Monthly Archives: May 2022

Violations of the Bankruptcy Discharge Injunction | Freeman Law – JDSupra – JD Supra

Posted: May 17, 2022 at 7:28 pm

The recent case of In re Micah Cade McKinney, Case No. 21-50046-rlj-11 (Bankr. N.D. Tex., April 28, 2022) provides insight as to violations of the bankruptcy discharge injunction.

Contempt litigation in bankruptcy court is occasionally driven by intentional, willful conduct on the part of a creditor perhaps out of spite that the debtor who owed them money had filed for bankruptcy in the first place. But more often than not, violations of the automatic stay or the discharge injunction occur out of a misunderstanding of the applicable law. This case represents an example of the latter.

Since December, 2018, the Debtor, Micah McKinney, and his wife Leslie McKinney, were parties to a divorce case in State Court. On March 31, 2021, the State Court held a hearing on two motions filed by Leslie McKinney in the divorce case: a motion for enforcement of temporary orders and a motion to allocate a tax refund. The State Court orally granted Leslie McKinneys requested relief on the record, holding Micah McKinney in contempt and ordering that he transfer approximately half of a $3 million tax refund to Leslie McKinney.

On April 5, 2021, before any written order was issued by the State Court, Micah McKinney filed this chapter 11 bankruptcy case. The case was primarily filed because Micah McKinney did not have the funds to comply with the State Courts March 31 ruling.

On August 22, 2021, after a lengthy mediation, Micah McKinney and Leslie McKinney entered into a settlement agreement that resolved all their divorce disputes save for certain SAPCR (suits affecting the parent-child relationship) issues. The terms of the settlement agreement were incorporated into Micah McKinneys bankruptcy plan (Plan). On November 4, 2021, the Plan was confirmed. Under the Plan, and the settlement agreement incorporated therein, Leslie McKinney released all claims against Micah McKinney, including claims in the divorce case, except for certain post-petition SAPCR issues. The Plan also states that all claims of the Lanfear Firm, which represented Leslie McKinney in the divorce case, were released. The order confirming the Plan includes a broad injunction (Discharge Injunction) barring all actions to enforce any pre-confirmation claims against Micah McKinney in a manner inconsistent with the terms of the Plan. At the time of the hearing the subject of this case, Micah McKinney had satisfied all his obligations to Leslie McKinney under the Plan.

On February 17, 2022, Leslie McKinney, through the Lanfear Firm, filed a motion in the divorce case requesting entry of two orders related to the State Court hearing held on March 31, 2021 (Motion to Enter). The orders, as proposed, provide that Micah McKinney be incarcerated if he fails to pay several pre-bankruptcy claims to Leslie McKinney, the Lanfear Firm, and others; they also required that Micah McKinney place the $3 million tax refund in escrow for payment of a claim to the Lanfear Firm. Each of the claims addressed by the proposed orders were discharged through the order confirming Micah McKinneys Plan. After counsel for Micah McKinney emailed Leslie McKinneys counsel on February 17, 2022, voicing Micah McKinneys objection to the Motion to Enter as a violation of the Discharge Injunction, counsel for Leslie McKinney said she did not intend to seek the relief in the Motion to Enter but simply wanted a clear record to ease the adjudication of the remaining

SAPCR issues in State Court. Subsequently, Leslie McKinney filed an amended motion on February 28, 2022 (Amended Motion to Enter) that added language to the orders stating that their entry was not an attempt to enforce relief but, rather, to accurately reflect the record. A hearing on the Amended Motion to Enter was set in State Court for March 22, 2022.

On February 25, 2022, Micah McKinney filed a motion seeking to hold Leslie McKinney and the Lanfear Firm in contempt for violating the Discharge Injunction by filing the Motions to Enter. On March 1, 2022, he filed a motion for a preliminary injunction, which was granted on March 8, 2022, enjoining Leslie McKinney and the Lanfear Firm from pursuing their Motion to Enter and Amended Motion to Enter (collectively Motions to Enter) and enjoining the State Court from entertaining the Motions to Enter at the March 22 hearing. The Court took the motion for contempt under advisement.

When a creditor violates the discharge injunction in a bankruptcy case, a bankruptcy court may hold the creditor in contempt to compensate the debtor for the violation and to coerce the creditor into compliance with the injunction. Placid Refining Co. v. Terrebonne Fuel & Lube, Inc. (In re Terrebonne Fuel & Lube, Inc.), 108 F.3d 609, 61213 (5th Cir. 1997). This authority derives from 11 U.S.C. 105, which allows a bankruptcy court to enter any order necessary to carry out the provisions of the Bankruptcy Code. Cirillo v. Valley Baptist Health Sys. (In re Cirillo), No. 09-10324, 2014 WL 1347362, at *4 (Bankr. S.D. Tex. Apr. 3, 2014). To determine whether a party should be held in contempt for violating a discharge injunction, courts employ an objective standard, and contempt is appropriate when there is not a fair ground of doubt as to whether the creditors conduct might be lawful under the discharge order. Taggart v. Lorenzen, 139 S. Ct. 1795, 1804 (2019).

Under Taggart, three elements must be proven for a court to hold a party in contempt: (1) the party violated a definite and specific order of the court requiring him to refrain from performing particular acts; (2) the party did so with knowledge of the courts order; and (3) there is no fair ground of doubt as to whether the order barred the partys conduct. In re City of Detroit, Mich., 614 B.R. 255, 265 (Bankr. E.D. Mich. 2020).

The Court had no trouble finding that Leslie McKinney and the Lanfear Firm violated the Discharge Injunction by filing the Motions to Enter. The Discharge Injunction states:

AS OF THE EFFECTIVE DATE ALL HOLDERS OF CLAIMS AGAINST THE DEBTOR ARE HEREBY PERMANENTLY ENJOINED AND PROHIBITED FROM THE COMMENCING OR CONTINUATION IN ANY MANNER, DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY, OF ANY ACTION, CASE, LAWSUIT OR OTHER PROCEEDING OF ANY TYPE OF NATURE AGAINST THE DEBTOR OR THE ESTATE, WITH RESPECT TO ANY SUCH CLAIM OR INTEREST ARISING OR ACCRUING BEFORE THE EFFECTIVE DATE, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION THE ENTRY OR ENFORCEMENT OF ANY JUDGMENT, OR ANY OTHER ACT FOR THE COLLECTION, EITHER DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY, OF ANY CLAIM OR INTEREST AGAINST THE ESTATE OR THE DEBTOR.

