europe, and Asia for 25 years. 

In 2011, he founded Engine Co. 4 to provide strategic consulting services on immersive multi-platform user experiences,creative development, and tactical firefighting advice for large computer graphics projects. Recent clients of Engine Co. 4 include PopCap Games, DeNA, The USC Institute for Creative Technology, and Uncharted Territory.

Previously, he served as vice president of creative development at THQ, where he was responsible for raising production values and creative processes at nine game studios. Before joining THQ, as creative director at Microsoft’s Live Labs and Surface teams, he played a lead role in defining the user experience for Surface, the first widely manufactured and distributed multi-touch computer.

This is the 3rd year for the Symposium, what is going to different (or the same) from previous years?
We know that the market for our work has seen many explosions in the last year and more. Sadly those explosions I'm referring to are not CG effects on screen, but real events that happened in studios, boardrooms, balance sheets, and ultimately, careers.

In thinking about building on the incredible work Jill (Smolin) did to establish the Symposium, I wanted to turn the idea of disruption on its head, into ideas around innovation that would be useful to our attendees, and hopefully serve to inspire them as they go forward in their businesses.  Every session this year is focused on disruption and/or innovation in business.  Equally I wanted to ensure that we heard many different voices from the diverse parts of our businesses to cross-fertilize thinking.

Finally, we heard from many of our attendees last year that it’s very difficult for them to build and grow their own careers.  We heard it can be lonely at the top and once you stop pushing pixels it becomes more difficult to navigate your career.  So this year we're going to have an optional session on mentoring for those attendees who want to mentor and/or be mentored. This topic may not look that sexy on the surface, but as someone who benefited so much from some incredibly generous and kind mentors via SIGGRAPH throughout my career, this is an area I am most excited about.

Who is your target market?
The people who will get the most out of the Symposium are the studio executives and their counterparts. For example, the CEO’s, GM’s, CFO’s, CTO’s, CCO’s, VP’s, heads of production and executive producers for VFX facilities, Commercial and Animation houses, Game studios, new media boutiques as well as the senior production people like VFX supervisors, VFX producers, senior development directors, and any other production people who manage managers and supervisors.

If you want to change or grow your level of impact in the business of content creation, the Symposium is where you want to learn, share, and network.  

 
What are some of the hotter topics that will be addressed?
The explosion of platforms is one topic. Rich Hilleman, (Chief Creative Officer of EA) recently told me that a few years back he had maybe five to seven platforms that he had to pay attention to and that maybe there would be a new platform to evaluate each year.  Now he has to keep his eyes on almost 100 platforms and that a new one is announced almost every month. If you focused on film, you may think this is not applicable, but with the explosion in platforms for high-definition linear content with everybody from Amazon, Netflix, and some very unconventional players getting into the space, this global tidal wave has the potential to benefit a lot our attendees. Yes, the market is tougher for traditional VFX and game production, but it’s equally filled with opportunities for innovation and growth.

Another topic I am personally interested in is how facilities and studios can use innovation to create or clarify markets. The conventional wisdom was that “true R&D” was limited to large FX facilities or universities, but our panel of CTO’s from companies large and small will address how true R&D can be done in facilities of any size to carve out strategic advantages of their own. 

And we are still planning to have some quick, five and 10 minute crash courses on specific topics that we will be revealing very soon.

What are the most compelling reasons why people should attend?
In both of the Symposiums to date, we had incredibly honest, unfiltered, and foretelling conversations with some of our speakers.  We have worked very diligently to create an environment where our attendees and speakers can talk off-the-record, with no-holds barred. What other conference lets you hear those conversations, cross paths and share ideas with business and creative leaders that range from film, games and broadcast to NASA scientists, world-class researchers and car designers?

What motivated you to become involved?
Selfishness. All joking aside, as my career moved from being on the box with Houdini, Maya, and game engines, to being “creative” with PowerPoint and Excel, I quickly realized that my options for learning, growing, and staying abreast of the changes in the business were becoming more and more limited.  When I heard that Jill was putting the Symposium together, I immediately volunteered to help out.

What do you identify as the biggest 3 threats to content creators?
Tunnel vision, complacency, and hubris.

