With the world of broadcast entertainment rushing toward a file based workflow more and more the need to present a viable and understandable digital workflow is needed.

After all what is digital workflow really? Is it simply one step better then the age old sneaker net and does it bring a true value to the broadcast and entertainment space?

Joining me in discussing these and other issues will be:

Steve Canepa, IBM, Vice President, IBM Global Media & Entertainment Industry: As Vice President, Global Media and Entertainment Industry, Steve is responsible for IBM’s overall results in the Entertainment, Publishing, Broadcast, Cable, Satellite, Sports and Advertising customer segments worldwide. He is also the founder of and a key leader in IBM’s cross-industry Digital Media initiative. Steve has guided the marketplace strategy and solution offerings for IBM’s Global M&E Industry organization since 1995. He directs the worldwide sales of IBM’s broad portfolio of hardware, software and services and is responsible for IBM’s marketing activities, including all messaging and partnerships.

Tom A. Ohanian, Chief Strategy Officer, Signiant: Tom oversees the development, improvement and customer acceptance of all Signiant offerings with a special focus on exceptional customer experiences and continuous innovation. Ohanian is an accomplished strategist, designer, and inventor of digital media products and workflow solutions and was a founding member of Avid Technology. Drawing upon his 26 years in the media industries, his inventions and efforts in product creation and evangelization have led to the widespread adoption of digital nonlinear video, film editing systems and workflow strategies in addition to LAN and WAN digital media collaboration. He is an Academy Award and a two-time Emmy recipient.

Michelle Munson, President and co-founder of Aspera, Inc., is co-inventor and software architect Aspera’s core technology, Fasp and responsible for overseeing the company’s direction. Aspera specializes in creating innovative data transport technologies that solve the fundamental problems of network data delivery. Before founding Aspera in 2003, she began her career with IBM Research as a software engineer at the Almaden Lab in San Jose, CA. Michelle has B.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering and in Physics from Kansas State University and a post-graduate Diploma in Computer Science from Cambridge University where she was a Fulbright Scholar. She was the 2006 KSU College of Engineering Alumni Fellow (the youngest recipient ever) and serves on the College of Engineering Dean’s Advisory Council. She was a Goldwater Scholar, a national finalist for the Rhodes, and received national awards from USA Today and Glamour magazine.

Michael Pusateri is the Senior Vice President, Technology at the Disney ABC Television Group in Burbank, California. Responsible for Broadcast Engineering and Information Technology, Michael has been with Disney since 1995. Previous to that, he worked at Sony and National TeleConsultants designing television production facilities. In broadcasting, he has led the facility conversion from analog television to digital television and pioneered the use of video file servers as play to air devices on the flagship Disney Channel network. On the information technology front, he leads the use of weblog software, syndication aggregators, and wikis to rework internal business workflow systems.

Jake Winett, Global Industry Manage, Media & Entertainment, Communications Sector, Microsoft Corporation: As industry manager for the Media & Entertainment business in the Communications Sector at Microsoft, Jake Winett is responsible for driving strategy, messaging and business development of world-class software solutions for the film and television broadcast industries. Winett works with different business and product groups across Microsoft to combine technologies to help drive new and better ways for media & entertainment organizations to realize their potential in the new digital age. Prior to joining Microsoft, Winett spent six years as director of operations for Media.net Communications, Inc., a workflow technology company which delivers high-end real-time collaboration solutions to television and film production companies and studios around the world. Winett began his career in software development at ImMix (now part of Accom). He has also held software and product development positions at Autodesk and Adobe. Winett holds a bachelor’s degree from California State University Long Beach, where he graduated cum laude.