Skarpi Hedinsson, Senior Vice President, Technology & Platform, Digital Media, Disney/ABC Television Network

As Senior Vice President, Technology & Platform, Digital Media for the Disney/ABC Television Network, Skarpi Hedinsson is responsible for managing technology and platform product development for the Group’s number network sites and innovative apps including the ABC Player app and the WATCH Disney authenticated video products, which launched this past June.

Mr. Hedinsson and the Technology & Platform team develop video distribution platforms, both short and long form. They designed, built and continue to evolve the Emmy Award-winning Full Episode Player for ABC.com, the official online home of the ABC Network Primetime, Daytime, and Late Night programs. Additionally, Mr. Hedinsson led the team who designed developed the critically-claimed ABC Player iPad App, and the innovative ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy Sync App for iPad.

Mr. Hedinsson joined The Walt Disney Company in 1998 working in Seattle, Washington for ESPN. He relocated to Los Angeles in 2004 to join the Disney/ABC Television Group.

Mr. Hedinsson received his Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of Washington, Seattle. He resides in the Los Angeles area with his wife and daughters.

Jon Brendsel, VP of Products, PBS

Jon Brendsel is the VP Products for the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). In this role, Jon leads an integrated product development organization for PBS Interactive, including product management, software engineering, QA, operations, customer support, and visual design. During his tenure at PBS, Jon's group has launched multiple web and mobile products, including the video delivery platform that today serves more than 150 million streams per month to desktops and mobile devices. Prior to PBS, Jon has held leadership positions at VeriSign and AOL.

Christy King, Vice President Digital, Technology Research & Development, Ultimate Fighting Championship®

Christy King serves as the in-house technology consultant for all departments within UFC® (Ultimate Fighting Championship®), a division of Zuffa, LLC.

The UFC and mixed-martial arts have experienced massive growth in a very short amount of time, culminating in the recent partnership with FOX network, a major worldwide sports television brand. Christy actively researches, tests and implements new and emerging methods to share content information among media partners in traditional television, gaming consoles, mobile technologies, OTT boxes, internet platforms and other emerging technologies for content distribution, worldwide.

UFC recruited Christy in 2006 from a CBS affiliate in the Deep South. She has a background in video production, including writing, producing, and editing on AVID platforms. Christy developed early expertise in “the web” in 1994 when she built a commercial website, one of only 500 commercial websites then existing. Even during the early days of the web, she understood and envisioned incredible opportunities emerging for niche content film and video producers who would be able to easily and cheaply distribute content.

Christy is currently creating a Digital Asset Management system for UFC, using cutting edge technologies to receive, catalog, and store media; address metadata issues, closed-captioning, SAP information, scripts/transcripts, export formatting, QC processes, approval policy workflows, and other asset management issues.

Narayanan Rajan, Head of Services Portfolio, Solution Area Media Group, Ericsson

Narayanan "Raj" Rajan is the Head of Services Portfolio within the Solution Area Media group at Ericsson. Raj is responsible for managing the services portfolio within SA Media, including developing new services products and creating new paths to market for existing products. Raj has held leadership roles within both the engineering and services organizations at Ericsson, Tandberg TV, and Adva. Raj received his M.S.EE from Case Western Reserve University, and currently resides in Atlanta.