A large segment of my business is working with clients to help them with project and studio-level turn-arounds. I get to see firsthand how teams find themselves in tough corners.  With many CG clients, I often find that they developed a method, process, and/or business practice that was quite good and effective (or sometime less so), but they’d hold on to that methodology with a very, very firm grip. When times were good, they were too busy to look up and around to see how things were changing around them and get in front of those challenges. Then when things slowed down, the fear of what might not happen would keep them holding on longer and tighter.

I have also been advising some financial clients on possible investments in our space as a result of working with them, and looking inside their companies that are widely perceived as successful, leading companies.

Granted, in doing this work I have the advantage of 20-20 hindsight, but I have been utterly amazed at some of the decisions that were made.  In each case, it wasn’t the decision by an exec team to make one big bet or take one big risk, but the decision to take two or three risks at one time.  It’s the hubris behind the belief that “we are so good, so smart, so brilliant that nobody else can do X.”  Then one thing goes wrong, something else unexpected pops up and there was no real mitigation strategy -already in place- in case any of these things went sideways. 

Which in some ways bring me back to your question, “Why did I get involved with the Symposium?”  Since I can’t talk publicly about my work, I want to create a community where we can learn from each other and help each other grow.

After 25 years in this industry, how do you stay motivated?
The constant evolution of technology and creativity in this business guarantees that I will never ever be bored, and that certainly keeps me on my toes. It’s also why I have not missed a single SIGGRAPH since 1991.  Seeing the work that is presented and shared, the endless creativity of how people in this community come to define and solve problems is deeply inspiring to me. Every year, the bar is raised which only stokes my hunger to keep learning and growing. 

Some years it’s small, other years it a “big thing” but I have yet to attend a conference where sometime later in that year, I couldn’t apply some knowledge gained at the conference and use it to innovate a project I was working on.   

If your children were considering a career choice in game development or the movie industry, what direction would you give them?
Pick a craft you are deeply passionate about and do the work. The real hard work.  There are no shortcuts and if a school tells you that anything other than hard work and putting in the time will get you there, then run, don’t walk away from that school.

The people I know in the business who succeed through thick and thin have a craft they love, and love working hard at it.  Make sure that whatever program it is, it teaches problem solving for all four years.  I am not a fan of the generic game design or generic “Digital” programs that confuse learning software with learning a craft. Whether that craft is physics (the best TD’s I have worked with are often physics grads), math, or in the arts, photography, industrial design (my background), something in theater, sculpture, true character animation (acting), I have always found that people who can do something in the physical, real world and then translate that thought process and craft to the digital world never cease to amaze me. 

The SIGGRAPH 2013 Business Symposium is open to the public, but a separate registration is required and attendance is extremely limited.  The event takes place 21 July 2013 at SIGGRAPH.

SIGGRAPH Business Symposium Presents Leaders and Visionaries to Address Industry Direction

Featured Speaker Carl Rosendahl

In its second year, the SIGGRAPH Business Symposium provides an intimate, interactive forum for open, frank conversations among leaders and executives in the visual effects, gaming, and media arena as they explore the present and future of the industry. SIGGRAPH 2012 welcomes visionary leaders and experts from a broad spectrum of the computer graphics industry, including animation, education, motion pictures, gaming, and visual effects, to this year’s Business Symposium in Los Angeles, 5 August 2012.

This full-day event is an exclusive opportunity for attendees to gain high-level, experiential vantage point insight from the producers and executives who have all forged unique paths to their current roles and now design the industry’s direction. The day begins with breakfast and roundtable discussions of the day's agenda. Possible topics include visual-effects production, marketing, international law, education, business development, and other areas related to the industry's current issues. The morning session provides a foundation for the day – an opportunity to hear from leaders on the global stage what they experience from their particular perspective, followed by featured speakers Carl Rosendahl and John Textor, both visionary leaders who influence the direction of our industry in vastly different manners.

Featured Speaker John Textor

Throughout the day attendees will join in-depth discussion and have ample time to interact with their peers before the afternoon session closes. The Symposium provides a look into newer business models from some of the people and companies defining the future.

Registration for the SIGGRAPH Business Symposium is now available. Attendance for this event is intended to accommodate approximately 200 people interested in, and committed to, defining the industry.

The SIGGRAPH Business Symposium sold out in its inaugural year in 2011. For more details, visit the SIGGRAPH 2012 web site.

