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  • Conference Whispers: Money 20/20 USA 2024

    Conference Whispers: Money 20/20 USA 2024

    Las Vegas, NV October 27-30

    Published: November 1, 2024                      ID: 2053

    Readers: November 2, 2024

    Analyst: Dr. Doreen Galli

    Photojournalist: Dr. Doreen Galli

    ABSTRACT

    Money 20/20 USA 2024 was held at the Venetian and boasted over 10,000 attendees from over 90 countries with 80% of attendees coming from the USA. The over 400 speakers and 300 exhibits were captured by TBW Advisors with over 340 minutes of video captured and posted. As the place where money does business, the event brings together the ecosystem of money spanning banks payments tech startups, and capital market. AI everywhere, cross bank collaboration and cross geography collaboration along with fighting fraud were the key themes throughout.

    Highlights

    • AI everywhere with particular focus on fight fraud along with cross bank and cross-border collaboration was discussed throughout the keynotes and the exhibits.

    Cautions

    • As with all new AI technology use cases, it is critical to verify the quality of the data used in training the models and identify any inherent biases. The desire is to increase accessibility of the fintech market as opposed to further facilitating biases and disenfranchisement.

    Conference Vibe

    After more than 340 minutes of taping, 29 videos, a few hundred shorts forthcoming, and over 50 fact checks, our coverage of the Money 20/20 USA 2024 closes. Money 20/20 USA had over 10,000 attendees, 400 speakers, and 300 exhibits full of vendors from around the world*. Nonetheless, there were no lines at registration to pick up one’s badge. An exciting note was shared during the press briefing that 47% of speakers were women in 2024 up from 11% in 2023. The conference provided a full breakfast for all attendees as well as some smaller stations with continental breakfast. If that wasn’t enough food, have no fear a full lunch was also available to all attendees right in the exhibit hall as well. Speakers graced one of 6 stages with a fan favorite being the Sentient stage featuring Money 20/20’s custom sentient robot, Aiana-live.

    Focus on the customer!

    No matter where in the world one resides, your life is impacted by fintech. Some experience significant inconveniences such as sending digital money to relatives across the globe only for those relatives to receive physical money. Cross border payments maintaining digital banking convenience was one of the examples shared in the distinguished panel on creating a new language for cross-border payments. This panel featured Ryan Zagone from Wise who presented his company’s solution. Other panelists included leaders from TBD – a block company, Bankaya and Vansary. A key to achieving customer desired functionality is continual modernization of payment platforms beyond migrating to the cloud. This panel included leaders from Wise, Bank of America, Deloitte, and Amazon. A session on Navigating the journey to the cloud featured leaders from Featurespace, AWS and T-Sys. The focus of this session was the need for collaboration amongst partners for the benefit of the customers. One part of the ecosystem cannot go to the cloud if critical components they depend on remain on premise. The migration journey is never truly completed. To ensure your product has solid APIs to easily integrate with the rest of the market, APImatic shared their product on the expo floor. APIMatic increases adoption by leveraging automation to ensure you complete the journey to usable APIs.

    One key ingredient every business requires is customers! The panel, “Small is the next big thing” emphasized the sheer magnitude of opportunity by serving small businesses which make up 44% of the US GDP. This panel featured leaders from Co-created, Penelope, and SMB Franchise Advisors. The emphasis was to encourage the creation of a one-stop shop, a single pane solution for all one’s financial needs for the SMB space. One method to extend the reach to additional customers includes embedded payments and private capital to expand the consumer credit space. A panel on this topic featured leaders from Jeffries, Milken Institute, Citi and Pagaya. The session emphasized the need for new risk rating models for those not currently served by the sector. In this regard, an AI risk decision engine for financial services by Bordo.ai was displayed in the expo hall.

