DEG's Amy Jo Smith and Xperi's Bill Neighbors welcome guests at the fourth annual EnTech Awards, held Oct. 1 at the SoundStage in Los Angeles. (Media Play News staff photo)
DEG: The Digital Entertainment Group Honors Tech Innovators at EnTech Awards 2024
October 2, 2024
Trade association DEG: The Digital Entertainment Group Oct. 1 honored technology innovators at its fourth annual Entech Awards, held in Los Angeles at the Sound Space on Wilshire Boulevard’s famed “Miracle Mile.”
The 10 awards are for innovations in the digital entertainment supply chain.
Honorees “deserve huge credit for delivering premium content to consumers efficiently and with constant improvements in choice, convenience, engagement and experience,” said DEG president and CEO Amy Jo Smith.
The Technology Leadership Award, presented by Dolby, went to Richard W. Kroon, technical operations director at the Entertainment Identifier Registry, a nonprofit industry association that provides the entertainment supply chain with universal identifiers for a broad array of audio visual objects. The award honors an individual or team for demonstrating leadership in implementing something technically that had an impact on the business as a whole (extending to the industry beyond their specific company).
BROWSE OUR ENTECH AWARDS 2024 PHOTO GALLERY
The Emerging Technology Award went to the Kung Fu Panda Apple Vision Pro Project Teams, who developed a mixed reality app based around meditation and stress relief. This award honors a company that created a new, consumer-facing technology that will likely positively affect the future of digital entertainment.
The Localization Trailblazer Award was given to Andrea Riehle of NBCUniversal, who researched and compiled a non-binary pronoun and conjugation reference guide of over 40 languages to help further gender representation within localization. This award honors pioneering teams or individuals who have transformed the industry and introduced a game-changing innovation.
The Technology Efficiency Achievement Award went to Geoff Bloder of Premiere Digital for SmartBag, an archive file format, based on the Library of Congress’ BagIt Open Source, that is designed for efficient storage and transfer of complex media assets. The Technology Efficiency Achievement Award honors recipients who have demonstrated technical efficiency in the supply chain and significantly contributed to the realization of technological advancements in their organization.
The Technology Innovation in Accessibility Award was given to the Pixelogic 3D Subtitle Team. This award honors an individual or team that has created accessibility technology innovations within the media and entertainment supply chain that meet and exceed regulation requirements.
The Technology Innovation in Content Delivery (B to B) Award went to the Amazon Prime Video team for Prime Video Slate, a new platform that unifies delivery and account management features in a single user portal designed to streamline and optimize content publishing, reporting, and growth tooling. The award honors an individual or a team for identifying a problem within the media and entertainment supply chain and creating a novel solution, such as an engineering lab, infrastructure, or product.
Subscribe HERE to the FREE Media Play News Daily Newsletter!
The Technology Innovation in Content Distribution (B to C) Award went to Mark Sgriccia of Lionsgate, Tanya Razo of Premiere Digital and Patty Campagno of Amazon for Dynamic Artwork, unique, stylized artwork that is routed algorithmically to Amazon’s consumers to attract streaming audiences of all distribution types (TVOD, EST, SVOD, AVOD) on Amazon’s platform. The award honors an individual or a team for identifying a consumer-facing problem and creating a novel solution in content distribution.
The Rising Star Award went to Rising Star Award was given to Daniella Ruotolo of Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology. This award honors an individual with no more than seven years total of professional experience who demonstrates an attitude of excellence and performs well above their experience level. This individual is a team player and finds solutions to industry challenges and shows great promise to lead, innovate, and inspire the entertainment technology industry.
And Annie Chang, VP of creative technologies at Universal Pictures, was inducted into the Hall of Fame.
The People’s Choice Winner, voted on by attendees and announced near the end of the post-ceremony cocktail party, went to the Max Product Teams and Deluxe ASL Team for Barbie: ASL, an American Sign Language interpreter for the popular movie.
DEG also announced that Rick Hack, formerly of Intel Corp., has been appointed chair of EnTech, which in addition to the EnTech Awards consists of EnTech Fest in the winter and the EnTech Summer Symposium, the latter preceding the annual 40 Under 40 in Home Entertainment cocktail party, which DEG presents in partnership with Media Play News. Hack is charged with building the EnTech brand and making it more meaningful to the industry.