Fireside Chat Sessions
Douglas Thron
Drone videos can be utilitarian, fun, boring, or provide a visual impression that can last a lifetime. In that latter category, a drone video has recently touched the hearts of millions of TV and YouTube viewers across the globe, documenting a lone postal worker still delivering mail in a destroyed and desolate Santa Rosa neighborhood.
Hear aerial cinematographer Douglas Thron talk about how and why he shot this video hours after the fire, and what the response so far has been.
Itai Tsiddon, co-founder of Lightricks
Itai’s company, Israel- and New York-based Lightricks, is behind the bestselling Facetune and Enlight apps – apps that are consistently among the top 5-ranking paid iOS photo apps in the US and have each reached #1 position in the Overall Paid iOS Apps rankings in over 120 countries.
In this session we will hear Itai’s perspective about Lightricks’ innovative move towards a subscription-based model with Facetune 2, its next-generation facial image enhancement app, and Enlight Photofox, its recently released image editing app.
Plus we’ll get a glimpse of whatever else Lightricks might have in store for us!
Anna Dickson, Photo Lead, Content and Community, Google
We all know Google helps us to store, edit and keep track of our photos. But the company is also a massive consumer of photos in its own apps and sites – think of Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Trips, Google Flights, Zagat, Google Local Guides, and Google My Business.
Anna is responsible for procuring the right photo content, whether user-generated or professional, and optimizing how Google’s photo-enabled apps and sites leverage that content. She will share how Google uses cutting-edge photo organizing and enhancement tools in the aggregation and selection of visual content, and to turn critically important Google legacy properties into modern visual-first destinations.
Anna was previously deputy director of photography at The Wall Street Journal, photography director at HuffPost (formerly The Huffington Post) and, earlier, photo editor at iHeart Media (formerly Clear Channel).
Jim Mohan, Senior Director of Marketing, Creative Cloud, Adobe
Being the leader in desktop imaging software is one thing; successfully transitioning to the new cloud/mobile ecosystem is quite another. It requires becoming an agile innovator through mobile- and cloud-based applications.
Jim Mohan, Adobe’s Senior Director of Marketing for Creative Cloud will discuss the Adobe vision for seamlessly connected photography apps and how Adobe will drive innovation in desktop, mobile and cloud-centric imaging.
Alexis Gerard, advisor and co-host Mobile Photo Connect
From teaching Photoshop 1.0 to Adobe’s celebrity early adopters to bringing together thought leaders from the nascent digital and mobile photo industries through his think-tank Future Image, his Mobile Imaging Executive Summit and 6Sight-Future of Imaging conferences, to co-authoring the seminal Going Visual book published in 2005, Alexis Gerard has been involved with the leading edge of the digital imaging revolution for over 25 years.
History won’t repeat itself, but his experience with what worked (or didn’t) in similar paradigm-shifting times informs his thoughts on what might happen next.
Keynote
Hans Hartman, President Suite 48 Analytics and
co-host Mobile Photo Connect
As we celebrate the 5th year of Mobile Photo Connect, it’s time to look forward as well as back. What are the consumer imaging trends that matter? And how can we foster an ecosystem that nourishes partnerships between industry giants as well as innovative startups, produces true innovation and consumer satisfaction, while enabling profitable businesses for the participants? And what do these industry trends and ecosystem opportunities all mean for a conference like Mobile Photo Connect, as we’re looking toward the future?
Hans Hartman, Founder and co-host of Mobile Photo Connect, and a market analyst who’s been focusing on Mobile Imaging since its inception, will share his insights on these issues.
Panel Discussions
New ecosystem opportunities:
leveraging visual-first communication for brand engagement
Brand owners are seeing a cornucopia of new opportunities to enhance their strategies through new categories of visuals, ranging from AR-enhanced user-generated snapshots to highly engaging 360 videos and depth images.
In this session, you’ll hear directly from high-profile brand owners who are developing innovative approaches for tying their brands to the way their target customers visually express themselves and absorb content. How do they seek out the best visual communication channels? What are the do’s and don’ts for engaging influencers to expose brands on visual platforms like Instagram and Snapchat? How do marketers implement the latest AR technologies to embed their brands inside the visuals that truly matter? What are the opportunities for visual content platforms, creators and aggregators to partner with these visual-focused brands?
