Speakers
Amy Jo Kim, Creative Director, ShuffleBrain
Amy Jo is an internationally-known designer of social games and online communities. Her clients include AOL, BBC, Digital Chocolate, Disney, Electronic Arts, eBay, MTV, Nokia, Square/Enix and Yahoo! She's also the author of Community Building on the Web, a design handbook for networked communities that's available in 7 languages (English, Spanish, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese) and has become required reading in game design studios and universities around the globe. Amy Jo holds a PhD in Behavioral Neuroscience from the University of Washington, and a BS in Experimental Psych from UC San Diego. She is also an adjunct professor in the USC Film School, where she teaches Game Design.
Brock Pierce, Chairman & CEO, Affinity Media
Brock, an entrepreneur noted for his pioneering work at the nexus of entertainment and interactive media, serves as Chairman and CEO of Affinity Media, Ltd. Brock founded Affinity Media in 2001 as Internet Gaming Entertainment (IGE), the world's largest provider of virtual asset trading services. As the chief architect behind a market strategy that has brought together more than 25 leading brands dedicated to the online games market, Brock spearheads the development of the world's fastest growing and largest network of digital content, community services and online commerce sites dedicated solely to the world's 35 million gamers.
Renowned for being among the first to recognize and harness the astonishing entrepreneurial potential represented by the convergence of entertainment, media and immersive online games, in 1997 Brock co-founded one of the first businesses to successfully link virtual world economies with real ones. A year later, while attending the University of Southern California's prestigious film school, he co-founded Digital Entertainment Network. At DEN, a company focused on delivery of entertainment over broadband, Brock provided executive production oversight and helped win the backing of more than $100 million from investors that included Microsoft, Intel, and NBC.
Bryon Reeves, Professor, Stanford University
Byron is a Professor in the Department of Communication at Stanford University, Co-Director of the Stanford H-STAR Institute (Human Sciences and Technologies Advanced Research), and Faculty Director of the Stanford Media X Program. He is an expert on the psychological processing of media in the areas of attention, emotions, learning, and physiological responses, and is co-author of The Media Equation: How People Respond to Computer, Television and New Media Like Real People and Places. His research has been the basis for a number of new media products for companies such as Microsoft, IBM, and Hewlett-Packard, in the areas of voice interfaces, automated dialogue systems, and conversational agents. He is currently working on applications of multi-player game technology to the conduct of serious work, and is co-founder of Seriosity, Inc., a venture-backed startup building game inspired enterprise software that uses a virtual economy to manage information.
Craig Sherman, CEO, Gaia Online
Craig Sherman is CEO of Gaia Online, the largest online hangout for teens. Craig leads the company's strategic planning, management, and technology development with a focus on maintaining Gaia's rapid growth as a company and one of the most popular online destinations for teens. Prior to joining Gaia Online, Craig served as an Entrepreneur in Residence for Benchmark Capital. Craig was also COO of MyFamily.com, where he helped grow the company from $23 Million to $150 Million in sales. During his tenure, Craig helped re-focus the company on its consumer subscription business and grew that from 200,000 to over 2 million subscribers, taking the company from significant losses to profitability.
Dan Kelly, Co-Founder and CEO, Sparter
Dan is co-founder and chief executive officer of Sparter. Dan is a ten-year veteran of the video game industry and was previously senior vice president of business development for THQ where as a member of the executive management team he was responsible for building out the company’s portfolio of original titles and expanding the internal studio network. A few of the key franchises published by THQ as a result of Dan's leadership include Full Spectrum Warrior, Destroy All Humans!, Juiced, Supreme Commander, Company of Heroes, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, Frontlines: Fuel of War, Titan Quest, and Stuntman; studios added include Relic Entertainment, Juice Games, Kaos Studios, Vigil Games, and Paradigm Entertainment.
Before joining THQ, Dan was an executive with The Walt Disney Company where he held several management positions in the consumer products division. As head of business development and licensing for Disney Interactive, Dan was responsible for negotiating the ground-breaking relationship with Square Enix for the production of the hugely successful Kingdom Hearts. He also served as president of marketing and distribution for the award-winning television production company Cartoon Pizza, a spin-off from The Walt Disney Company. Dan earned his Bachelor of Science in Engineering and Economics from Vanderbilt University and his Master of Business Administration in Finance and Marketing from Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management.
