Aspirations vs. the reality of diversity progression in media production proved to be an indispensable conversation at Soho Media Club and Outernet London’s collaborative event, BE YOU Festival which took place in London this month, reports Sheryl Hickey.
The BE YOU Festival covered challenges and successes in D&I across the industry, through breakaway sessions, new talent advice, tech sessions, Q&A’s, wellbeing workshops, and a presentation on the IBC Accelerators from an R&D perspective: How Inclusion & Accessibility come first in Innovation.
Audiences and speakers also debated the cardinal topic of generative AI, is it an existential threat to creativity and jobs, or just a novel plaything? In a talk on AI bias in data sets – i.e. AI being a reflection of our own bias in terms of our own images, proved that we are still a long way off an accurate reflection of society. Sarah Beranek, Automatic Speech Recognition/Machine Learning Scientist at AppTek advised it’s time to “embrace and try out AI – it’s not going away – we’re just at the beginning.”...
You are not signed in
Only registered users can read the rest of this article.
Camerimage: “The time to be afraid of AI was two years ago”
The festival of cinematography remains political with the rise of AI and gender equality bubbling beneath the surface.
Content Everywhere: Disruptive forces in 2025, from AI to ROI and SGAI
Looking back over 2025 to date, it’s clear that AI continues to widen its role in the Content Everywhere ecosystem, and many companies are becoming more discerning about how and where the technology should be applied to streaming and video technology. Clearly, there is still much more to come, and much more to learn, but what have recent developments taught the industry to date?
Scalable broadcast tech provides backbone for Esports World Cup Festival
Tasked with producing the festival side of the 2025 Esports World Cup in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Vanguard engineered a multi-venue broadcast workflow built on Blackmagic Design infrastructure to handle weeks of continuous live programming.
Touch the future: Immersive video will soon make its presence felt
As XR devices become more accessible and 6G wireless systems emerge, we’ll move from simply watching video to stepping inside it.
Securing the media supply chain: Protecting trust from lens to cloud
Today’s rapidly evolving media production technologies have enabled a new wave of creative workflows. With them comes a tsunami of corresponding infrastructure vulnerabilities.