Speakers:
- Elodie Mailliet Storm, Sr. Dir. of Business Development and Content Strategy, Getty Images (moderator)
- Ashley Thomas, Marketing Manager, National Geographic Creative, National Geographic
- Ben Plomion, Chief Magic Officer, GumGum
- Pei Ketron, Photographer, Educator, Influencer
- Faryar Ghazanfari, Co-Founder, Polygram
AI is ready for primetime:
How to use AI in the next-generation photo apps and services
As consumers engage with their photos in greater numbers, more and more opportunities arise to build training sets for the development of algorithms that do anything from automatically controlling the optimal camera settings, to editing photos, to making photos easily discoverable through image recognition, esthetic ranking, or face recognition. But what if you don’t have access to large training sets or the resources to hire a team of PhDs? How much is available as open source; how much can you license from partners in the ecosystem? And finally – the bottom line – how best to monetize the next generation of AI-based photo apps and services?
Speakers:
- Ramzi Rizk, Co-Founder & CTO, EyeEm
- Josh Weisberg, Principal PM, Computational Photography, Microsoft
- Borui Wang, Founder & CEO, Polarr
- Argam DerHartunian, VP Product, PicsArt
What’s next for photo print services:
Monetizing photo engagement
When consumers engage with their photos on their smartphone or tablet, well-designed print apps are only a button away from monetizing this engagement. However, with “good design” the devil is in the details. How broad a range of photo print products should you offer? And is a digital catalog really the best way to introduce photo print products to a generation of photographers who haven’t grown up when printing photos was the norm? Does today’s photo print buyer want ship-to-home, print-at-store, ship-to-store? Or does immediacy trump quality and do they prefer printing in the moment through portable instant printers or print-enabled instant cameras?
Speakers:
- Chaim Pikarski, CEO, Zink
- Jim Dolce, VP Technology and Strategic Business Development, Fujifilm
- Fionn Concannon, Co-Founder & Managing Director, Kite
- Phillipp Muehlbauer, Co-Founder & Managing Director, Picanova
Photo and video storage solutions:
Where’s the money, and how to pry it loose
It’s inevitable: At some point, people are going to run out of storage space on the device – usually their smartphone – on which they’ve been stashing an ever-growing hoard of photos and videos. So, where else to keep them? Is archiving photos in the cloud the best solution? How about PCs? Or a new breed of storage devices for use both at home or on the road? Is it even better to avoid the archiving conundrum by using innovative software solutions to weed out duplicates or compress visuals on the fly?
Beyond archiving, can storage solutions without value-adding features be profitable in this competitive field? Or do the next generation of visual media storage solutions need to provide more, e.g. easy access and enticing photo/video features, to enable consumers to engage with their visuals anytime, anywhere, from any device?
Speakers:
- Eli Lubitch, President, Beamr
- Chris Bourdon,CEO, Upthere
- Marc-Antoine Benglia, CEO, Kwilt
Show-and-Tell Sessions
In three fast-paced sessions spread throughout the day, leading and emerging photo/imaging app developers will show their latest creations in 4-minute presentations.
presenters
- Adobe, Michelle Wei
- American Direct Sales, Tim O'Neil
- Beamr, Will Cole
- CaptureLife, Scott DeFusco
- chatbooks, Vanessa Quigley
- DabKick, Balaji Krishnan
- Diagramics, Alexander Abalakov
- Fujifilm, Nathan Curry
- HP, Philippe Lesage
- Kite, Charlie Carpenter
- Kwilt, Sylvain Lambert
- Live Portrait, Peter Lars
- Loop, Brian Gannon
- PastBook, Stefano Cutello
- PhotoGurus, Laurent Martin
- Photomyne, Yair Segalovitz
- Pic Collage, Joanne Chang
- Picanova, Alexander Lörcks
- Rainhut, Rob Adamson
- SanDisk, Aran Ziv
- Storyo, Filipe Vasconcellos
- Streetography, Mike Lanza
- Taopix, James Gray
- TeamFotog, Rodney van Johnson
- Timebox, Len Kawell
- V360, Etienne Leroy
- VicMan, Sergey Petrusev
- Whorl, Remon Tijssen
- Winning Fotos, Jenni Flinders
- Zebra Instant, Anton Pereiaslavtsev
Show & Tell judges
- Geraldine Le Meur, Co-Founder & General Partner, The Refiners
- Haje Jan Kamps, Writer, TechCrunch
- Jackie Dove, Writer and Editor, Tech blogs
- Andy Kelm, Managing Director, Palmarés Advisors