Daniel James, CEO, Three Rings
Daniel is the founder and CEO of Three Rings, a San Francisco developer and operator of massively multi-player online games for the mass-market casual audience. Puzzle Pirates, Bang! Howdy and Whirled are Three Rings' titles. Prior to Three Rings Daniel consulted on game design, toiled for many years on Middle-earth Online, and co-founded two profitable UK internet startups, Avalon and Sense Internet.
David Wallerstein, SVP International Business, Tencent
David is the Senior Executive Vice President of Tencent, China's largest Internet community with over 220 million active users. David has been a core member of the Tencent executive management team since 2001, helping to drive the company's growth from the start-up phase to the present. David is responsible for Tencent's international strategic partnerships and helping to formulate the long-term development strategy of the company. Prior to joining Tencent, David was Vice President, Business Development of MIH Asia, overseeing MIH's entry strategy into China's Internet sector. David worked on the establishment of a number of MIH Internet businesses in China, and was responsible for China investment strategy, including MIH’s investment in Tencent Before MIH, David was a management consultant based in Shanghai and Beijing, advising Fortune 500 companies on China entry strategy. Prior to working in China, David worked at SONY Corporation in Tokyo, Japan. David has a Master's Degree in Political Economy from UC Berkeley, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude from the Jackson School of International Studies of the University of Washington.
Erik Bethke, CEO, Go Pets
Erik Bethke is the founder of GoPets and currently resides in Seoul. He has been developing games for over 12 years. Previously, he was responsible for overall corporate operations, leading design and business development. Starfleet Command real-time tactical starship simulator one of Taldren's projects. He acted as the lead designer and producer/executive producer throughout the series, including SFC 1, SCF: Neutral Zone, SFC II: Empires at War, SFC: Orion Pirates and Starfleet Command 3. Prior to founding Taldren, Erik worked for both large publishers and small developers. Projects include I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream for Cyberdreams, PlanetNET for MPGNet and Caesars Place Windows 95 for Interplay. Erik is the author of the book Game Development and Production. The book is currently used by the game design departments of at least half a dozen universities and colleges.
James Hong, Co-Founder, HotOrNot
James is best known as the co-founder of the website HOTorNOT.com, where real people submit their photo for others to rate on a scale of 1 to 10. It is also the largest paid dating site focusing on the 25 and under demographic. He also co-founded SaveMyAss.com (a flower delivery service) and 10over100.org, an initiative to increase charitable giving. He is a graduate of UC Berkeley, where he earned a BS Electrical Engineering degree and an MBA.
Jia Shen, CTO, RockYou!
Jia is the Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of RockYou!, and has focused extensively on graphic design and usability throughout his professional web development career spanning over 10 years. Prior to RockYou!, Jia has held management roles leading the user interface and technical solutions teams at Open Harbor, and managing the majority of engineering at Iconix. Jia started working on scalable consumer applications at shopping tools internet provider Bluedog, a Stanford based startup, and was part of the original team at Bell Laboratories which developed the VoiceXML format into the W3C standard. In addition, Jia's experience has spanned enterprise sales and professional services functions, as he closed transactions and integrated with large multi-national corporation customers like Mitsubishi, Tyco, Flextronics, and DHL. Jia has a double major in Computer Science and Computer Engineering from Johns Hopkins University.
Jim Greer, CEO, Kongregate
Jim is the founder and CEO of Kongregate, a startup aiming to become the leading user-generated web games community. Jim has been in the games industry since 1991 and his credits include Ultima 7-8 (Origin) and NetStorm: Islands at War (Activision). In 2000, he started his web games career at Shockwave.com and moved to Electronic Arts in 2001, where he remained until founding Kongregate in 2006. As Technical Director for Pogo, he led the game and web development teams for both the free and subscription service, as well as launching development of connected downloadable titles. Jim has spoken at both casual and core game conferences, and contributed to Game Programming Gems III. He holds a BA in Computer Science from Princeton University.