The proposed orders on the Motions to Enter directed that Micah McKinney was to make payments to Leslie McKinney for a portion of the $3 million tax refund and payments to the Lanfear Firm for attorneys feesobligations that were expressly discharged by confirmation of the Plan. The Discharge Injunction enjoins the continuation in any manner of the entry or enforcement of any judgment on a prepetition claim. As an action that continues to seek entry in State Court of a prepetition claim, Leslie McKinney and the Lanfear Firms filing of the Motions to Enter plainly violated the Discharge Injunction. So too would a hearing on the motions or the State Courts issuance of an order on the motions. The Court rejected the notion that the inclusion of a disclaimer in the motion saying that it was not an attempt to collect any of the monetary relief or awards therein saved the conduct from contempt. And the Court flatly rejected any thought that the requested State Court order was needed to accurately reflect the record. Any further proceedings in the State Court were stayed by Micah McKinneys bankruptcy filing. In addition, the savings language did nothing to solve the critical issue, which is that any continuation of a discharged claim violates the Discharge Injunction regardless of the purpose of the continuation. The Court made clear that Entry of an order against a debtor on a prepetition claim during the pendency of a bankruptcy case violates the automatic stay; and entry of an order against a debtor on a prepetition claim after the debtor receives a discharge violates the Discharge Injunction.

Turning to the second prong of the Taggart test, the Court easily found the existence of knowledge, as Leslie McKinney and the Lanfear Firm did not dispute that they were aware of the Discharge Injunction when they filed the Motions to Enter. Both were claimants under the plan, actively negotiating with Micah McKinney before its approval. They both received distributions under the plan post-confirmation. The Amended Motion to Enter expressly recognized that the Plan resolves the monetary relief sought through their motions.

Turning to the final prong under Taggart, the Court found that Leslie McKinney and the Lanfear Firm had no objectively reasonable basis for concluding that [their] conduct might be lawful. Despite Leslie McKinneys belief that she was acting

lawfully, the Court found no objective basis for concluding that her and the Lanfear Firms continued prosecution of claims in State Court on a prepetition claim would not violate the Discharge Injunctionsuch conduct directly violates the injunctions clear and plain language.

Finding that all three elements of the Taggart test had been met, the Bankruptcy Court found Leslie McKinney and the Lanfear Firm in contempt. The Court therefore turned to fashioning an appropriate sanction. The Court found that evidence made clear that neither Leslie McKinney nor the Lanfear Firm intended to violate the Discharge Injunction. Therefore, the Court found that, while she never had an objectively reasonable basis for concluding she was not violating the Discharge Injunction, she had shown that she was not proceeding in bad faith but, instead, under a misguided understanding of how she was restrained under the Discharge Injunction. Therefore, despite a request for attorneys fees and punitive damages, the Court ultimately limited its damage assessment to a sanction of $250/day for every day after the date that this order became final that Leslie McKinney failed to file a notice in State Court withdrawing the Motions to Enter.

The refusal to grant attorneys fees to Micah McKinney was somewhat surprising, but the Court determined that, in this case, further sanction was not necessary or appropriate under the circumstances.

[View source.]

Go here to read the rest:

Violations of the Bankruptcy Discharge Injunction | Freeman Law - JDSupra - JD Supra

Posted in Bankruptcy | Comments Off on Violations of the Bankruptcy Discharge Injunction | Freeman Law – JDSupra – JD Supra

SCOTUS To Review Spending Clause, Overtime, and Bankruptcy Fraud – The National Law Review

Posted: at 7:28 pm

On May 2, the U.S. Supreme Court added three more cases to its docket for next term. The first raises the question whether Spending Clause legislation may ever confer a privately enforceable right under Section 1983. The second concerns when an employee is highly compensated and thus not subject to federal overtime pay rules. And the third addresses whether the U.S. Bankruptcy Codes bar on discharging liabilities incurred from fraud applies when the debtor has no knowledge of the fraud.

The Spending Clause and overtime pay cases will be closely followed, as they are likely to affect thousands of public entities and private businesses. A number of amicus briefs were filed in these cases while they were pending before their respective circuit courts, and both cert. petitions had multiple supporting amicus briefs. And while the bankruptcy case drew no cert-stage amicus briefs, it too is likely to have significant consequences, especially for bankruptcy cases involving allegations of fraud.

Section 1983 provides a cause of action for the deprivation, under color of state law, of any rights secured by the Constitution and laws. This provision is famous as a tool for vindicating constitutional rights, but in 1980 the Supreme Court held that the reference to and laws means Section 1983 can be used to enforce certain statutory rights as well. InHealth and Hospital Corporation of Marion County v. Talevski, the Supreme Court will consider whether federal laws enacted under the Spending Clause which include a wide variety of statutes regulating Medicaid and other federal spending programs can create the sort of statutory rights that are privately enforceable via Section 1983.

Notably, in 1990, inWilder v. Virginia Hospital Association, the Supreme Court allowed private parties to use Section 1983 to enforce rights contained in Spending Clause statutes. But in the three decades sinceWilder, the Court has not found any other privately enforceable rights in Spending Clause legislation. And the defendants inHealth and Hospital Corporation of Marion County an Indiana long-term care facility, its public-entity owner, and its privately held management company asked the Court to reconsiderWilderand to hold categorically that Spending Clause statutes do not implicitly confer such rights. They insist that Spending Clause statutes function as contracts between the federal government and the recipient of federal funding, and they further contend that when Congress enacted Section 1983 contracts did not create rights enforceable by third-party beneficiaries. Accordingly, the defendants argue, Spending Clause statutes cannot create statutory rights within the meaning of Section 1983. If the Court were to disagree with that contention, the defendants also asked the Court to consider whether the Federal Nursing Home Reform Acts transfer and medication rules create such rights.

Opposing the cert. petition, the plaintiffs contended that there is no justification for reconsideringWilder, arguing that it has been ratified by Congress and that there is no reason to single out Spending Clause statutes for special treatment. The plaintiffs also pointed out that there is no circuit split on the Federal Nursing Home Reform Act question. Nevertheless, the Court has agreed to consider both questions. And because Spending Clause statutes regulate numerous entities across several extensive benefit programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, which in 2020 reached spending nationwide thatexceeded $829 billion and $670 billion, respectively the Courts decision will have considerable economic consequences.

InHelix Energy Solutions Group, Inc. v. Hewittthe Court will address when the overtime pay rules of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) apply to employees who are both highly compensated and paid on a daily basis. The FLSA generally requires employers to pay time and a half for time worked beyond the standard 40-hour workweek, but exempts from this requirement those employed in a bona fide executive, administrative, or professional capacity. Department of Labor regulations provide detailed rules governing which employees fall within this exception, andone such regulationdeems employees exempt if 1) they perform at least one of a set of defined executive, administrative, and professional duties, 2) earn at least $107,432 per year, and 3) earn at least $684 per week paid on a salary or fee basis.

