The Academy Software Foundation has announced the keynote speaker and full schedule details for its Open Source Forum, taking place in Los Angeles and virtually on Thursday, February 22. This annual one-day event brings together business and technical leaders to collaboratively drive the future of open source software development across the motion picture and media industries.
The Open Source Forum takes place during one of the most buzzworthy weeks of the year as industry leaders convene in Los Angeles for both the Visual Effects Society (VES) Awards and The Academy’s Scientific & Technical Awards. Held at the Petersen Automotive Museum, the event also offers a virtual attendance option.
This year’s keynote address will be delivered by John LePore, the Founder of BlackBox Infinite and a renowned creative consultant designing the future across film, technology, and automotive. He has collaborated with leading studios including Marvel, Pixar, Netflix, and more to envision fictional futuristic technologies on the silver screen, as well as major automotive brands to strategize around emerging technologies and their impact on functionality and mobility. LePore’s keynote, titled “Designing Positive Futures,” will discuss approaches to collaboration, blending unexpected disciplines and tools, and how we can break the cultural addiction to dystopia.
The day’s speaker lineup will also include a number of inspiring talks from across the open source landscape, including insights from Foundation member companies and a look at the latest developments across our open source projects. Programming highlights include:
- State of the Foundation – David Morin, Executive Director, Academy Software Foundation
- Putting Open Source at the Foundation of VFX Tools – Phil Parsonage, Foundry
- Advancing OpenUSD: Collaboration Between the ASWF and the Alliance for OpenUSD – Guido Quaroni, Adobe & Nick Porcino, Pixar Animation Studios
- Leveraging Academia to Stimulate New Approaches, Build a Stronger Entry-level Pool, and Impact DEI – Karen Ruggles, DeSales University
- physLight: Physical Units in Digital Lighting – Luca Fascione, NVIDIA
- Volumetric Neural Style Transfer for Expressive Fire Simulation on Pixar’s Elemental – Paul Kanyuk, Pixar
- Generative AI Production Rights Management – David Edelsohn, IBM Research
- Portable and Open Render Job Specifications – Pauline Koh, AWS
- Arras, MoonRay’s Distributed Computational Framework – Mark Jackels, DreamWorks Animation
The event will conclude with an evening reception, sponsored by Autodesk. View the full schedule and register to attend here: https://events.linuxfoundation.org/aswf-open-source-forum/
The event is complimentary for all employees of Academy Software Foundation member companies. Please reach out to events@aswf.io for the registration code if you need it.