John Bates, Evangelist, Entropia Universe
John role as a real world evangelist for Entropia Universe is to expand Entropia's visibility to a new and greater population of gamers and virtual world enthusiasts. He is responsible for marketing and public relations initiatives throughout North America, brand development and forging strategic alliances. An internet pioneer since 1987, John consults companies on sales, marketing, brand advocacy, and expansion as well as internet strategy and public relations. During his career, John has guided the explosive growth of companies from zero to millions in revenues and has experience in the virtual realm dating back to 1994.
John Vars, CPO, Dogster
John oversees company strategy, community, and the development and implementation of new products and technology at Dogster, Inc. John is constantly sniffing out opportunities to introduce new products and technologies to the Dogster and Catster communities. He also manages the company's engineering and community teams as they build those products and keep the sites up and purring. John earned his chops as a software engineer, web producer, and product manager working for global travel company Preview Travel, which merged with Travelocity in 2000. In 2002, he combined his love of travel and coding by becoming the Sydney, Australia-based manager and lead software engineer for Travelocity's international partnerships and joint ventures in the Asia-Pacific and Europe. Growing up in St. Paul, Minnesota, John's pets included dogs, cats, hamsters, bunnies, and fish--he kept eight aquariums in his room as a kid. His mother, who worked as a part-time zoo curator, also cared for exotic animals at home, including monkeys, lion cubs, and kodamundis.
Joshua Hong, CEO, K2 Networks
Joshua co-founded K2 Network in 2001. Prior to establishment of the company, he was vice president of strategic planning and growth at Kali, developer of one of the first network-based multiplayer game systems. In 2004, Joshua co-founded Item*Star, China's leading digital game item trading platform, and serves as its CFO, and co-founded Game Networks in the United States, the game industry's first cross-industry conference for broadband ISPs, content aggregators, service providers and game developers. Prior to becoming an entrepreneur in the online games industry, Joshua was a management consultant at Accenture. He holds a BS in industrial engineering from Purdue University and an MBA in finance, accounting and international business from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.
Justin Hall, Founder, Passively Multiplayer
Justin is the creator of PMOG - a "Passively Multiplayer Online Game." PMOG offers players a chance to score points, collect treasure and playfully annotate the web as they surf. Before PMOG, Justin worked as a freelance journalist covering the video game industry. In 1994, while a student at Swarthmore College, Justin started his web-based diary Justin's Links from the Underground. In December 2004, the New York Times Magazine referred to Hall as "the founding father of personal blogging." Justin lives in Los Angeles, California, where he recently received his MFA from the USC Film School's Interactive Media Division.
J.T. Stephens, Director of Consumer Marketing, Six Apart
J.T. oversees marketing, community development, customer research and website analytics for Six Apart's two consumer properties - LiveJournal and Vox. Previously, J.T. was an Assistant Vice President at Overstock.com, where he managed the Company's online auction business and affiliate programs. Prior to that, he worked in corporate finance at Robertson Stephens. J.T. holds a BA in English from UC Berkeley and spends his free time actively maintaining a humor blog.
Kevin Efrusy, General Partner, Accel Partners
Kevin came to Accel in 2003 and serves as a General Partner. His background is primarily as an entrepreneur and operating executive. He served two stints as an Entrepreneur-In-Residence at Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers where he started Corio, an ASP pioneer which went public on Nasdaq and was acquired by IBM in 2005. Later he served as the first CEO of IronPlanet, an online marketplace for heavy equipment which currently sells in excess of $170M/year of equipment. Prior to KPCB, Kevin served as a product manager at Zip2 and a consultant at Bain & Company. Kevin invests broadly in software and internet businesses, but he focuses on consumer internet companies, open source software, and wireless application providers. He co-led Accel�s investment in The Facebook and Tumri, currently serves on the boards of BBN Technologies, Hyperic, Medio Systems, Metacafe, Mig33, Xensource, and Terracotta. He is also actively involved in Riverbed Technology and Transera. Kevin has an MSEE, BSEE, and BA in Economics all from Stanford University, and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business where he was an Arjay Miller scholar.
