Entertainment Forum

Uncertainty challenges leadership teams to adapt, and to navigate their organizations through a journey of surviving (stabilizing the business with a growth mindset) to resetting (updating the existing direction and plans) in order to thrive or dramatically grow and prosper. Dr. Homkes will kick off our discussions by discussing the Survive Reset Thrive journey and how to lead the transition from reset to thrive. She will share stories of successful companies that are building robust organizations for growth and provide insights of how you can do the same! Then she will introduce her B.L.A.S.T framework that describes successful high-growth companies and their teams prepare for a successful growth path. She will challenge us as CIOs to embrace the challenge and build organizations ready to blast off and grow!

The pandemic has revealed a whole new way to galvanize, energize and engage audiences; opened a whole new vista of opportunity for monetization of access to media personalities, and new ways of creating compelling participatory content. Hear about how virtual events will likely change your media and entertainment offerings in the years to come.

The pandemic has completely disrupted how we live, work and play. Join an expert from CBRE discuss their thoughts on The Way Forward for the economy and commercial real estate, especially as conditions evolve due to a new U.S. administration and the vaccine.

The media & entertainment industry is in the midst of a transformational shift, as direct-to-consumer disrupts the journey of media content, from creator to consumer. As audience choices for content and platforms multiply, they’ve come to expect 1:1 personalized interactions from acquisition to experience --across every subsegment of the media industry.

In this session, we’ll explore how media firms can adapt by reimagining their relationships with audiences, and prepare for what’s next by building an agile, flexible, data-driven organization of the future.

Globally and across a range of industries, 2020 took existing patterns of activity for CIOs and sped them up radically and unexpectedly. Some organizations were more prepared than others. However, a select few overachieving teams solved these challenges in remarkably creative ways. In this session, we will dig deeper on strategies that allow for companies to not only survive, but thrive. In addition, we will explore companies who ‘broke the mold’ in 2020 and the strategies they plan to adopt as they take on 2021.

In a year filled with so much unrest and cloudiness, it’s a bit of a paradox that some things have become clearer than ever. This is the case with the mission of the Giants Community Fund. With society’s challenges of a pandemic and the continued battle for racial justice, the fund looked to its mission to find strength and clarity. In this short session, you’ll hear from Giants Community Fund Executive Director, Sue Petersen on their programs and how they are propelling youth in underserved regions to be positive forces in their communities.

COVID has changed the way studios are producing games -- and who is playing them. As game play surged and strengthened in-game social communities, it’s attracted a wider, more diversified audience of new gamers. In this session, explore COVID’s lasting impact and the opportunities created for gaming companies to better understand their new audiences, and foster more robust cross-platform ecosystems to serve these new gamers, wherever they are.

We will pull together key insights and end with a call to action including recapping shared guidance on how CIOs can lead their organizations, accelerate learning and thrive through 2021 and beyond.