    Once you have your customers, you want them to have an amazing experience. To facilitate a unified view of all customer activities on your platform, Mixpanel was one of the vendors on hand demonstrating their capabilities. This product along with the talk on hyper-personalization in the age of AI reminded us of our coverage of the Adobe Summit. If this is a passion area be sure to review this research as well as enjoy its related playlist.

    Trust

    Expanding on the hyper-personalization to serve customers, a fireside chat featured Fortune reporter Luisa Beltran interviewing PayPal’s Frank Keller. Titled, AI + Trust, the question of when too personalization becomes a creepy user experience was discussed. The one where you have a conversation on the phone then suddenly your computer has an advertisement for such a product. Part of the challenge with the trust question arises because the bad guys are organized, collaborate, and share information but the good guys do not. As discussed in the session “Fighting Fraud in an AI First World’, until the good teams collaborate, the issue will remain. This exciting panel featured leaders from Google, Mostly AI, BNY and Swift. This point was also emphasized in How AI Innovation Influences Trust and Safety panel. This panel featured leaders from JP Morgan, Walmart, Trulioo, and OpenAI. A key takeaway included that AI plus humans is creating new capabilities to try to counterbalance the aggressive progressive of the fraudsters leveraging AI in a coordinated fashion.

    Trust is a two-way street. For financial institutions attempting to establish trust with their customers, they may wish to leverage Inscribe.AI. This platform reviews all documents turned in by customers for signs of fraud leveraging generative AI. Maintaining compliance can also assist with maintaining trust. A highly automated intelligent solution for achieving compliance that is traceable, explainable, and auditable by Trisotech was on exhibit. As anyone who has played with early consumer editions of generative AI knows, true value of generative AI is not just the answer but understanding the why behind the generated answer. If, however, your organization is interested in leveraging behavioural AI to prevent fraud, Futurespace may be one of the products for your organization to evaluate.

    Nothing loses a customer’s trust like compromising their privacy and their data. Sometimes, no matter the steps taken, a company accidently leaves a backdoor open or misconfigures their environment compromising customer trust. Have no fear, Packetlabs and their white hats are here to offer their services. Remember: it is always better to hire white hats to find your security issues instead of finding out on the front page of the news.

    Finally, one of the more critical aspects of trust according to SEC Chair, Glen Gensler is the whistleblower program. This was one of the many topics discussed in this fireside chat.

    Identity

    We had a flashback to our coverage at Identiverse, as one might expect at any conference in a highly regulated space. The expo hall had some identity solutions on display. A true global identity solution can be difficult to find but Shufti shared their solution. Available across 240 countries validating over 10,000 document types with outcomes in over 150 languages, Shufti is based out of London.

    Another identity problem arises in Fintech around the use of credit cards. Is the person using the card really the person we issued the card to? Prove shared their solution that enables you to prove it is really you with only one small line added to the magnetic strip. Prove interestingly leverages the technology within smartphones today to enable the credit card to be a key. With a tap of your credit card to the phone, the phone can let the company know if it is really the card holder holding the official card making the charge.

    AI

    While very little of the conference did not involve AI, a key concern within Fintech involves using public models with their highly regulated data. Glean shared their product that consumes all your internal data to create a customer LLM for your organization. If your emphasis is one producing customer facing content from your own data, then Writer that leverages generative AI over your own data may be something to explore.

    One of the more creative talks on Generative AI was titled, “Killer GENAI Cake”. Emphasizing the parallels to how baking powder created new use cases for baking, GENAI will expedite fintech and related user experiences to the next level. Featuring leaders from Microsoft, iGenius, Growfin and Citizens. Questions addressed by this panel included what use cases could materialize in 2025 and beyond?

    Next Year’s Conference

    Next year’s Money 20/20 USA will be once again held at the Sands Convention Center on October 26-29, 2025.

    *When vendors’ names are shared as examples in this document, it is to provide a concrete example of what was on display at the conference, not an evaluation or recommendation. Evaluation and recommendation of these vendors are beyond the scope of this specific research document. Other examples products in the same category may have also been on display.

    ©2019-2025 TBW Advisors LLC. All rights reserved. TBW, Technical Business Whispers, Fact-based research and Advisory, Conference Whispers, Industry Whispers, Email Whispers, The Answer is always in the Whispers, Whisper Reports, Whisper Studies, Whisper Ranking , The Answer is always in the Whispers, and One Change a Month, are trademarks or registered trademarks of TBW Advisors LLC. This publication may not be reproduced or distributed in any form without TBW’s prior written permission. It consists of the opinions of TBW’s research organization which should not be construed as statements of fact. While the information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, TBW disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. TBW does not provide legal or investment advice and its research should not be construed or used as such. Your access and use of this publication are governed by the TBW Usage Policy. TBW research is produced independently by its research organization without influence or input from a third party. For further information, see Fact-based research publications on our website for more details.

  • Conference Whispers: NAB Show 2024

    Conference Whispers: NAB Show 2024

    Analyst: Dr Doreen Galli

    Photographer: Dr Doreen Galli

    Published April 24, 2024

    ABSTRACT

    After 85 flights of stairs, ~40,000 steps, 12 Vegas loops trips, and over 40 factchecks, our coverage of 2024 NAB Show, National Association of Broadcasters Show, ends. NAB Show was held in Las Vegas from April 13-17. It is the premier event for content professionals in the broadcast, media, and entertainment ecosystem seeking to create superior and innovative audio and video experiences. The conference featured over700,000 net square feet of exhibits, nearly 1300 exhibitors, 750 educational courses and sessions, and over 61,000+ attendees from an amazing 163 countries. Attendees witnessed endless examples of cloud enabled remote production, early implementations of generative AI, and discussions on sustainability in production and technical security for remote live production.

    The Conference

    • The first NAB Show was held October 11, 1923, in New York City at the Commodore Hotel. There were 16 radio stations represented among the 23 attendees. NAB Show moved to Las Vegas in 1991.
    • NAB Show was held April 13-17, 2024, in Las Vegas. The event featured over 61,000 attendees. Within those attendees 27% were international attendees from an amazing 163 countries represented.
    • The exhibitions featured nearly 1300 exhibitors in over 700,000 net square feet of exhibits a 30% gain over 2023.
    • Attendees at NABShow held titles such as Production Director, Production Editor, Production Engineer, Broadcast and Network Engineer, Logistics Manager, Electrical Engineer, Sound and Video Engineer, Director of Product Management, Technical Architect, and data scientist.

    Conference Vibe

    After 85 flights of stairs and 40,000 steps, and 12 Vegas loops trip, our coverage of the 2024 NAB Show produced by National Association of Broadcasters, ends. NAB Show 2024 exhibitions surpassed last year’s by nearly 30% with 700,000 square feet in all. Attendance came in at 61,000 attendees with 27% coming from international destinations. NABPAC contributors were recognized in the West Hall. The conference leveraged the entire indoor conference exhibit spaces in the West Hall, Central Hall, South Upper and South Lower and a few rooms in North Halls. A majority of North Hall was under construction. Fortunately, the Vegas Loop was running with free rides so one needed not walk the entire distance. We took advantage of the loop no less than a dozen times. When asked attendees reported meeting their business objectives and described it as really good. Once again – the quality of attendees itself was mentioned by the exhibitors.  Our entire playlist of video research for NAB Show is available online at our YouTube Channel.

    Deep Learning & Generative AI in Media

    With over 200 exhibitions and over 150 sessions on AI, generative AI was once again the star of the show. Amid the buzz about AI and generative AI transforming broadcasting, one question was on the mind of video engineers – “Will it affect our jobs?”. Luisa Winters had an answer in her keynote. If you are adapting and using the new technologies, you will be fine. No different from the move from tapes. More importantly, you will not only be able to deliver something acceptable but have time to make it great! Another keynote emphasized the importance of great metadata for your assets if you want to fully leverage generative AI solutions in sports coverage. As one might expect, there were countless examples* of tools for production and distribution and each of the tasks involved. Pixellot was on hand with their exciting deep learning automated sports tracking leveraged for streaming sports. Their solution leveraging their state-of-the-art cameras and patented technology that stitches it all together. As would be expected, each sport has its own model. In fact, they had over 10,000 live events streaming as I conducted the interview. Pixellot also includes capabilities for monetizing said sports streams.