Kyra Reppen, SVP, NeoPets
Kyra is Senior Vice President and General Manager of NeoPets, the largest and fastest growing youth community on the Internet. In this role, Kyra leads and manages all day-to-day operations, creative direction and business strategy for NeoPets, which is based in Glendale, California. As Vice President and General Manager of Nickjr.com, a division of Nickelodeon and MTVN Kids and Family Digital Group, Kyra oversaw strategy, creative and editorial for Nickjr.com. Since assuming that position in 2000, she repositioned Nickjr.com from a television promotional site to the number one parenting website for parents of young children. Kyra can also be credited with creating ParentsConnect, a new Nickelodeon-owned online community designed exclusively for parents and spearheading the acquisition of GoCityKids, the leading local online resource for parents and winner of a 2006 Webby Award for best family/parenting website. In addition, Kyra launched Nick Jr. ParentsTV, broadband video for parents; she produced the first ever 3D online games for preschoolers and led the networks' preschool introduction to wireless, interactive TV and innovative online gaming experiences. Kyra is a graduate of Wellesley College and holds a JD from the University of California Hastings College of Law.
Mark Wallace, Editor, 3pointD
Mark is editor of 3pointD.com, a widely read blog on virtual worlds and related metaverse technologies, and is Editorial Director of the Second Life Herald. He is co-author of a forthcoming book on virtual worlds from MIT Press (The Second Life Herald: The Virtual Tabloid that Witnessed the Dawn of the Metaverse), and has written for publications from Wired magazine to The New York Times and many others. He speaks often on metaverse technologies and consults on virtual world design and related media projects. He encountered his first virtual goods in the text-based game Adventure in 1978.
Min Kim, Director of Business Development, Nexon
Min is a director of Nexon America responsible for business development initiatives and game operations of Nexon published titles in the US. His current professional and personal goal is the successful introduction/adoption of the item-selling business model in the US. Prior to joining Nexon America, Min operated the successful launch of the Global Edition of MapleStory as the Vice President of Global Business Development at Wizet Corp. Today, MapleStory remains one of world's top online games supported by an item-selling business model. Min started his career in gaming as a senior associate of business development at Nexon Corporation pursuing new business opportunities such as a social networking service, a board game business, and online game licensing. Before joining the online games space, Min was an investment banking analyst in the media group of Salomon Smith Barney in New York. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics-Statistics from Columbia College.
Nabeel Hyatt, CEO, Conduit Labs
Nabeel is the founder and CEO of Conduit Labs. Founded by veterans from Harmonix, Turbine, Ambient, and MTV, Conduit is a startup building persistent online worlds for social gamers. Nabeel is an entrepreneurial veteran of five technology startups in wireless and new media consumer technologies. He has served in roles from garage founder to COO of publicly traded new media companies.
Nabeel was most recently an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Prism VentureWorks, helping establish their gaming investment thesis and incubating Conduit. Previously Nabeel was COO of Ambient Devices, an MIT Media Lab spin-off creating a new category of "polite" consumer electronic, including the Ambient Orb. Prior to that Nabeel served as COO/CMO of Teamtalk, a new media sports company which went public on the LSE in 2001. Nabeel's blog on gaming and virtual worlds can be read at http://nabeel.typepad.com.
Paul Thind, General Manager, Habbo
Paul is the General Manager for North America of Sulake Corporation, an interactive entertainment company based in Helsinki, Finland. Thind runs the North American operations from Santa Monica, California. In this role, he is responsible for maintaining the daily operations of the US (.COM) and Canadian Habbo (.CA) branded websites as well as identifying, negotiating and securing business partnerships to develop Sulake's presence in North America. Sulake is an interactive entertainment company specialized in developing, publishing and distributing multiplayer online games and communities, like Habbo. Sulake's main product is Habbo, a new type of youth brand, which is based on one of the world's fastest growing online communities for teenagers. There are localized Habbo communities in 29 countries on five continents supported by a payment network spanning 31 countries. To date, over 73 million Habbo characters have been created and close to 7.5 million unique users worldwide visit Habbo each month.