This case which involves an employee who earned more than $200,000 per year supervising 12 to 14 other employees on offshore oil and gas operations turns on the last of these criteria, which is commonly known as the salary basis requirement. The employer paid the employee once every two weeks based on a daily rate of nearly $1,000 per day, without regard to how many hours he worked that day. And the employer argues that because the employee received nearly $1,000 in any week in which he worked, he earned at least $684 per week paid on a salary or fee basis and therefore satisfies the salary basis requirement.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued a sharply divided, 12-6 en banc decision rejecting this argument. The Fifth Circuit majority held that the key fact was not the employees high compensation, but was instead the fact that his compensation was computed on a daily basis. Because he was paid a daily rate, it concluded, the employee could qualify as an exempt employee only pursuant toa separate regulationthat, the majority explained, provides a special rule that must be satisfied before an hourly or daily rate will be regarded as a salary. Because the employer did not argue that it met the requirements of this regulation, the Fifth Circuit majority held that the employee was not exempt and was thus entitled to retroactive overtime pay.

The Supreme Court is now set to consider this complex question for itself. And as the cert. petition notes, the Courts answer will have widespread consequences, especially for the wide range of employers, such as those in the oil and gas industry, that often pay workers daily rates.

The U.S. Bankruptcy Code provides a way for debtors to discharge their debts and thereby obtain a fresh start yet the law exempts certain debts from discharge, among those debts for money or property obtained by false pretenses, a false representation, or actual fraud. And inBartenwerfer v. Buckley, the Court will decide whether this fraud exception applies to bar discharge of a liability for fraud committed by a debtors agent or business partner even when the debtor was unaware of the fraud.

The fraud at issue here arises from a husbands failure to disclose alleged defects in a house he and his wife sold together as partners. After the husband incurred a state court judgment for nondisclosure of material facts a judgment imputed to the wife under common law partnership principles the couple filed a joint bankruptcy case. The bankruptcy court held that the judgment against the husband was non-dischargeable under the fraud exception, but applying a knew or should have known standard developed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit it held that the fraud exception did not apply to the wife because she was entirely unaware of the fraud. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, however, reversed. In a brief, unpublished opinion, the Ninth Circuit departed from the Eighth Circuit and held that a debtors liability for fraud is non-dischargeable regardless of her knowledge of the fraud.

The Supreme Court will now resolve this inter-circuit dispute, and its answer likely will provide a uniform rule governing partner and agency relationships in a wide variety of contexts. Bankruptcy practitioners across the country will be watching for the Courts decision.

See more here:

SCOTUS To Review Spending Clause, Overtime, and Bankruptcy Fraud - The National Law Review

Posted in Bankruptcy | Comments Off on SCOTUS To Review Spending Clause, Overtime, and Bankruptcy Fraud – The National Law Review

Ukraine Has Exposed The Bankruptcy Of Germany’s "Never Again" Pacifism – Worldcrunch

Posted: at 7:28 pm

Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Russian and Ukrainian hackers have been fighting tit for tat on what we can call the "digital front line." To quantify the firepower involved, the number of ransomware attacks on Russian companies has tripled since Feb. 28, according to Kaspersky Lab, a Russian multinational cybersecurity firm that found a direct link between the uptick in online targeting to the breakout of military conflict in Ukraine.

At the same time, developers of information security solutions such as Fortinet, ESET, Avast and NortonLifeLock Inc. have left the Russian market, making it harder for companies to protect themselves against external attack.

Earning cash through online ransoms and blackmail has often served as the motivation for carrying out cyberattacks. But prior to the war, cybercriminals had tended to keep news headlines in mind when going after their targets for example, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, when users were faced with a large amount of spam and phishing emails.

In 2022, however, the face of cybercrime has evolved. Attacks are now driven more by personal motives and moral convictions than by a desire for financial gain.

The goal of new attacks is to block or complicate access to the victims data. Alexey Chuprinin, head of Application Security Softline, tells Russian business daily Kommersant that hackers are not only targeting companies that are capable of paying a ransom, for example industry and finance they are also targeting organizational structures, which can cause a public outcry.

Immediately after the outbreak of war, Conti, a ransomware-as-a-service group, announced unequivocal support for the Russian government. In retaliation, a partner working from Ukraine, posted information about the identities of Conti members, as well as the source code of the ransomware program.

This allowed hacktivists to use this family of programs against organizations in Russia, said the head of the Group-IB digital forensics laboratory, Oleg Skulkin. It served as a means to protest against their own government anonymously.

Similarly, a representative of Ransomware group Network Battalion 65 (NB65) told Tech Novosti how a former member of the Russian group Trickbot leaked two years of chat logs as well as a host of operational data regarding their group.

We took a copy of the source code and decided that it would be a good idea to use this ransomware against Russia. The irony of using Russian ransomware against Russian companies seemed like the perfect 'f*ck you,'" he said. "This is our way of saying 'Russian ship, Russian ship, this is Network Battalion 65. F*ck you!'"

The Ukrainian government is welcoming this growth in hacking. Slava Banik, head of the IT Army Of Ukraine at the country's Ministry of Digital Transformation, tells Euronews that more than 300,000 people worldwide are using their computers to help disrupt Russias war efforts, as well as the everyday lives of Russian civilians.

One way of doing this is to overload Russian websites with junk traffic, forcing them offline. It is a tactic that even ordinary non-tech-savvy citizens can resort to, and it can be used to target Russian banks, governmental websites and media.

In its latest report, Kaspersky Lab backs its thesis that cyber-incidents are politically motived, as variants of encryption programs that are made exclusively in Ukraine are involved in attacks on Russian resources.

One of the malwares recently discovered by experts was the Freeud viper, developed by pro-Ukrainian supporters. The ransom note sent after activating the program states that Russian troops must leave Ukraine.

The choice of words and the way the note is written suggest that it was written by a native Russian speaker, Kaspersky experts say.

Yes, the enemy (on or offline) can be where you least expect him.

See the rest here:

Ukraine Has Exposed The Bankruptcy Of Germany's "Never Again" Pacifism - Worldcrunch

Posted in Bankruptcy | Comments Off on Ukraine Has Exposed The Bankruptcy Of Germany’s "Never Again" Pacifism – Worldcrunch

Is BBBY Stock Headed for Bankruptcy? One Analyst Thinks So. – InvestorPlace

Posted: at 7:28 pm

Amid a rather impressive speculative surge today in a number of meme socks,Bed Bath & Beyond (NASDAQ:BBBY) has also seen some impressive price action. At its highs earlier today, BBBY stock surged more than 14% higher, despite a lower overall market. Right now, most of those gains have been pared, with Bed Bath & Beyond now trading up only 1% as of 2:00 p.m. Eastern.

Source: Shutterstock

That said, BBBY stock is in the green. On a day like this, thats rather impressive. And perhaps its something to celebrate, with the retail crowd not giving up on their favorites like Bed Bath & Beyond.

As a favorite of retail investors (both investors who arent in the institutional bucket and those who favor retailers), Bed Bath & Beyond has been a fun stock to watch. This stock has surged from pandemic lows below $4 per share to nearly $54 per share at the peak of the previous meme-stock bubble. Since then, shares have trended in the opposite direction, now back to single-digit territory.

