Engineering Resilience: A Case Study of Super Bowl 2020 Live Streaming by Fox by Melody Hildebrandt, James Birchler
Super Bowl 2020 set a new record for peak concurrent live streams while also offering the content at a new quality bar - UHD HDR - for the first time. For Fox Sports, this meant 5X'ing its previous platform record on the highest stakes day of the year when several things broke, but customers never knew! In this talk, Melody Hildebrandt, EVP of Engineering at FOX, will share lessons learned from preparations to deliver this event digitally - from architecting a highly scalable API tier to aligning 20+ technology partners against a common objective.
Melody Hildebrandt
Melody Hildebrandt is the Chief Technology Officer of FOX Corporation. Formerly she was President of Blockchain Creative Labs (BCL) where she leads product and engineering for its set of web3 media distribution technologies and also Chief Information Security Officer of its parent company, FOX Corporation, where she was responsible for the cyber security posture of the entire business, spanning Fox Sports, Fox News, and Fox Entertainment. She is the Executive Sponsor of FOX Women in Technology and on the FOX Technology Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Council. She previously was the Global Chief Information Security Officer at 21st Century Fox where she was responsible for the cyber security posture of 21CF businesses including 20th Century Fox, Fox Networks Group, National Geographic Partners, Fox News, Star India and others. She moved into a larger role at FOX following the announcement of the spin-off of many assets to Disney. Before joining 21CF, she was an executive vice president of Palantir Technologies. An early employee of the company, she helped start Palantir’s Commercial work, opened its New York Office, and led Palantir’s sales, product and field execution in cyber security, anti money laundering, and rogue trading detection. Prior to that, she consulted to US and international governments with Booz Allen Hamilton where she designed military and strategy wargames.
James Birchler
James Birchler is an engineering leader, startup CTO advisor, and executive coach. He is currently VP of Engineering at Caffeine. Previously, he was VP of Engineering at IMVU, where he implemented Lean Startup methodologies alongside Eric Ries and the early IMVU team. His leadership practice is based on mindfulness and nonviolent communication.
