MTH Mediatech Hub Conference

From 11 to 12 November 2020, the first hybrid version of the annual Mediatech Hub Conference MTH took place – produced live in Babelsberg’s studios and accessible through an online platform. The MTH Conference is Germany’s only business-to-business event dedicated to media technology, examining the potential, the applications and challenges of MediaTech in the context of both economy and entertainment.

During the two conference days, more than 800 visitors participated at the #mthcon2020’s interactive online platform. Attendees could experience a program amounting to 30 hours with more than 75 speakers on three stages supplemented by workshops on the production of series, metadates, micro mobility and digital ecosystems. In the Startup Pitch Arena, innovative Media-Tech-Startups were able to present their business models, while the Cinemalovers Cinema showed six curated movies.Networking was made possible in the Networking Carousel. 

The MTH’s opening talks threw a glance behind the scenes of the technology sector, taking into consideration, how humans could use media technology, in order to create a fair and human society. The conference’s first day was inaugurated by Murat Sönmez, director of the Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution at the World Economic Forum, demanding for a “transparent and integrative way” in order to fully realize “the potential of the Fourth Industrial Revolution”.  Kenza Ait Si Abbou, author and Senior Manager Robots and AI at 3IT’s partner Deutsche Telekom, launched the MTH’s second day with a presentation on how Artificial Intelligence is biased and thus reproduces racism.

Central topics on the entertainment stage picked up the film industry’s digitization, which has been shown to be accelerated by the pandemic. While the crisis due to Corona is challenging the sector in a radical manner, it has been met with creative visions, according to the speakers.

The Industry Stage of the MTH highlighted the potential of media technology in the domains of mobility, health, the event sector and industry 4.0, in particular Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence. According to Michel Reilhac, curator of the Venice Biennale’s VR competition, the future lies in ‘phygital’ events that is hybrid formats combining physical and virtual. Moreover, in the E-Health-Track, health experts discussed the potential of immersive technologies to support both the treatment of patients and the fight against pandemics. Their conclusion was that health technologies had to be designed patient-centered.

In the Track Mobility, Kirsten Degner of the Digital Media Hub Mobility gave insights on the studies of micro-mobility, while Marius Swoboda of Rolls-Royce switched live into the VR-Cave of the Berliner Werk, in order to demonstrate how industrial processes can be optimized thanks to immersive technologies.

Check out the page of the event here.