The pandemic reopening thesis with Bed Bath & Beyond didnt really play out as many expected. In some respects, increased confidence in retail stocks in general has helped BBBY stock and its competitors. However, with the economic outlook increasingly uncertain given the rising rate environment were now in, investors arent so certain. Accordingly, volatility has manifested mostly to the downside of late.

With that said, lets dive into one more potential headwind investors should be watching right now.

In addition to the aforementioned headwinds, Bed Bath & Beyond is a stock thats been in financial trouble for some time. The companys balance sheet isnt what many would call pristine. And given what one analyst is calling deteriorating financial performance, its possible investors may need to seriously consider endgame scenarios with BBBY stock.

Thats according to Anthony Chukumba of Loop Capital, who chimed in on Bed Bath & Beyond with a new note yesterday. In this note, Chukumba reiterated a sell rating, as well as a $5 price target on this stock.

Some of the factors playing into this analysis arent good. Chukumba believes that the company may be limited in the levers it has to pull to regain market share and improve the relevance of this company. Accordingly, this analyst sees the potential for a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing as a very real scenario.

Thats not good for any stock. And while some investors may have been thinking this themselves, seeing it in a note certainly isnt encouraging.

On the date of publication, Chris MacDonald did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article.The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.comPublishing Guidelines.

Chris MacDonalds love for investing led him to pursue an MBA in Finance and take on a number of management roles in corporate finance and venture capital over the past 15 years. His experience as a financial analyst in the past, coupled with his fervor for finding undervalued growth opportunities, contribute to his conservative, long-term investing perspective.

Read more:

Is BBBY Stock Headed for Bankruptcy? One Analyst Thinks So. - InvestorPlace

Posted in Bankruptcy | Comments Off on Is BBBY Stock Headed for Bankruptcy? One Analyst Thinks So. – InvestorPlace

New Hypothesis on Titan Landscape Evolution | Planetary News – Planetary News

Posted: at 7:27 pm

This is a portion of a Cassini radar mapper image obtained by the Cassini spacecraft on its December 21, 2008, flyby of Saturns moon Titan. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASI.

The landscape of Saturns moon Titan, which features lakes,rivers, canyons, dissected plateaus, and sand dunes, can be strikingly likeEarths. The landforms reveal a world with active liquid transport cycles andsedimentary processes. On Titan, however, these processes are moderated byorganic hydrocarbon grains and liquid methane instead of silicate rock andliquid water as on Earth. This poses a problem: sand-sized organic grains aremore fragile than their silicate counterparts. And yet, Titans equatorial sanddunes have likely been active for tens to hundreds of thousands of years, a timescaleon which organic grains would have abraded or worn away into dust.

Mathieu Laptre (Stanford University) and coauthors put forward a new model to address this conflict. They hypothesize that growth due to sintering the process of neighboring organic grains being fused together when they are at rest could counterbalance the abrasion that grains experience when transported by winds or methane rivers. Comparing their calculations to existing data on Titans climate and atmospheric modeling, the authors also demonstrate how this balance could explain the latitudinal zoning of Titans geomorphology. The equatorial region is dominated by wind transport, which promotes abrasion over sintering and would produce the fine-grained sand necessary for the dune fields. The winds lull in the mid-latitudes, promoting sintering and the formation of coarse-grained sandstone, consistent with the observed plains. In the polar regions, more frequent rainstorms and river flow would carve plateaus made of this organic sandstone into observed dissected labyrinth terrain.

While well-reasoned, this model remains a hypothesis. When the planned Dragonfly octocopter spacecraft lands on Titan in the mid-2030s, it will help validate the model by measuring the composition, shapes, and sizes of grains within the dunes as well as the wind speeds, frequencies, and precipitation rates that shape them. READ MORE

See more here:

New Hypothesis on Titan Landscape Evolution | Planetary News - Planetary News

Posted in Evolution | Comments Off on New Hypothesis on Titan Landscape Evolution | Planetary News – Planetary News

The evolution of Disney’s 3D-animated hair from ‘Tangled’ to ‘Encanto’ – Insider

Posted: at 7:27 pm

Following is a transcript of the video.

Narrator: If you peel back the layers of Rapunzel's hair in "Tangled," you'll see just how complicated animating 3D hair can be. But back then, Disney had mainly focused on straight hair, building on its previous 2D looks.

With "Encanto," the studio figured out how to create coiled hair like Mirabel's with natural movement. But the animators didn't stop there. "Encanto" made history as the first Disney animated movie to represent the full range of hair textures, from 1A to 4C.

Getting from here to here required over a decade of innovation.

The story begins with a familiar storybook princess who in 2010 was seen for the first time in 3D.

Disney's first major foray into 3D hair animation came with "Tangled." Rapunzel's 70 feet of hair was basically its own character in the movie, pretty much breaking every real-life law of motion, and not just because it was magical.

Hook Hand: That's a lot of hair.

Flynn: She's growing it out.

Nadim: Every shot of every movie has a lot of bending the laws of physics. Otherwise, things would look very flat.

Narrator: This emphasizes a key tenet of Disney's animated hair. The goal isn't always to make it as realistic as possible, but rather believable within the fictional world of the story.

To make Rapunzel's CG-animated locks look as appealing as Disney's hand-drawn ones, the filmmakers started with a "hair bible" created by artist Glen Keane, who was behind some of the biggest hair hits of Disney's 2D past. The bible set rules, like how Rapunzel's hair could never fall in anything resembling a straight line. It had to have volume; rhythmic curves, twists, and turns; and a signature swoop in the front.

But that shampoo-commercial hair wouldn't be so easy to replicate in 3D.

Nadim: It's not hand-drawn, where you're focusing more on the shaping and you could cheat. You have to kind of take everything into account when you're doing CG hair, even stuff that's not on screen.

Narrator: Like wind or different sources of light or shadow.

And Rapunzel's strands interacted with the environment in ways never seen before. You had hair interacting with cloth, with skin, with other hair. The other characters were constantly touching, pulling, climbing, and rolling in it. Accounting for all these interactions would require simulation, a way of automating the movement of elements like hair, fur, and cloth.

Michelle Lee Robinson: The only movie before "Tangled" where I think we had really even attempted simulated hair was "Bolt" with Penny. We knew we had a huge task ahead of us to go from basically that to 70-foot-long flowing hair.

Narrator: Engineers then created a program called Dynamic Wires, which combined physically based simulation with laws for determining the hair's behavior that defied physics. This allowed the artists to make Rapunzel's hair twist and turn in exactly the ways they wanted.

In real life, this hair would weigh 60 to 80 pounds, so it'd clump into a mass or drag on the ground, like a heavy tail. But in the movie, you see it gliding smoothly along.

Meanwhile, to give the artists more power to sculpt the look of Rapunzel's hair, the team broke down her 140,000 strands into 147 different tubes.

Michelle: The idea was to sculpt tubes of hair that would represent the main blocks of hair. That process allowed us to kind of control the way the hair would break apart and interpolate.

