On the first day of the study tour, we set the scene for the rest of the week. Los Angeles is not the easiest to understand, so we'll kick off with how the ecosystem has developed over the last 10 years. We’ll look at how L.A. is more than Hollywood, becoming the global headquarters for music, gaming, and the creator economy, as well as how these intertwine to create world-class content products.
Viceroy Hotel, 1819 Ocean Avenue, Santa Monica
Collect your registration credentials and meet your tour mates over breakfast.
Viceroy Hotel, 1819 Ocean Avenue, Santa Monica
In the opening session, we will have a welcome address for the tour, icebreakers to get to know each other, and hear from Jodie Hopperton, lead of the tour and INMA’s Product and Tech initiative as well as author of Los Angeles Reinvented: why innovators are looking south of Silicon Valley to the booming home of Hollywood.
1660 Stewart Street, Santa Monica
Situated within Santa Monica College, KCRW punches above its weight connecting “the interesting to the interested, growing a hyper-engaged LA-based collective through one-of-a-kind experiences.” The station offers free programming and no paywalls. In this session, we meet with Chief Operating Officer Jill Smayo to tell us about how they have built up such a loyal following well beyond the borders of Los Angeles.
Superba 1900 S Lincoln Boulevard, Venice
Over lunch with Highly Flammable author Rachel Richardson, and dcdx founder Andrew Roth we will discuss all things Gen Z, Gen A and the creator economy. We’ll dig into the rise of the creator economy and what it takes to reach these elusive audiences.
3250 Ocean Park Boulevard, Santa Monica
How does the most prominent social media platform for 18+ year-olds think about AI? Why are they still buoyant on glasses? And how can news organisations thrive on the platform? These are some of the questions we will discuss with executives at their home in Santa Monica. The session will be highly interactive including trials of their hardware bet: Spectacles.
Fresh air break with a short walking tour from the Venice sign, to the iconic skate park and along the boardwalk to our sunset drinks location.
Fig Tree, 431 Ocean Front Walk, Venice
Unpack day one with Jodie Hopperton and your tour mates over a sunset drink.
Silicon Beach is the Westside region of the Los Angeles metropolitan area that is home to more than 500 technology companies, including startups. Today, we will go deeper into the culture of Silicon Beach: innovation, immersive media, video, and more.
Viceroy Hotel, 1819 Ocean Avenue, Santa Monica
Be ready for a 8:30 a.m. sharp departure.
13031 West Jefferson Blvd., Building 500, Los Angeles
This is a hands-on experience delving into the possibilities of the ultra-fast connections that 5G brings. This is an immersive lab with cutting-edge research infrastructure. Explore real-world experimentation in media, entertainment, and beyond.
Playa Vista, 5865, 15, 16 South Campus Center Drive, Building 14, Playa Vista
At the iconic Spruce Goose office of Google in Playa Vista, we will have a practical session on how news can be successful on YouTube and get an overview of Google's consumer AI tools and where consumers are moving to.
6701 Center Drive, Los Angeles
Nexstar owns, operates, programs, or provides services to 200 broadcast stations (including partner stations) reaching 116 markets or more than 68% of all U.S. television households. We’re meeting the digital technology and operations team which is responsible for overseeing Nexstar’s 140 local Web sites and 278 mobile apps offering hyper-local content and verticals. In this session we will learn how a large TV operation is approaching the new AI landscape.
6701 Center Drive, Los Angeles
Nota is a startup founded by two ex LA Times executives to solve one of the problems that is the essence of this study tour: how can you use AI to help produce multimodal content? Their product, which we will get a demo of, offers a suite of assistive AI tools that can reformat human-created content into multiple different text, audio and video formats. This will be hosted at Nexstar so we can hear first hand how a media company is actually using this, what works and what the limitations are.
Margot, 8820 Washington Blvd., Suite 301, Culver City
Having lived in Los Angeles for almost 10 years, the study tour host knows a few interesting people in media and technology and will gather them together for a relaxing dinner.
On the third day of the study tour, we dive into something that is on everyone's minds: AI. What’s in store for the future of media and entertainment? From LLMs to personalised news anchor avatars we’ll go deep into innovation on how this technology is changing the landscape as well as consumer habits.
Viceroy Hotel, 1819 Ocean Avenue, Santa Monica
Be ready for a 8:00 a.m. sharp departure. Grab and go breakfast will be available at the front desk
In this session we will take a deep dive into media attribution and a fair share of revenues for content creators through the lens of ProRata, Bill Gross’ new company set up to bring the solution around attribution, control and monetisation for content creators. Having just raised $25million we’ll talk about the business they are building to give fair compensation and credit in the world of AI.
A highly personalised news channel complete with a human-like AI anchor. Channel1 has made waves by creating one of the first AI news anchors which is virtually impossible to discern from a real human. In addition to learning about creating digital doubles and AI news anchors, we’ll delve into their B2B product suite that allows content creation in multiple formats with their ‘magic button’. We’ll evaluate time efficiencies from creating content in different formats, to reviewing and tweaking formats and content to meet specific needs.