Planned participants include:

Featured Speakers

• Carl Rosendahl, Founder Pacific Data Images, Venture Capitalist, Co-Director, Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center-Silicon Valley

• John Textor, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Digital Domain Media Group

Morning Session: The Business of the Business: The State of the Union in 2011-2012

• Will Cohen, Managing Director/Executive Producer for Mill Film and Mill TV

• Patrick Davenport, Vice President Creative Operations, Method Studios
• Mark Driscoll, President, Executive Producer and Co-Founder, Look Effects Inc.
• Hael Kobayashi, Executive Director, Creative Innovation, University of Technology Sydney
• Lee Berger, President, Rhythm & Hues' Film Division and CEO, East Grand Films
• Habib Zargarpour, Creative Director, Microsoft Studios

Afternoon Session: Show Me the Money!

• Jonathan Garson, Vice President, Worldwide Marketing & Franchise, Pixar Animation Studios
• Shannon Blake Gans, Co-Founder and CEO, New Deal Studios
• Ondraus Jenkins, Head of Strategy and Corporate Development, Bungie, Inc.
• Sara Cardone, Vice President, Global Strategy and Business Development, SDI Media
• Sanford Rosenberg, Managing Director, Discus Ventures
• Gregg Lukomski, CEO and Founder, Slide Rule, Inc.

Round-table Discussions

• Don McGowan, General Counsel, The Pokémon Company International
• Gregg Lukomski, CEO and Founder, SlideRule, Inc
• Shannon Blake Gans, Co-founder and CEO, New Deal Studios
• Hael Kobayashi, Executive Director, Creative Innovation, University of Technology Sydney
• Jonathan Garson, Vice President, Worldwide Marketing & Franchise, Pixar Animation Studios
• Patrick Davenport, Vice President Creative Operations, Method Studios

Moderator for the Day

• Don McGowan, General Counsel, The Pokémon Company International

SIGGRAPH Launches Business Symposium to Address Industry Needs and Direction

For nearly 40 years, SIGGRAPH has inspired, educated, and influenced the direction of research, production, and artistic communities. At SIGGRAPH 2011 in Vancouver, 7-11 August 2011, the conference is introducing the SIGGRAPH Symposium: The Business Think Tank. This one-day event brings together leaders to address the past, present, and future of the global computer graphics industry.

The Business Think Tank introduces an opportunity for industry leaders and visionaries to discuss issues related to finance, strategy, culture, and creativity in a conversational environment. This full-day event on 7 August 2011 features discussion groups and two enlightening featured speakers intended to spark frank and honest interaction about the industry in the 21st century.

"The intimate, interactive nature of this inaugural Business Think Tank is the ideal forum in which to inspire idea-sharing and problem-solving among some of the visionaries within the global computer graphics community," says Jill Smolin, SIGGRAPH 2011 Director from 3ality Digital. "This highly interactive day will feature conversations and presentations of industry-specific issues and challenges within our local and global community."

Planned participants include:

Featured Speakers:

• Gail Currey, Head of Studio, PDI/DreamWorks

• Andy Hendrickson, Chief Technology Officer, Walt Disney Animation Studios

Business Session:

• Victoria Alonso: EVP,VFX and Post Production, Marvel Entertainment, LLC

• Rory Armes: CEO, Gener8 Digital Media Corp.

• Dan Glass: EVP, Senior VFX Supervisor, Method Studios

• Namit Malhotra: CEO, Prime Focus

• Don McGowan: General Counsel, The Pokémon Company International

• Marc Weigert: Executive Producer, VFX Supervisor, CEO, Uncharted Territory, LLC

Culture Session:

• Steve Bocska: CEO, Pug Pharm Productions Inc.

• Kim Davidson: Co-Founder, CEO, President, Side Effects Software Inc.

• Warren Franklin: CEO, Rainmaker Entertainment Inc.

• Jenny Fulle: Founder, Visual Effects Producer, The Creative Cartel

• Shannon Gans: CEO, Co-Founder, New Deal Studios, Inc.

This Symposium is a new initiative for SIGGRAPH, and is intended to accommodate approximately 200 people who are on the business side of the industry. They might be artists who are now company leaders or leaders who work with artists. They are the people who look to each other and other leaders to define and run the industry.

Registration for the SIGGRAPH Symposium: The Business Think Tank is now available. Attendance for this event is very limited.