Narrator: This tube-grooming tool was the predecessor to Tonic, the hair-grooming software that Disney still uses today.

Nadim: A lot of the technology from that movie pretty much still exists till this day or has evolved into a newer form.

Narrator: You can see that clearly in "Frozen," which had over 50 unique hairstyles. Believe it or not, Elsa was originally going to have black, spiky short hair. But as the characters evolved, Disney decided to give both Elsa and Anna light-colored braids, in line with the Norwegian cultural traditions that inspired the movie.

Michelle: We were pulling the hair from her head, weaving it through into a braid all the way to the end. And just trying to ensure that those braid pieces didn't crash into each other and would bend and move properly was a challenge for us.

Narrator: For "Bolt," Disney had developed a hair-brushing tool called iGroom, which worked well on short-haired characters. But that plus the tube tools from "Tangled" weren't enough for braided looks, so Disney's engineers built a new hair-grooming system called Tonic. Tonic is a volume-based tool, which lets artists group the hairs on a character's head and move and direct those sections of hair in the desired ways. This allowed look artists like Michelle to create the first versions of complex styles within a few days, a process that before would've taken several weeks.

The team was also able to use Tonic for the hair on the wolves and horses and the shaggy reindeer hair on Sven's neck. Elsa's hair had another environmental element to adapt to: snow.

Michelle: Particles of snow or sparkles on top of hair is like procedural geometry on top of procedural geometry. So that was hard to figure out.

Narrator: And then there were the gusts of wind.

Michelle: Very stylized bang shapes that, you know, these kind of pieces that formed that really distinctive silhouette. She really does, towards the end of the movie, get blown around quite a bit, and trying to balance maintaining that stylization and that kind of appealing shape language with real physical motion.

Narrator: Figuring out hair's interaction with the wintry elements in "Frozen" paid off in "Moana," where the focus was on hair's interaction with more forces, like water and character movements.

Things might have been more straightforward if the demigod Maui had been bald, like The Rock himself, which was the original plan. But Polynesian cultural advisors pointed out that Maui's long hair is a source of his spiritual energy, so both Maui and Moana ended up with long, curly-wavy hair. I've only been thinking of keeping this hair silky and being awesome again.

Narrator: The first task was sculpting their zigzag, or S-shaped, curls, a hair shape Disney hadn't created before. Michelle: Making those shapes on very, very long hair and then trying to figure out how to manage those individual curl locks so they don't poke through each other and catch on each other.

Narrator: This task required Disney to expand Tonic's tube-grooming tool, giving it the ability to curl the hair up. After sculpting the shape, the team figured out how the waves would move and hold their look.

Nadim: Part of the trick with something like wavy hair or curly hair is retaining the volume of the hair. Because if you just sim it as is, it'll just collapse and fall flat on her head. So how do you retain the flowiness of it?

Narrator: The team developed what they called an elastic rod model, which determined the degree to which the hair would retain its twists and springiness under different forces, like wind or water.

Nadim: If, let's say, Moana is falling through the sky and her hair's really stretched, well, how much of her hair is going to be a full straight line versus how much curl is going to be there? Or if she compresses, how much is it going to bunch up?

Narrator: But Disney also wanted to give its animators an ability to guide the simulation of the hair. So the engineers built a new hair program, Quicksilver, that combined rigging and grooming controls. Instead of animating the characters with static hair, now, the animators could put the hair into starting poses, and Quicksilver's engine would use those poses to determine the resulting movement.

By allowing artists to shape the posing of the hair, Disney was able to recover some of the expressiveness of hand-drawn animation that could often get lost in CG.

Michelle: It's particularly useful for the interaction moments, where the character is doing something with their hair specifically, and the animator wants to guide what that's going to be.

Narrator: They wanted Moana in particular to be able to constantly play with her hair, since that habit is typical of teenagers, as they observed it in actor Auli'i Cravalho as she performed Moana's lines in the studio.

The characters' darker hair also broke new ground for Disney.

Nadim: If you look at kind of previous movies, "Tangled," "Frozen," we haven't really done any black, darkish hair colors. So that reacts fairly differently to light than other hair colors, and how do you kind of still show its richness? You kind of have to have a movie that needs a hair color to then be able to see how far your technology goes and then tune to that. And now we're at a pretty good spot with actually the shader being able to handle a wide range of hair colors.

Narrator: All of these technologies and more came into play in "Encanto."

The shading advancements from "Moana" made it possible to get the rich shades of hair in the Madrigal family, and the S-shaped curls seen on Moana and Maui appeared on some characters in "Encanto."

Jose: We had the software to be able to do type 1 hair, type 2 hair very easily, but we hadn't really figured out how to do coils that are actually helical and that actually look like springs. Specifically for Mirabel, she had kind of a type 3 curly hair, like, loose ringlets that get kind of tighter in certain places.

Narrator: The team added this tighter type of coil into Tonic.

Jose: So there was a lot of collaboration with the technology team trying to figure out what is hair actually doing when it starts to coil versus when it's wavy and then figuring out how we can get our tools to actually do that.

Narrator: Emphasizing the unique attributes of each hair type was a big part of Jose's job as a character look development artist.

Jose: We're trying to figure out, what naturally is beautiful about this type of hair and how can we emphasize that?

Narrator: And the diversity goes all the way down to the individual hairs on a character's head.

Jose: Curl direction is very important. Because you don't want two curls to look exactly the same, because then it feels very artificial. In everybody's hair, there's a lot of variation. Things like variety in size of the curls, hair color. We try to make sure that nothing is symmetrical.

Narrator: Every strand of hair also figured in to the dance sequences of "Encanto," building on the movement work in "Moana." The artists started by looking at a lot of reference material, including footage of the choreography.

Michelle: We knew that Mirabel and Luisa and a lot of the characters were going to be really active and jumping around and in a musical fantasy sequence that they could be hanging upside down. Sometimes in those tests, you find out that, like, one piece of hair is quite a bit longer than the other. And so you have to go back in and adjust it.

Narrator: The team would have to look at whether all the strands of hair reacted naturally to the character's movements and to each other. It was important as ever to honor differences in textures for every character.

Previously, Disney princesses had mostly straight hair that moved in big, sweeping paths. To make more tightly curled hair move naturally in "Encanto," the team had to adjust this approach.

Edna: We used to talk about how, when they were dancing, how the hair would have to move, how the hair would have to perform. For example, we have the idea that Afro hair, or African hair, has not movement. And we have the perception that that's something bad, but that's not bad. It's just our hair. Our hair doesn't have a lot of movement. It's OK that it stay like that, you know? So it doesn't have to be a ponytail with straight hair to be beautiful.

Narrator: What set "Encanto" apart from previous movies was also the sheer scale of its hair diversity, not just for the Madrigal family but for the entire town.

Edna: We have the 12 hair textures in the 12 chapters of the family, but also we have different styles in the whole town in "Encanto." You can see turbans. You can see other type of braids. More indigenous population, for example, in Colombia. There's a little girl in the town, she has an Afro not like this with turban, but all free. And also you can find women with braids, very Colombian and African style.

