Visual 1st offering vibrant program in new location

The annual Visual 1st conference, held each fall in San Francisco, brings a concentrated group of imaging executives together for a day and a half networking conference. This year’s event, held Oct. 28-29, brings together an impressive program in a new venue: Public TV & Radio station KQED’s state-of-the-art headquarters.

And, as tradition, the Dead Pixels Society will host a coffee-meetup the morning of Oct. 28, before the Visual 1st program kicks off.

Among scheduled events so far

There are two fireside chats announced:

• Jim Louderback, Editor and CEO Inside the Creator Economy, past includes CEO of Vidcon, CEO of Revision3, editor in chief of PC Magazine
• Tom Hughes, CEO of RPI Print, past includes Board member of Shutterfly, founder of PhotoDisc, VP at Flickr.

Jim Louderback is one of the top leaders at the intersection of creators, media, and technology. He has built and sold multiple creator economy startups to companies including Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount, and led editorial and ops at cable networks, event companies, magazines, and digital publishers.

He currently writes the weekly Inside the Creator Economy newsletter on LinkedIn, which has 30,000+ subscribers, speaks at global events, and works with several startups in the creator space. Prior to launching his newsletter, Louderback had an 8-year run with VidCon, an annual convention for influencers, fans, executives, and online brands that attracts and continues to draw tens of thousands of attendees. As CEO, he led the sale of VidCon to Viacom (now Paramount).

Tom Hughes is an accomplished executive with extensive experience in stock photography, photo sharing, and digital printing and technology. He currently serves as the CEO of RPI Print, where he leads the company across the globe, including manufacturing facilities in Seattle, Atlanta, Rochester, and Eindhoven in the Netherlands, as well as blurb.com, a self-publishing platform that allows users to create, print, and sell their own books. Blurb.com provides tools for creators in designing photo books, trade books, and magazines. Previously, he served on the board of directors for Shutterfly and engineered the sale of Shutterfly to private equity. His early career includes founding PhotoDisc, which merged with Getty Images while on their IPO road show.

From September 2013 to October 2014, Hughes served as the Vice President of Flickr, an image hosting and video hosting website owned at that time by Yahoo! Inc. He has a strong background in investment and advisory roles across various startups, helping many be acquired and taking three companies public.

This year’s Panel topics and initial Speakers:

• Agentic AI: From groundbreaking user apps to workflow optimizers and beyond, is it the next tech game-changer for the photo & video industry?
• The photo + video convergence: It’s finally happening? From photo-to-video, to video-to-photo, to AR that merges both.
• Photo print innovation: The next big things in products, apps, production, and partnerships.
• The enduring appeal of Retro: Today’s growth opportunities for innovative photo taking, editing, sharing and printing solutions.

This year’s preliminary Schedule, including the pre-conference The Dead Pixels Society Meetup and our traditional Women in Imaging Networking Luncheon.

Book your hotel soon. As San Francisco can be busy, now is an excellent time to book the hotel of your choice. You’ll still have many options, but one suggestion warmly recommended to us is the Hyatt Place, near the SF Giants stadium, an 8-minute drive from our venue.