    One keynote provided a demo of Adobe Premier Pro, something we didn’t recall seeing at Adobe Summit. Backlight showcased their extensive collection of products for media content creation and distribution. Backlight’s solution leverages AI and  generative AI to simplify media workflows. Backlight allows horizontal and vertical video distribution. Backlight leverages their own AI and LLM models to transcribe the video/audio. That transcription is then used to quickly generate all the metadata to put on social media. They leverage automation to automate the creation of sports highlight clips out to social media by registering all key moments as the game plays. Finally, their solution also enables monetization.

    Amazon and AWS were at NAB Show in full force. A huge display was on hand where they shared their entire Generative AI stack with those looking to develop solutions. Experts were on hand if you had any questions including seeking insights on Amazon Bedrock. In the Microsoft pavilion, SymphonyAI was there as part of the beet the buzzer architecture that enables viewers to play along with game shows. Microsoft offered a Pilot demonstration of AI enabled marketing.

    Transcription and translation are a big area for generative AI in broadcasting and media, sometimes referred to as localization. This topic was featured in a keynote as well as in exhibits. Microsoft featured their solution based on Open AI. TRINT featured their text to speech solution adopted across the industry. One exciting development is the ability to do full motion capture without putting on a special suit due to generative AI! In fact, Zerospace Captury was on exhibit sharing their solution. Interestingly, the room only requires about 15 minutes to set up the space to capture motion.

    With all of the generative content capabilities shown, stopping misinformation and deepfakes was a very popular topic featured in a keynote. The solution involves knowledge of the content frequently communicated through metadata. To that end, Hand (Human & Digital) shared their solution for identity intelligence for notable talent.

    Broadcasting Technologies

    Leveraging capabilities of 5g, XGN featured their solution that enables users to connect direct to mobile to send content from the field – no SIM card required! Cobalt Digital shared their extensive collection of open gear based on 2110, 12G and ultra-low latency. Their gear also supports Rest APIs. Cobalt Digital featured routers, control panels, and multi-viewers for video and audio processing. As might be expected with the continual increased resolution, a new video compression standard is being rolled out and is already rolled out in Brazil, LCEVC. In the LCEVC showcase, all the providers with their next generation of tech leveraging LCEVC were on display. Ateme also focuses on compression – for the purpose of technologies such as the Apple Vision Pro which they showed off in the exhibition. Once you created all your content, if you wanted to manage the programming data so it is accurate in every tv program listing, Titan TV shared their solution. If you wanted to optimize the way in which you manage ad campaigns, Showseeker shared their solution to simplify advertising scheduling.

    For those seeking cost effective or additional footprints to deliver content or to serve an unserved area, Varnish presented their highly cost-effective region. HP demonstrated their HP Anywhere enabling remote teams to leverage power that was not on the remote site. Storj, the sustainable storage solution that leverages unused electronic storage space that we covered in Conference Whispers: World Crypto Con Las Vegas 2019 and last year’s Conference Whispers: 100th Anniversary NAB Show.

    For those requiring the ability to manage the labor and payroll for that remote labor, Procrewz shared their solution. If keeping track of and on top of all the compliance requirements for broadcast and streaming is your challenge, Vela exhibited their product.