Paul previously served as CEO of PBA Music, an online music entertainment company as well as the VP of Business Development at Current Attractions, an internet entertainment company and movie database. Prior to that, Paul served as the CEO and President of two community oriented independent record labels including one that was cited as America's '#1 Extreme Entertainment Company' by Billboard Magazine. Paul has over fifteen years of experience in the entertainment and internet space and a proven track record in senior posts at entertainment companies. Paul holds a Bachelor of Science in Marketing from California State University, East Bay and is working towards an Executive MBA from Pepperdine University.
Raphael Koster, President, Areae
Raphael got started in virtual worlds back in the days of the text MUDs in the early 90s, working on LegendMUD. He was creative lead on the original Ultima Online and lead designer for UO Live and Ultima Online: The Second Age while working for ORIGIN and Electronic Arts. He then went on to be creative director on Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided, for Sony Online Entertainment. From 2003 to 2006 he served as Chief Creative Officer at Sony Online. He's also the author of the acclaimed book "A Theory of Fun for Game Design", and somehow finds the time to write constantly on his popular blog at http://www.raphkoster.com/.
Robert Scoble, VP of Media Development, PodTech
Robert is a technical evangelist, writer, and the author of the popular blog Scobleizer at http://www.scobleizer.com/. He is currently Vice President of Media Development at the Palo Alto -based video-podcast startup company PodTech.net, where among other things he produces the ScobleShow, a series of interviews and stories about, as the site puts it, "geeks, technologists and developers." Robert is a lifelong technologist, growing up just blocks from Apple computer and playing in the garage with electronic gadgets his father brought home from work. Robert worked for Fawcette Technical Publications, UserLand Software, NEC and TabletPC before landing a job in 2003 with the Channel 9 MSDN Video team, producing stories about Microsoft employees and products. During this period his Scobleizer blog became a favorite of technologists who valued his independence and objectivity. Robert is a popular speaker and co-author of "Naked Conversations: How Blogs Are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers."
Sean Ryan, CEO, Meez
Sean is the CEO of Meez, a leading provider of 3D avatars. Sean previously served as vice president of music services at RealNetworks, where he managed the music division after selling Listen.com (home of the Rhapsody music service) to Real in August, 2003. Sean had earlier held various positions at Listen.com, including CEO for the 2 years before its sale. Prior to joining Listen.Com, Sean ran business development for online game company SegaSoft Networks, spent several years at the GAP helping launch the successful Old Navy clothing line, and worked at Chemical Bank. Sean holds an M.B.A. from UCLA's Anderson Graduate School of Management and a B.A. from Columbia University.
Susan Wu, Principal, Charles River Ventures
Susan joined Charles River Ventures with 12 years of operating experience working with early stage technology ventures. Susan is a member and the former CMO of the Apache Software Foundation, one of the world's most influential open source software organizations. Susan's roots in the open source community stems from her long-abiding interest in how technology catalyzes social and economic change. She began her career as the chief architect of an early massively multiplayer online game and has remained active in online gaming. She was the Executive Producer of GXMod, a widely popular, award winning Quake 2 enhancement. Susan also contributed to components of the open source Nebula 3D graphics and game engine.
Prior to her work at Apache, Susan was the VP of Strategic Alliances for Predictive Systems, a NASDAQ-listed security services firm that was acquired by International Network Services (INS) in 2003. Susan also served as the VP of Strategic Development for Opus360, a provider of on demand human resources and project management solutions. Susan co-authored Opus360's business plan, led business development activities, and helped steer the company to a public offering in 2000. Prior to Opus360, Susan was the Director of Development at USWeb/CKS, where she led the development and design of some of the world's first community-centric consumer Internet businesses.
Susan received her BA from Tufts University and an MBA with distinction from Cornell University, where she was a Park Fellow and a Bristol Myers Squibb Fellow.
Tim Stevens, CEO, Doppelganger
Tim is a seasoned executive with extensive experience in the Internet, advertising, content, discovery, intellectual property, and software industries. He has served as a senior executive officer, board member and strategic advisor at a number of private and public companies, including Inktomi, Borland, Fios, Bazaar Advertising Solutions, Tumri, and 3VR. Tim holds BS degrees in both Finance and Management from the University of Oregon, and a JD degree from the University of California, Davis.