Narrator: Every single head of hair had to be styled meticulously by the artists, picking up where they left off with "Frozen."

Nadim: So if you watch kind of the evolution of having straight-hair characters, and then suddenly "Encanto" has all these crowd characters with braids, and we could barely do two-braid characters on "Frozen." So the advancements are really there, and they trickle down.

Narrator: But at the start of production, braiding hair was still a very manual process.

Jose: So, like, how you would actually braid actual hair in real life, we have to do that with essentially 3D tubes that we use in our computer. By the end of the movie, we had a more automatic process for making braids where you just draw or you create a curve, a line along the head where you want your braid to come out, and then it'll do a little computer-made braid for you.

Narrator: That doesn't mean all the work is finished.

Jose: There's so much diversity, even within braid types, that then there's more complex braids that we're looking at to try to figure out how to make those look really good.

Narrator: Ultimately, "Encanto" made history as the first Disney animated movie to represent the full range of hair textures, from 1A to 4C; a milestone reached by building a foundation of tools and then adapting them.

Nadim: What's also great about these tools is we're able to repurpose them in areas that you might not expect. The system that we use to do hair is the same system that we use to do plenty of other things, like Mirabel's dress. Her skirt has tons and tons of embroidery on it. We were able to use iGroom to be able to do some of the embroidery.

Narrator: The technological progress is impressive on its own, but it's always done in service of telling bigger stories.

Michelle: I think now at this point we have a really complete set of tools, and we should be able to make and represent the panoply of humanity, which is a really good place to be.

Continued here:

The evolution of Disney's 3D-animated hair from 'Tangled' to 'Encanto' - Insider

Posted in Evolution | Comments Off on The evolution of Disney’s 3D-animated hair from ‘Tangled’ to ‘Encanto’ – Insider

Faster, Leaner, Better SMB Loans: How The Pandemic Triggered An Evolution On Main Street – Forbes

Posted: at 7:27 pm

As recently as two years ago, banks and credit unions really didnt lend to true Main Street. They were focused on larger businesses who needed cash infusions of $1M+, had good credit, plenty of collateral, pristine cash flow and really didnt need a loan. Why? Because there wasnt a lot of (any?) technology used in the process, which meant it cost the same to process a loan for $1M as it did a loan for $10,000, so banks simply serviced larger loans and relied on relationships to keep business flowing.

Then the pandemic hit. And changed everything. While lockdowns and mandates dealt a heavy blow to the 70 percent of small businesses that shut down, the knock-out punch came when lendersevery single lenderturned off the spigot of cash, which effectively froze Main Street.

When the Paycheck Protection Program started, the closed banks needed to find a way to accept PPP applications on-line. For the most part, fintechs, Lendio included, became the bridge for lenders technology gap. Banks had a pretty steep learning curve in terms of technology, but the experience forced them to take a serious look at APIs, workflows, and digitization. They liked what they saw and many of them arent turning back.

This includes Texas National Bank (TNB), one of the over 300 traditional banks Lendio helped during the pandemic. TNBs President, Joe Quiroga, was kind enough to sit down with me to talk about the PPP experience, and how its changing the way his bank approaches small business lending going forward.

BROCK: The pandemic youve said that it helped you see a better approach to systems and processes that your bank used before the pandemic. Can you explain?

JOE: We had a day where we needed to book 300 loans on our system we had never had to book 300 loans in a month prior to the pandemic much less in one day and I just saw this escalating. I knew that maybe we could book 300 loans manually today, but tomorrow, if we had 500 or 1,000, there would be no way we could do that manually typing all of this into our system.

BROCK: So you made changes?

JOE: Yes. Thats when the importance of automating, integrating, and sharing data hit us. Eventually, we were at the point where we were booking 1,000 loans a day on an automated basis. It was just happening. We had no human physically typing these loans into our core system. We knew it was a better way of doing things now and going forward.

BROCK: How long would this evolution have taken without the pandemic?

JOE: Were a smaller institution. Were dynamic and were younger, so we were headed down that path already but I think what the pandemic forced it accelerated a 5-year project into a 1-year turnaround.

BROCK: How did these changes impact your bank?

JOE: When you compare us to the traditional bank in Texas or even in our region, we processed 5 to 10 times as many PPP loan applications relative to our size. It really paid off for us and we will now deploy that strategy toward small business lending. Ive called small business lending the last frontier of community bankingthese are the only types of loans that were hanging on to.

It works to have a partnership because we have something fintechs dont havewe have capital and fintechs have the right process and technology. Thats how this marriage comes together to say Hey, we can coexist. Quite frankly, we can now fund loan transactions that previously we didnt even see in our backyard. That, to a community banker, is the real evolution.

A new kind of borrower

What Joe didnt mention, however, was how much the market needs this evolution. More than 4.4 million new businesses were created in 2020 (source: U.S. Census Bureau). Last year, that jumped up to 5.4 million. Compare that to 3.5 million started in 2019 on the eve of the pandemic. BTW, 52 percent of these new businesses launched with less than 10K in funding and nearly half of that group had less than $5,000 when they opened their doors.

The majority of these new businesses rely on existing cash, savings, and family/friends for capital to start. But some are also realizing that there are new lending options available that simply werent there prior to the pandemic.

Were seeing a rise in lenders embracing the gig economy and underwriting loans that straddle the fence between a personal loan and a sole-proprietor loan. And, like Joe said, banks didnt really see these super-small businesses in the past. While there isnt a lot of good that you can say about a global pandemic, PPP loans pushed this evolution since so many of the people who received PPP loans were in fact sole proprietors. And for those who started business during the pandemic, theres never been a better time to get access to capital. Optimism on Main Street is strong and growing.

How lending is improving for the small business, too

We worked with thousands of business owners on PPP loans. For many, it was their first time ever applying for a loan outside of a traditional bank or credit union. For some, it was their first attempt applying for a business loan.

Regardless of whether they were successful in securing funds, much of the feedback we received from the applicants centered on how easy and how quickly we were able to process their paperwork. Clearly the PPP process had its share of snags, but it also introduced small business owners to a world of lending that they either didnt know about or perhaps never felt comfortable using before.

Today, that leaves us with business owners with more confidence and a better understanding of how to access capital. Theyre leveraging their access to cash in ways that have never been seen before in our industry. While uncertainties exist, including high inflation, supply chain slowdowns, and the global effects from the war in Ukraine, small businesses have a renewed focus and are better equipped to handle whatever lies ahead.

Weve got a long way to go to get back to where we were before the pandemic, but theres no doubt that Main Street and the financial institutions that support it are both more efficient and more resilient than ever before.