    Broadcast stars and the creator economy

    NAB Show also featured technology and solutions to support the creator economy.  In Vimeo’s session they stated that one can expect 2% of free YouTube subscribers to convert to a paid subscriber on Vimeo. For those wishing to participate in a reality show about making creators or leverage it for advertising, the team from the TV show Follow Me had a lively panel. The central Main Stage featured an interview with Jennifer Hudson. During the interview Jennifer told the audience that she is always cheering for everyone. A great session on diversity in broadcasting featured the Las Vegas Aces Alysha Clark who majored in broadcasting during her college career. Alysha Clark made the great point to all that inclusion means opening prime spots to diversity be it tv slots or board and executive spots in corporate America.

    Next Year’s Conference

    NAB Show is held every year in Las Vegas since 1991. The next NAB Show will occur April 5-9, 2025, in Las Vegas, NV.

    *When vendors’ names are shared as examples in this document, it is to provide a concrete example of what was on display at the conference, not an evaluation or recommendation. Evaluation and recommendation of these vendors are beyond the scope of this specific research document. Other examples products in the same category may have also been on display.

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    ©2019-2024 TBW Advisors LLC. All rights reserved. TBW, Conference Whispers, Industry Whispers, Vendor Whispers, Technical Business Whispers, Whisper Reports, Whisper Studies, Whisper Ranking and Fact-based Research and Advisory are trademarks or registered trademarks of TBW Advisors LLC. This publication may not be reproduced or distributed in any form without TBW’s prior written permission. It consists of the opinions of TBW’s research organization which should not be construed as statements of fact. While the information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, TBW disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness, or adequacy of such information. TBW does not provide legal, or investment advice and its research should not be construed or used as such. Your access and use of this publication are governed by the TBW Usage Policy. TBW research is produced independently by its research organization without influence or input from a third party. For further information, see Fact-based research publications on our website for more details.

  • Conference Whispers: Adobe Summit 2024

    Conference Whispers: Adobe Summit 2024

    Analyst: Dr. Doreen Galli

    ABSTRACT

    Adobe Summit 2024 took over the Venetian with over 11,000 attendees and leveraging one-million square feet of exhibition to host the conference, keynotes, exhibits and meals. The keynotes and side sessions were all about generative AI for the ultimate in personalization and scale for your marketing content needs. Many service providers and ecosystem partners were exhibited. A Strangely many exhibitors didn’t denote if their products leveraged artificial intelligence within their solutions on their displays.

    Analysis is only available to clients at this time.

    Highlights

    • Extensive examples on stage of how Firefly can scale to quickly generative full experiences target to exactly the right customers.
    • Many service providers were on exhibit for those who are overwhelmed by the technology involved.

    Cautions

    •  Many sessions were filled in advance leaving attendees to wait list for desired events. If attending, be sure to create a formal schedule in advance to ensure ability to attend desired events.

    Conference Vibe

    As a conference for a vendor’s technology for marketing, the atmosphere was set up to be fun with a DJ playing in the hall throughout. The 11,000 strong in attendance could be felt while approaching the keynotes or perusing the exhibits. Meals were served downstairs albeit the word was one might be finding something elsewhere. Readers may experience the entire Conference Whispers: Adobe Summit 2024 playlist.

    Keynotes

    The keynotes presented endless examples of personalized experiences at scale. The opening day keynote launched with an in-depth overview of Adobe Firefly. They then shared an example using Coca Cola brand assets designing an entire campaign with significant variety in no time. Pfizer’s Lidia Fonseca then came on stage. Lidia Fonseca shared how they are leveraging Adobe’s generative AI capabilities enables campaigns every time a new drug is approved by the FDA. Next, there was a quick announcement regarding Adobe’s collaboration with Microsoft was made surprising without Scott Guthrie who was in town or any other Microsoft executive. With no shortage of examples, they keynote then welcomed Mary Barra of General Motors. It was fascinating to hear how Mary started her career on the assembly line as well as how GM leverages Adobe. At the end of day one, there was an amazing introduction to artificial intelligence and generative AI for those who do not understand its basis.

