LA5 Club Meeting - 9/11/26: Artificial Intelligence Panel

Location: City Club LA 

If you’ve been wanting to learn more about Artificial Intelligence and how it is affecting the world, starting right here in your own back yard called Los Angeles, this is your chance. On Friday, September 11th you will hear from a panel with some of the biggest names in AI. You simply don’t want to miss this event.

Larry Namer is an entertainment industry veteran with over 50 years of professional experience in cable television, live events, and new media.  He began his career from humble roots, working as an underground cable splicer beneath the streets of New York City for Manhattan Cable.

In the mid-1980s, Namer partnered with his friend Alan Mruvka to launch Movietime, a small, low-budget cable channel centered on movie trailers that eventually evolved into E! Entertainment Television. Under his early leadership, the network revolutionized celebrity journalism and helped launch the global pop culture careers of major icons like the Kardashians and Howard Stern.

After moving on from E!, Namer expanded his media empire internationally by pioneering Western television syndication and live rock concerts in Russia through Comspan Communications.

Today, he serves as the Chairman of LJN Media and continues to develop global content, including specialized media programming for the Chinese marketplace through the Metan Global Entertainment Group

Scott Page is an accomplished American musician, technologist, and entrepreneur best known as the charismatic saxophonist and rhythm guitarist for Pink Floyd, Toto, and Supertramp.

During his time touring with Pink Floyd in the late 1980s, Page actively spent his downtime reading business books and laid his entrepreneurial groundwork by founding the audio-video post-production company Walt Tucker Productions. He fully pivoted into technology entrepreneurship in 1993 by co-founding 7th Level, Inc., a pioneering CD-ROM gaming and educational software company. Through this venture, he co-produced Tuneland, the world’s first interactive musical cartoon, as well as the critically acclaimed interactive multimedia series for Monty Python. Today, Page is a prominent speaker, futurist, and leader in the tech ecosystem, serving as the CEO of immersive media company Think:EXP and actively launching ventures in the Web3 and blockchain spaces

Akash Kumar Panda 

"Dr. Akash Panda is a researcher at USC who works in Explainable AI (XAI), agentic AI, and neuro-symbolic processing. He received his PhD from USC in electrical and computer engineering, and received his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur.

Tony Materna

Tony Materna will be our conversation moderator for this event. 

He is a pioneer in the field of neural networks, with a notable role as the Co-Founder of HNC Software, the world's first neural network AI computer company. In addition, he co-founded the International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN).

He is a serial entrepreneur who has enjoyed a 35 year career in high technology and is the veteran of a dozen start-ups, two of which have gone on to be $100 million successes. A degreed engineer (UC Berkeley), he has held marketing, sales and CEO positions with companies in AI, electronics, computers, test equipment, aerospace, video gaming, crypto, consumer products, packaging, solar power, biotech and digital outdoor signage.

He is currently CEO of Lucidium AI Systems, Inc., which develops and markets AI platforms for various business applications. He is also currently the Vice President of the Space Tourism Society.

His hobbies include sailing, reading and motorcycling.