Speakers

Seamus Blackley is head of the Games Department at Creative Artists Agency (CAA), an entertainment and sports agency based in Los Angeles, California with offices in Nashville, New York City, London, and Beijing.  Blackley’s role is to define and execute CAA’s global strategy for representing many of the world’s most respected and successful game creators. Under Blackley’s leadership, the Games Department specializes in securing and negotiating game production deals with publishers, financiers, film and television studios, and networks, as well as building and advising development companies to give game designers greater creative and financial control.

Prior to joining CAA in 2004, the top-selling game designer piloted the creation of the Xbox game platform at Microsoft. The former physicist and DreamWorks Interactive executive producer wrote the initial proposal for Xbox, assembled and led the team behind the technical design and philosophy for the platform, and established and nurtured support for Xbox within the game development community worldwide.

Susan Bonds is President/CEO of 42 Entertainment, the pioneer in the genre of Alternate Reality Games (ARGs), and the architect behind 42’s most critically acclaimed interactive experiences.   In 2008, 42 Entertainment created the groundbreaking alternate reality game, Why So Serious?, which brought Gotham City to life through various mediums and platforms and engaged 10 million worldwide for the blockbuster film, The Dark Knight.  The year before, 42 had taken the music world by storm, working with Nine Inch Nails to produce Year Zero, a first-of-its-kind concept album, combining music with multimedia and interactive storytelling.  The campaign was awarded the Cyber Grand Prix at the 2007 Cannes Lions International festival.  Other notable campaigns that Susan produced include, ilovebees, which won GDC’s innovation award in 2005, and The Vanishing Point, a global puzzle event for the release of Windows Vista in 2007.

Before joining 42, Susan was Chief Design and Production Officer for Cyan Worlds, the company behind the worlds of Myst and Riven, where she produced a Massively Multiplayer Online game.  Susan was also Creative Director/Producer for Walt Disney Imagineering, where she produced both the Indiana Jones Adventure and Mission: SPACE, two groundbreaking attractions with proprietary new ride systems.  Susan has an Industrial and Systems Engineering degree from Georgia Institute of Technology, and an MBA from Georgia State University.

Joel is the founder of Gamezebo.com, a leading editorial web site and community devoted entirely to casual games. Previously, