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.
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.
3340 Ocean Park Blvd, Santa Monica
How does the most prominent social media platform for 18+ years 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.
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, 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 9:00 a.m. sharp departure.
13031 West Jefferson Blvd., Building 500, Los Angeles
Verizon LA Innovation Lab 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. Join General Manager Luke Wang, Senior Technical Program Manager Steve Garrido, and Andrew Zarick, head of Lab strategy and partnerships.
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.
12760 Millennium 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.
12760 Millennium 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.
Connect with media and technology executives over 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 7:30 a.m. sharp departure.
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 the first AI news anchor, 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 and FT’s LA correspondent Chris Grimes join us to talk about Hollywood, streaming and how AI is changing the industry.
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.
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.
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 9:00 a.m. sharp departure.
8559 Higuera Sreet, 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.
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 Ballenciage for $450 totes) before arriving at Rivian where we will discuss media and electric cars.
The Associated Press has embraced AI as a core principle. In this casual session over lunch in Rivian’s garden we will hear about the overall strategy and some specific AI projects that the AP is excited about.
Rivian, 660 Venice Boulevard, Venice
Conversations with Ernest Kung, Rivian test drives and Waymo rides
Rivian, 660 Venice Boulevard, Venice
Social commerce has arrived in the United States in a big way. Millennials and Gen Z want a different way to shop. One that involves their friends, while still being digital. Flip commerce’s goal is to bring community back to shopping. Making shopping fun, and with your friends, they redefine what it means to being a creator focusing on buying from people they trust. This also creates a whole new way to advertise using brand advocated. Learn about social commerce and discuss how to leverage it as a revenue stream or as an acquisition tool in this highly interactive session. Learn from Brian Reinken, brand success and founder community with Flip.
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.
On the final day of the study tour we’ll focus on video. This has become table stakes for the media industry, yet there is still a lot to learn to create content that people want to watch and engage with, and how to monetise. In the final sessions, we’ll draw out best practices in video creation and monetisation.
Viceroy Hotel, 1819 Ocean Avenue, Santa Monica
Be ready for a 8:00 a.m. sharp departure.
10201 W Pico Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90067
Following a tour of Fox studios, a working production lot, we will meet with several Fox executives to talk about how Fox is thinking about changes to content production and AI in the creative process as well as two exciting brands: Tubi, which has become one of the most popular streaming services in the US with their ad supported algorithmically driven personalization, and soon to be launched joint venture with Disney and Warner Bros, sports streaming service Venu.
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.