2014 Schedule
Interactive: March 7–11  •  Film: March 7–15  •  Music: March 11–16

You Got Music, You Got Tech, Now Build Me Products

Ok so...you're in the music business, and the tech business, so all is great right? No, not really. Because music people don't now tech and tech people don't know music. But they're soooo related and intertwined. Just ask a musician who codes. But so often the synapses over throw, and the product over thought, leaving for a suboptimal end user experience. Nobody wins and that sucks. Let's talk about alignment of interests and purpose, where the music person, the tech person and the end user person all win.

Presenters

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Julie Pilat

Head of Music Curation & Artist Dev

Beats Music

Based in Los Angeles, Julie Pilat is Head of Music, Curation and Artist Development at Beats Music. As one of America's top radio programmers, Julie Pilat is best known for her encyclopedic knowledge of all types of music and passion for breaking new artists. Most recently, Julie divided her duties as Program Director of alternative radio station 98-7 (KYSR), Music Director/APD of the legendary Top 40 radio station KIIS-FM and Alternative Brand Coordinator for Clear Channel. Pilat is well-known throughout the music industry as a key player in artist development. Her eye for talent led to an instrumental role in launching stars as diverse as Nicki Minaj, Pitbull, OneRepublic, Jason Derulo and Foster the People. Whether she is at a concert or in the studio, Pilat is discovering new music nearly every night. With close colleagues such as Timbaland, Dr. Luke, Ryan Tedder, Benny Blanco, J.R. Rotem and Rodney Jerkins it’s no surprise that Pilat has been included in Billboards 2013 Top 40 under 40, Billboard’s Twitter 140: Music Industry Characters You Need To Follow list and Radio Ink Magazine's list of the 50 Most Influential Women in Radio. She holds several Music Director of the Year titles from industry publications FMQB, S.I.N. Network and R&R. Pilat is also a dedicated community leader. She works with Youth Mentoring Connection, a program that connects at-risk youth with adult mentors, and serves on the Board of Directors of A Place Called Home, a non-profit youth center in South Central Los Angeles.

Kenna

Artist, Philanthropist, & Chief Vision Officer

Myspace

Kenna is a Grammy Award-nominated musician, philanthropist and Chief Vision Officer of Myspace. He was raised in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where he became friends and career-long collaborators with Chad Hugo and Pharrell Williams. Kenna expressed an interest in music when he first heard U2's The Joshua Tree. That album inspired Kenna to teach himself piano while studying singers like Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye, as well as groups like The Cure and Duran Duran. Kenna broke into the music scene at such a young age and at an interesting time in pop culture. He has toured with Justin Timberlake, Nelly Furtado, Mark Ronson, No Doubt, N.E.R.D and Depeche Mode's Dave Gahan. He continues to create his own sound that has yet to be categorized and filed under any mainstream genre. He is defined only by his natural constitution to never be what you expect.

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Michael Cerda

SVP Prod & Technology

VEVO

I design, build and scale product experiences and teams through major inflection points. I love breaking new ground, solving problems, and exceeding expectations. I believe good products are never done; they evolve over time to maximize key business and customer goals. I obsess over these goals and work fast, creatively and collaboratively.

Tom Conrad

CTO

Pandora

Tom Conrad leads the Pandora product organization, which includes product management, user interface design, software development, and network operations. Over the years, Tom has led numerous engineering and product design teams across a wide range of applications - from operating systems and enterprise software to video games and consumer web sites. Before joining Pandora, Tom was the Vice President of Engineering at Kenamea, Inc. where he led the teams responsible for the design and development of an award-winning Internet-scale messaging system. Tom previously was the Technical Director for the successful video game series "You Don't Know Jack."
Past experience also includes engineering management positions at Berkeley Systems, Relevance Technologies, Documentum, Pets.com, and Kenamea. Tom began his career at Apple Computer developing user interface elements for the Mac OS. Tom holds three U.S. patents and a B.S. in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan.

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