Industry experts sound off at one of the many GEMS panels.
Networking is what New York City is all about, and the city offered up another excuse to do just that with the Global Entertainment and Media Summit, or GEMS (www.globalentertainmentnetwork.com), held at expansive club Spirit in November. The summit was created to bridge the gaps between all communication platforms, including independent music, film, video and multimedia, with a welcome dose of humanitarianism mixed in.
Besides the highly motivated attendees and a more intellectual group of exhibitors, including the Talent Clearing House and the American Federation of Musicians, the show’s strengths are its panels, which focused on everything from the nitty-gritty to forward-thinking concepts. The panel “New Innovations for Distribution” included speakers from the likes of JukeBoxAlive, GenArt, Hi Frequency Marketing, Rhythms of Life and Red Distribution. In another panel, “Autonomy,” the closing comments encouraged the audience to keep schmoozing: “You never know,” the speaker reminded the crowd, “who you’re sitting next to.”