Maciel’s 5933 York Boulevard, Los Angeles
Gunpowder & Sky documentary film studio President Floris Bauer joins us to talk about Hollywood, streaming and how AI is changing the industry.
13603 Marina Pointe Drive, Marina Del Ray
Reuters Digital news report showed us, very starkly, that consumers get their news more from celebrities and influencers than they do from traditional journalism. It’s vital we understand the creator economy, and how we may leverage it, or take lessons from it, to serve our consumers. In this session James Creech will help us understand how and why this group resonates so well, and how they monetise.
13603 Marina Pointe Drive, Marina Del Ray
Gen Z spend over 30% more time on Roblox than Tiktok. Minecraft and Twitch are also in the top 6 of time spent for this generation. And yet we do very little with gaming as a platform. In this session we meet with Head of Umi Games, a specialist working to connect brands within popular gaming platforms. We’ll hear examples of successful campaigns from legacy brands such as Ralph Lauren.
13603 Marina Pointe Drive, Marina Del Ray
In 2022 Uber put together a product equity team to ‘design and build products that prioritize communities that are often overlooked, ignored, and neglected.’ Earlier in the week, they are leading an event in Silicon Valley to bring together the major tech players to discuss how the entire industry can work to create products that reflect the world we live in. Oona King, Chief Diversity Officer will take us through what she learnt at this event and why this is so important for an equitable future.
From streaming to social media, professional to raw “influencer” video, we delve into different aspects of video creation and distribution. We’ll speak with individuals who are brands in their own right to draw best practices in video creation and monetisation, as well as companies that give a different take on wrapping commerce within existing products.
Viceroy Hotel, 1819 Ocean Avenue, Santa Monica
Be ready for a 8:30 a.m. sharp departure.
8559 Higuera Street, Culver City
The founder of Decoded will take us through some of their award-winning campaigns for companies such as Hulu, Disney, and Netflix to illustrate examples of how they use data to discover what resonates for different audiences. In this session, we’ll look at the infinite data feedback loops available to help media organisations understand how to frame content, what motivates people, and what content is most effective for which business goal. James Stephens, executive vice president of Media Monks and founder of Decoded, will speak.
8559 Higuera Street, Culver City
In this session we meet Runway AI, a company specialising in GenAI research and technologies. They are particularly focused on creating multimodal tools such as text to video, and generative video. Runway is probably the most advanced company working in this field with an aim of building 'the next era of art, entertainment and human creativity’. We’ll look at what is possible today, and what the company envisions for the future of media.
Abbot Kinney Boulevard, Los Angeles
Walk down Abbot Kinney in Venice stopping for demos of the RayBan Meta Wayfarer AI glasses and the iconic Erewhon (who did a collab with Balenciaga for $450 totes) before arriving at Rivian where we will discuss AI.
Rivian, 660 Venice Boulevard, Venice
Over a Goop lunch in the garden at Rivian we meet with OpenAI to discuss their approach to media partnerships and how they see this, and their products developing. This will be a casual AMA as we know there are many burning questions.
Rivian, 660 Venice Boulevard, Venice
Conversations with Ernest Kung, Rivian test drives and Waymo rides
Rivian, 660 Venice Boulevard, Venice
Jessica Chan joined Perplexity last month to head publisher partnerships. In this AMA session we will cover what Perplexity currently offers news organisations and what Jessica will be focusing on in her new role. This is an ideal time to help shape opinions of what a future framework could look like.
Rivian, 660 Venice Boulevard, Venice
Being multimodal means creating personalised video at scale. Meet an LA based start up, Aeon, founded by a former Conde Nast executive which is trying to solve this through brand-safe AI-generated video that is designed to act as a trailer.
Rivian, 660 Venice Boulevard, Venice
In media we often talk about engagement. In this session we look at a company focused on using AI to bring content to life through video and interaction, making it fun & rewarding for audiences while building retention & revenue. The CEO and CMO will take us through lessons to date from real case studies with partners such as The Walt Disney Co., Microsoft, USA Today and TMZ.
Hatchet Hall, 12517 W. Washington Boulevard, Los Angeles
In our final study tour dinner, join us at Hatchet Hall for a wrap-up of key learnings and make lasting connections.
Viceroy Hotel, 1819 Ocean Avenue, Santa Monica
Be ready for a 7:45 a.m. sharp departure.
Fox Studios 10201 W Pico Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90067
We will meet with several Fox executives to discuss how FOX is adopting AI across its creative production and consumer facing businesses. We’ll also dive into the growth story of what has become the most popular free CTV streaming service in the US…Tubi. This is an ad supported platform which has algorithmically driven personalisation.
In the final stop on this study tour, we’ll bring everything together by looking through the Fox studio lot.
10250 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles
Over a final lunch at Eataly we will discuss the learnings from the week and the practical offerings we will take back to our businesses.