Following its successful debut last year, the IBC Talent Programme returns on Friday 12 September with a full day of sessions featuring speakers from across the industry.
Everything from mentoring and career pathways to practical skills and inclusion will be discussed, with those leading the change as well as those benefitting from industry initiatives and efforts taking to the Hackfest Stage in Hall 14.
Sessions begin with a scene-setting panel debate that will address the critical challenges of attracting, retaining and supporting talent, and ask what needs to be done to build stronger relationships between the industry, education and under-represented communities in order to build a diverse and sustainable talent pipeline for the future.
Amy Vacher, VP Commercial, Global, Christy Media; Carrie Wootten, CEO and Co-Founder, Global Media and Entertainment Talent Manifesto; Kim Rowell, Chair of the RTS Technology Centre, and Managing Editor of News Production, ITN; and Polly Hickling, Education Vice President, SMPTE, will be sharing their insights.
That relationship between media and education will then be explored further with industry leaders discussing the current uptake of media technology courses and the opportunities for further collaboration in creating industry pathways for emerging talent. Chaitanya Chinchlikar, VP & Business Head, CTO & Head of Emerging Media, Whistling Woods International; Daniella Smith, BA Hons Television Production Student, Southampton Solent University; Sally Griffith, Research & Development Producer, Media Cymru; and Wolfgang Ruppel, Professor, RheinMain University of Applied Sciences, will be taking part in the conversation.
A trio of sessions will then consider career development and talent pathways. First up, Samina Husain, President, Broadcast Technology Society, IEEE; Ian Nock, Managing Consultant, Vice Chair, IET Media Technical Network and Managing Consultant, Fairmile West; Maryam Tse, Vice President of R&D, Ross Video; and Stuart Ray, Head of Skills and Development, IABM, will share the latest association and vendor community initiatives. Hemini Mehta, Senior Sustainability Lead, European Broadcasting Union; Selin Güngör, Project Engineer, Trt; and Yannick Olivier, Tech Lead, 2110, France Televisions, will then discuss the talent pathways, apprenticeships, internships and talent programmes currently making a difference for professionals across the industry. The final part of this trilogy sees a panel of EBU members, including representatives from ORF, SWR/ARD and TG4, sharing their talent management strategies.
In the afternoon, the focus shifts to the importance of allyship, beginning with Rise, Women in Immersive Tech Europe, #GALSNGEAR, Women in Streaming Media and more providing insight into their programmes, the success stories to date, and how media companies can better support emerging talent by establishing diverse leadership pathways.
This is followed by 'Allyship in Action: A fireside chat on inclusive leadership in streaming media', where Adam Tilbury-Eld, Co-Founder & Chief Growth Officer, Ovyo; Deepali Narsiker, Head of Allyship, Women in Streaming Media; and Rowan de Pomerai, CEO, DPP, will explore the vital role of allyship in media and how actionable allyship in leadership drives meaningful change.
The final session of the day will ask where the industry should be looking to grow a sustainable pipeline of talent. Trying to answer this question will be Ian Nock, Managing Consultant - Vice Chair, IET Media Technical Network and Managing Consultant, Fairmile West; Jessica Dowdall, Co-Chair, BBC Women in STEM, and Head of Data Operations, BBC; Morag McIntosh, Solution Lead for Live Production Control, BBC; Sabina Bunger, Professional and Personal Coach, Coaching with Sabina; and Sam Fray, Founder & Director, Black People in Sports Broadcasting.
The day will end with informal networking at 17:00.
The Hackfest Stage will also be called into action on 13-14 September as it hosts the IBC x Google Cloud Hackfest. This high-energy event will bring together over 150 developers, creatives and media technologists to compete in a sprint to prototype new AI-powered broadcast solutions.
Lightning talks from Ateme, Bitmovin, Formula E, Monks, Norsk, Shure, TechX, Vizrt and Zixi among many others will also run throughout the weekend, along with mentoring from Google Cloud coaches.
The Hackfest speaker sessions range from practical tech deep-dives — such as AI curation for media from Vionlabs, and Google Ad Manager integration — to forward-looking development from industry experts working on IBC Accelerator Media Innovation Programme projects.
On the last day of Hackfest, Buzz Hayes, Global Market Lead Entertainment Industry at Google Cloud, along with Gunpowder Tech, will discuss a groundbreaking project to turn the Wizard of Oz into an immersive 4D experience with AI-enhanced visuals and physical effects.
The IBC Talent Programme and Hackfest are free-to-attend sessions. More details can be found at: https://show.ibc.org/talent-programme.
IBC2025: What to look out for on Day 1
On Friday 12 September, IBC2025 will open its doors to the international media and entertainment industry.
IBC Accelerators – ECOFLOW II: Driving Sustainable Streaming
Building on last year’s ECOFLOW accelerator project, phase II works to better understand the environmental impact of digital content distribution.
Fight Nation Championship: “Without this setup, it would be impossible to deliver a serious event”
Martin Čehulić, CTO and Head of Production at FNC, reveals how the company designed and deployed its first OB van using the latest production systems from Blackmagic Design.
Esports World Cup: “Everybody born on this planet is going to be a gamer”
The Esports World Cup demonstrated a future in which competitive video gaming blends with traditional sport and entertainment on a global scale. Adrian Pennington reports.
IBC Accelerators: Multi-Vendor Software Live Media Exchange
The broad and ultimate goal of the Multi-Vendor Software Live Media Exchange project is to shift from current dedicated media exchange technologies to a software-based, native live media exchange. This will be able to harness HPC interconnect and compute resources asynchronously, a move that not only adds immense scalability, but also flexibility, cost savings and future-proofing into the bargain.