See the rest here:

Faster, Leaner, Better SMB Loans: How The Pandemic Triggered An Evolution On Main Street - Forbes

Posted in Evolution | Comments Off on Faster, Leaner, Better SMB Loans: How The Pandemic Triggered An Evolution On Main Street – Forbes

Evolution of anxiety: Humans may show signs of stress to gather support – Study Finds

Posted: at 7:27 pm

PORTSMOUTH, United Kingdom Science has finally uncovered the evolutionary reason why we tend to bite our nails, touch our face, or fidget when under stress. To evoke support! Scientists from the University of Portsmouth and Nottingham Trent University report that showing signs of stress may make people more likable and subtly encourage others to act more positively towards them.

Monkeys and apes display similar restless behavior when stressed out as well. So, the research team set out to investigate this instinctive paradox. According to the study, actions like scratching, nail-biting, fidgeting, and touching ones face or hair all tell onlookers that you are in a weakened state. Advertising vulnerability isnt exactly conducive to surviving out in the wild.

We wanted to find out what advantages there might be in signaling stress to others, to help explain why stress behaviors have evolved in humans, says Dr. Jamie Whitehouse, a research fellow at NTUs School of Social Sciences, in a university release.

If producing these behaviors leads to positive social interactions from others who want to help, rather than negative social interactions from those who want to compete with you, then these behaviors are likely to be selected in the evolutionary process. We are a highly cooperative species compared to many other animals, and this could be why behaviors which communicate weakness were able to evolve, he continues.

The investigation found that people are indeed quite capable of accurately noticing when someone around them is experiencing stress. Additionally, those noticing that something was off reacted more positively towards the anxious individuals.

The team recorded each person in their experiment while they participated in a mock presentation and interview session. Importantly, they told each person to prepare these presentations on very short notice. Researchers then showed the interviews to a different group of people they called raters. These raters had to assess the stress level of the people in the recordings.

Sure enough, participants who admitted to feeling stress during the presentation were perceived as being more stressed out by the raters. Those who displayed more stressful behaviors like nail-biting were also rated as being more stressed.

Critically, participants who were perceived as more stressed were also considered more likable by other people. Study authors theorize this may partially explain why primates evolved to outwardly display signs of stress.

If the individuals are inducing an empathetic-like response in the raters, they may appear more likable because of this, or it could be that an honest signal of weakness may represent an example of benign intent and/or a willingness to engage in a cooperative rather than competitive interaction, something which could be a likable or preferred trait in a social partner, explains study co-author Professor Bridget Waller.

This fits with current understanding of expressivity, which tends to suggest that people who are more emotionally expressive are more well-liked by others and have more positive social interactions, she adds.

All in all, these results strongly suggest the average person can accurately detect when someone else is feeling anxious based on their physical behaviors.

Our team is currently investigating whether young children also show this sensitivity to stress states. By looking at childhood we can understand how difficult it is to detect stress, as well as identifying how exposure to adults stress might impact young children, concludes study co-author Dr. Sophie Milward from the University of Portsmouth.

The study is published the journal Evolution and Human Behavior.

Read the rest here:

Evolution of anxiety: Humans may show signs of stress to gather support - Study Finds

Posted in Evolution | Comments Off on Evolution of anxiety: Humans may show signs of stress to gather support – Study Finds

Evolution of unified comms services – ComputerWeekly.com

Posted: at 7:27 pm

Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, employees proved they could work effectively and productively from home and many are planning to continue doing so despite the widespread return to offices.

According to a recent study by CCS Insight, although pandemic restrictions are easing in many regions, employees are determined that remote working will continue to play a vital role. This will have a profound effect on the way IT departments reconfigure telephony, unified communications (UC) services and Wi-Fi networks to support post-pandemic working methods.

The survey of 660 employees in European and US organisations reports that 90% of those who are able to work remotely want to retain the option to do so, with just over a quarter (27%) wanting to work remotely all the time. The appetite for full-time remote working varies slightly by region, at 38% in Germany, 36% in the US and 33% in the UK.

A much higher proportion of respondents, at 62%, favour a hybrid model, whereby they would work from home three days per week.

Analysts at Gartner forecast that the number of remote workers will have doubled to over two-thirds of digital workers by 2023, shifting buyer requirements towards work-from-anywhere capabilities.

The nature of remote and hybrid working means people are continuing to hold meetings online, even with the easing of pandemic restrictions and offices reopening. According to CCS Insight, this continued reliance on virtual meetings is triggering disruption across the employee productivity technology market.

Its survey found that use of the two leading platforms Microsoft Teams and Zoom jumped by over 50% in 2021, with the products being used by 47% and 41% of employees respectively. This is having a dramatic impact on the use of traditional voice technologies in organisations, with phone calls down 20% compared with pre-pandemic levels.

This is not just about using video conferencing, says CCS Insight principal analyst Angela Ashenden. The lines between the different forms of work-related communications are blurring, with a shift from voice to telephony apps, she adds.

CCS Insights research found that almost a quarter of employees expect their use of desk phones to further decrease over the next 12 months, with voice-only and video calls on meeting apps expected to grow strongly.

Popular apps combine enterprise messaging, telephony and video conferencing as cloud-based UC services with relatively straightforward subscription plans. In fact, the unified communications as a service (UCaaS) market has reached a point of maturity where the services available are superior to on-premise systems.

Gartners Magic Quadrant for UCaaS report, published in October 2021, identifies Cisco, Microsoft, Zoom, 8x8 and RingCentral as market leaders.

According to the report, for Gartner clients that subscribe to Microsoft 365, messaging is almost always awarded to Microsoft. In the most challenging telephony environments, however, such as hospitals, manufacturing, field services and retail, its clients select providers with the most extensive capabilities and a longer track record, such as RingCentral, Cisco and 8x8.

However, while senior IT leaders understand infrastructure spending and will err towards economies of scale to reduce communications costs, CCS Insights Ashenden says employees prefer to use the tools they are accustomed to, which means they may organise and host conference calls on their favourite video conferencing app, even though the organisation may have a company-wide contract with another provider.

With 80 million monthly telephony users, Microsoft Teams has experienced the largest UCaaS adoption rate among the top providers.

Gartners Magic Quadrant for UCaaS highlights Microsofts expansion of Calling Plans from 11 to 28 countries, along with its introduction of an Operator Connect programme and a Voice-Enabled Channels feature, which Gartner says offers lightweight call centre-like capabilities.

Teams also offers location-based routing and live captions for calls. There are 1,000+ apps available in the Teams App store.

Regarding enhancements to Zoom, Gartner says the company has introduced Power Pack, a desktop experience for reception console users, and an enhanced dashboard for real-time and historic call queue analytics.

It is now offering a hardware-as-a-service option for IP phones in 18 countries, and Zoom United, a bundled phone, meeting and chat offering for less complexity and commercial effectiveness. It also offers the Phone Appliance, which allows a Zoom app experience for desk phones.

In July 2021, Zoom put in a $14.9bn bid to acquire contact centre-as-a-service (CCaaS) provider Five9. But the two companies failed to reach an agreement and the acquisition was abandoned in September 2021.

