2024 Speakers | The Pipeline Conference

November 2024

November 12, 2024 Pipeline Containers using Kubernetes and Pulumi

Video

Panelists

Alex Hatfield, Founder, Juno FX
Aleks / Des Katunar, Sr. VFX Pipeline Developer & TD

Executive Host

Saker Klippsten, CTO & Founder of ZOIC LABS & Zoic Studios

Thursday, November 14, 2024 Pipeline Infrastructure as Code using Terraform

Video

Speakers

Ovi Borrero, Senior Principal Architect at Effectual
Tom Spalding , Chief Growth Officer at Effectual
Liviu Constantinescu, Sr. DevOps Engineer at Netflix
Special guests from Animal Logic to be announced

Executive Host

Saker Klippsten, CTO & Founder of ZOIC LABS & Zoic Studios

October 2024

October 8, 2024 Pipeline to Success: Pathways and Career Growth in Media & Entertainment

Video

Panelists

Leila Schemali Fouqué, Head of Pipeline, Squeeze Animation Studios
Tram Le-Jones, Vice President, Solutions - Creative, Backlight
Kristine Middlemiss, Senior Technology Leader
Fran Zandonella, Senior Pipeline Technical Director, Plenoptic Cognition

Executive Host

Rachel Rose, Director of R&D at Industrial Light & Magic

Leila Schemali Fouqué

Tram Le Jones

Tram Le-Jones

Kristine Middlemiss

Fran Zandonella Benjamin

Pipeline to Success: Pathways and Career Growth in Media & Entertainment

September 2024

September 10, 2024 Part 1: Integrating AI / ML into VFX, Animation & Games Studio Pipelines

Video

Speakers

Kristine Middlemiss, Senior Technology Leader
Ishrat Badami, Senior CTV Computer Vision & Machine Learning Engineer, Triplelift

Executive Host

Chelsea Blasko, CEO and Partner for Iron Galaxy Studios

Bios

Kristine Middlemiss, Professor, Georgian College
With over 20 years of experience, Kristine Middlemiss is a leader in innovation and software development, specializing in AI, Python, and C++. She has driven advancements at industry giants like IBM, Autodesk, Rockstar Games, and DreamWorks Animation, focusing on motion capture, pipelines, and emerging technologies like AR/VR and GenAI. As the CTO at Monsters Aliens Robots Zombies, she spearheaded pipeline advancements in cloud, Microservices, IT, and rendering technologies, and successfully led two groundbreaking generative AI products, VanityAI and LibDubAI.
Ishrat Badami, Senior CTV Computer Vision & Machine Learning Engineer, Triplelift
Ishrat Badami is a highly accomplished professional with a master’s degree in computer vision and machine learning from the University of Bonn, Germany. She began her career as a full-time researcher at the University of Aachen, contributing to the European Union project STRADS on mobile assistive robots. Following this, Ishrat transitioned to the healthcare industry, where she developed automatic fall detection systems for elderly care centers. As an early member of the Vanity AI product at MARX VFX, Ishrat played a pivotal role in advancing AI-driven solutions in visual effects. Currently, she is leveraging her expertise at Triplelift, specializing in ad tech for post-production ads in CTV.
Executive Host: Chelsea Blasko, CEO and Partner for Iron Galaxy Studios
As Iron Galaxy’s Co-CEO, Chelsea Blasko is the adult in the room who runs the company’s day-to-day operations and makes all of the magic happen behind the scenes. She maintains the well-being of its employees and the culture of the studio, overseeing IT, HR, DEI, PD, mentorship programs and more.
Chelsea was the company’s 13th employee and has been instrumental in Iron Galaxy’s growth and high employee retention. While she was initially brought on to produce titles, she proactively took the reins on the hiring, expansion and culture development to help shape the studio’s elevation from 13 to 250 employees across multiple offices. Chelsea mentored many of the studio’s leaders by overseeing product development and teaching others the process along the way. Additionally, she created Iron Galaxy’s career coaching program that assigned every employee with a more senior staff member to ensure they were offered opportunities to continue to support their growth and areas of interest. Iron Galaxy now has offices in Chicago, Orlando and even a virtual Austin location.
A Notre Dame graduate, Chelsea was a high school German teacher, and managed an H&M and high-end boutique before finding her start in games at Electronic Arts in Chicago. There she was enticed by the ability to flex her creative and artistic muscles. While at EACHI, she served as the assistant to the GM and a Production Producer and Project Manager. She was finally convinced by Iron Galaxy’s Founder Dave Lang to share her production expertise at Iron Galaxy and quickly took over the entire company’s production department and internal operations before becoming the co-CEO. Iron Galaxy strives to be a welcoming and diverse place to work, and Chelsea is key to making sure that goal is realized.