    The second day of the conference commenced with an Inspirational Keynote featuring Delta, TSB, and Major League Baseball (MLB). Admittedly as someone who worked with the MLB in high school, I didn’t expect to hear them talk about a long-lost friend, Bret Saberhagen. The Maximize creativity and scale content strategy keynote provided a Pepsi in depth example. Once again, the theme was how much brand aligned content we can help you create and deliver to exactly who you desire.

    The third day brought some other great conference talks and a lot of tired attendees due to the party at Area 51 with Shaq as DJ. We started off our coverage with an Adobe talk that discussed in-depth how to update your content strategy architecture in the age of generative AI. Expanding on this theme, Omnicom provided in-depth case studies on their AI powered ecommerce.

    Community Pavilion Exhibits

    Exhibitors ran the gambit to support the Adobe ecosystem. Interestingly many that leveraged AI to improve their product did not put any indication on their exhibit. This point was so strangely prevalent that all the industry analysts were discussing it prior to Keynote on day two. According to some exhibitors, the AI was added after the booth was ordered. Others said that at a data conference, every booth specified AI and they thought it was overwhelming. When pointed out if not specifying made it seem like they are displaying legacy technology, the error in their ways was realized. Exhibitors not specifying technology features of their product on the exhibits is not by any means customary!

    If attendees were seeking technology to assist in generating content, Movable Ink was present. Conveo provides AI search over your assets and can provide a generative answer to optimize business outcomes. If you would like to create chatbots from any kind of data, Searchblox was on hand.

    If you would like a single source of truth over all your marketing data assets, Claravine shared demonstrations and overview of their product. If you would like your assets converted to 200 different languages, Transperfect was on site. Yext shared their SEO intelligent platform to optimize the search over all your digital assets. Glassbox specialized in providing and optimizing customer experience and digital journeys with the use of artificial intelligence. Leveraging all forms of AI, Pathfactory shared their platform for b2b intelligence and personalization.

    Session AI’s CMO, Jason Seeba was on hand to share how their technology understands user types within 5 clicks. Knack shared their enterprise grade email and landing page no code solutions. To create a coherent digital journey from telephone calls to web visits at the session level, Invoca conversational intelligence was on display. If you would like to host a conference of your own, Cvent was there with their technology. From planning to hosting to managing all the data for marketing the conference, their product provides an all-in-one solution.

    Finaly on the protection side, Cheq shared their solution to remove all botts form analytics, marketing automation and paid advertising. Web governance in the form of removing unapproved cookies from your site was presented by Observepoint.

    Service Providers

    Adobe exhibit provided many service providers to execute on any of the technologies Adobe shared. We met Webjump who is a Magenta partner in Brazil. We also stopped by Virtusa IT services organization that is proud of their engineering first mindset to enable scalability. Finally, Grazitti not only display but had many their clients also exhibiting at Adobe Summit.

    Next Year’s Conference

    Next year’s adobe summit will be once again held at the Venetian Resort likely in March, stay tuned for details.

    *When vendors’ names are shared as examples in this document, it is to provide a concrete example of what was on display at the conference, not an evaluation or recommendation. Evaluation and recommendation of these vendors are beyond the scope of this specific research document. Other examples products in the same category may have also been on display.

    ©2019-20204 TBW Advisors LLC. All rights reserved. TBW, Conference Whispers, Industry Whispers, Vendor Whispers, Technical Business Whispers, Whisper Reports, Whisper Studies, Whisper Rankings and Fact-based Research and Advisory are trademarks or registered trademarks of TBW Advisors LLC. This publication may not be reproduced or distributed in any form without TBW’s prior written permission. It consists of the opinions of TBW’s research organization which should not be construed as statements of fact. While the information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, TBW disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. TBW does not provide legal or investment advice and its research should not be construed or used as such. Your access and use of this publication are governed by the TBW Usage Policy. TBW research is produced independently by its research organization without influence or input from a third party. For further information, see Fact-based research publications on our website for more details.