Gartner notes that Cisco has expanded the telephony feature set in its Webex service to support large organisations. Telephony is now available in 85 countries in 21 languages and Cisco now offers an e-commerce site for web-based purchasing.

Like many of the products featured in the Gartner report, Webex uses AI-based noise removal, which offers hybrid workers a better conferencing experience.

While it is known for its telephony service, RingCentral has been expanding into the online video conferencing market.

Gartner points out that the company has formed strategic partnerships with Verizon and Vodafone, made e-commerce investments for direct sales, and put a massive investment in RingCentral Video meetings, adding virtual backgrounds and closed captioning.

Other changes listed in the Gartner report include redesigned mobile and desktop clients to keep pace with rival offerings, and expanded developer support via RingCentral Engage application programming interfaces (APIs).

UCaaS is often discussed alongside communications platforms as a service (CPaaS), where services are more tailored to organisations wishing to develop functionality that fits closely with internal enterprise systems. CPaaS is generally seen as a way to help organisations develop and improve their end-to-end customer experience.

A study from Forrester, commissioned by Vonage, reported in October 2021 that seven in 10 firms feel they are able to provide information to customers when, where and how they want it. The online survey of 1,037 global customer and digital experience decision-makers and influencers found that 98% of CPaaS users are very or extremely effective at getting their customers the information they need, compared with just 37% of organisations that dont use a CPaaS.

According to Gartner, a capability that has seen increasing market demand is the integration of universal communications capabilities with business applications that make workflows more efficient. For instance, 8x8, one of the leaders in Gartners Magic Quadrant for UCaaS, develops software for the entire UCaaS and CCaaS stack.

There is clearly plenty of choice when it comes to selecting a unified communications service. The majority of products provide off-the-shelf video conferencing, telephony and messaging. Businesses looking to streamline workflows may need to consider how these systems integrate with their customer experience platform, customer relationship management (CRM) and other enterprise systems.

What is clear from the industry experts Computer Weekly has spoken to is that these systems need to be able to support hybrid working patterns and hence office wireless networks require a rethink.

Originally posted here:

Evolution of unified comms services - ComputerWeekly.com

Posted in Evolution | Comments Off on Evolution of unified comms services – ComputerWeekly.com

Context, cooperation and evolution: what we learned at ATS Madrid 2022 – ExchangeWire

Posted: at 7:27 pm

ExchangeWires ATS Madrid made a welcome return to the Spanish capital after a two-year hiatus. At a bustling Teatro Amaya in Madrids Chamberi district, guests were treated to a packed agenda discussing the latest issues across the media industry.

From measurement in a privacy first context and how publishers in Spain are structuring their business models around first party data, to the convergence of tech and creativity, our speakers had a lot to say. So what were the key talking points from the day? We take a look at the hot topics that industry experts discussed in Madrid.

With third-party cookies set to finally crumble at some point in the near future, many panels were interested in discussing whats going to come next.

During our Transacting Media in a Post-Cookie World panel, Tania Perez Gacho, digital business director, PHD discussed the need to avoid falling into the same traps by rehashing and repackaging old ideas: If were only developing cookies with another name, well just go back to the start. We need to find the best solutions, not just the easiest.

The conversation around cookieless continued with our Maximising Your Most Valuable Currency: First-Party Data panel. Cristina Lera, marketing solutions director, IPG Mediabrands thinks its time for a change: We need to be over cookieless now, so a new standard can rise Innovation comes from necessity. Maybe its that simple.

On the Where the Action is: Harnessing the Power of Retail Media panel, Rafael Martinez, director, business development, addressability Spain, LiveRamp, discussed data as an enabler and facilitator: Its the engine that launched retail media. The panel touched on the possibilities in the emerging sector, with Martinez discussing the strong growth already seen: The evolution is unparalleled - brands are really betting on retail media.

The first-party data discussion also turned to the subject of user-centricity. Lera discussed the need for better harnessing of first-party data in providing a better experience : First-party data really shows the relationship between the user and the brand. Cristina Villaroya, digital and media strategy director, BBVA also sees the cookieless future as an opportunity to improve the user experience: We cant prioritise business over user experience anymore.

Back on the retail media panel, Jesus Sancho Cubino, head of Carrefour Links Spain, Carrefour Spain discussed how data analysis of user needs allows for a better retail media offering, and the need for better knowledge of this nascent offering: We need to organise ourselves as an industry to improve visibility.

On the Evolution of the Publishers Business Model panel, we heard from Maylis Chevalier, director of innovation and digital product at Vocento, who discussed the importance of the user as a catalyst for collaboration: We need to focus on the user. Its the users that make publishers and tech companies speak the same language.

One of the most prominent themes throughout ATS Madrid was the need for collaboration. Whether in the form of interoperability, a multi-disciplinary approach or cross-industry standards, most panels touch on a more cooperative way of working.

This collaboration took a romantic turn during our Creative Transformation: Combining Data, Technology & Creativity panel. When discussing the need to remove silos and encourage technology to become part of the creative process, Roberto Fara, CCO, Ogilvy Spain, discussed wanting to see a polyamorous approach. Miguel Olivares, founder, La Despensa, agreed, running with the metaphor to demand an orgy of specialities.

On the same panel, David Pueyo, head of content and transmedia strategy at Bridges, chose to move the metaphor from the romantic to the theatrical, likening a successful creative and technological partnership as functioning like a performance: All the parts make the play - everyone works together to make a performance.

The future of TV was a hot topic around ATS Madrid, and our The Next Episode: Data-driven TV's Identity Opportunity discussed the need for collaboration. Enrique Diaz, digital and innovation director of Equmedia described the rise of CTV as a paradigm shift: Its a totally new way of working together. Gadea Rodriguez, associate director, advertiser solutions, Southern Europe, Pubmatic, spoke of how different TV platforms are starting to mix their models: Traditional TV is adding digital, digital natives are looking at linear audiences.

Jorge Suerias, chief data officer at A3Media asked: Are we able to make CTV address specific strategic goals? and highlighted the importance of measurement, with the panel agreeing that a set of industry standards is an important step. Juan Jesus Tova, head of data strategy for digital marketing, Mediaset agreed that we need efficient models to be adopted to increase interoperability.

As a fitting final thought for the day, Fernando Siles, head of online marketing, Worten described the three pressing challenges for retail media, defining them as measurement, inventory and communication. While he was specifically addressing retail media, these three issues had featured prominently across the day, highlighting some of the common challenges the industry will face over the coming year.

All discussions took place in Spanish. Quotes reported via translation.

Next stop for the ATS series is London, on June 14th - 15th 2022. Tickets are available now, with limited availability.

Read the rest here:

Context, cooperation and evolution: what we learned at ATS Madrid 2022 - ExchangeWire

Posted in Evolution | Comments Off on Context, cooperation and evolution: what we learned at ATS Madrid 2022 – ExchangeWire