Kip Welch, a founding executive officer, longtime board member, and executive director of the Entertainment ID Registry (EIDR) since December 2019, is stepping down from his roll with EIDR effective Aug. 13.
Hollie Choi, a media and entertainment veteran who most recently worked with The Walt Disney Co. and 20th Century Fox, and is a longtime industry advocate for supply chain automation, improved metadata governance, and digital and media asset management systems, has been named as Welch’s replacement.
“EIDR has been a passion project of mine for almost a dozen years, and it has been one of the greatest pleasures of my professional life to work with so many of you and help EIDR grow into what it is today — a core component of digital distribution of film and TV. I will always be proud of my role as a founder and leader of EIDR,” Welch wrote in a letter to the EIDR community.
“… I will continue to support EIDR unofficially and will watch your continuing work on the EIDR project with great interest. I will be a phone call away and will always make myself available for my EIDR friends. Thank you for your support, friendship, and dedication over the last decade. I wish you, and your EIDR workflows, the very best.”
A former president, chairman and chief evangelist of EIDR, Welch has been involved with the Registry since it was founded in 2010 by MovieLabs, CableLabs, Comcast and Tivo (Welch has led business development and outreach for MovieLabs, the tech lab founded by Hollywood’s major studios, since 2006).
During his long, multiple-role tenure with EIDR, Welch has helped the organization grow to nearly 100 members, and shepherded EIDR’s work in bringing studios, broadcasters, retailers, post-production houses, cable operators and service providers together in automating digital workflows with common asset ID standards and procedures.
Following the 2019 departure of EIDR executive director Will Kreth, Welch stepped in as interim executive director, and oversaw the launch of EIDR 2.5 in April 2020, a controlled vocabulary update included in EIDR 2.6 , released in August 2020, and a pilot member self-approval service that debuted in October.
During Welch’s time as executive director, EIDR also expanded its API to deliver new features with JSON and TSV return options, launched a new member portal (members.eidr.org), and debuted the Power User Group, which meets monthly to discuss use cases and increasing user input for EIDR.