Opening Remarks: Ray Waddell, Oak View Group and Jake Berry, Jake Berry Productions

– Jake Berry
CEO of Jake Berry Productions

Ray Waddell, Oak View Group’s president of Media & Conferences, has seen a lot of conferences in his time, as he programmed the Billboard Touring Conference in a previous life. Jake Berry, road warrior extraordinaire and founder of Jake Berry Productions, has seen his share of conferences, too. And both of them, in their remarks kicking off Production Live! Feb. 11 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, promised to take the typical conference experience to a new level.

“Jake brought a lot of ideas with him about what you find boring and what isn’t,” Waddell said in introducing Berry, who curated the production-focused opening day of Pollstar Live!. Waddell noted Pollstar Live! is undergoing an “evolution” that will include more attention and focus to all things production.

To that end, who better to approach than Berry? A perennial “Road Warrior of the Year” at he Pollstar Awards and the man behind the curtain moving the production levers for such global superstars as The Rolling Stones, U2, Metallica and many more, Berry was recruited by Waddell to up the game at Production Live!

“Ray asked me if I would come on board and be part of Production Live!,” Berry said “we’ve been to conferences and been critical of them. We wanted to make sure there was something here for everyone to enjoy. People travel from all over the world for it.

“We have panels on new gadgets and toys, what we can do now that we couldn’t do thirty years ago,” Berry said. “There will be panels on new technology and things like augmented reality, and I know nothing about it. We want everyone to leave at the end of the day saying it was not boring.”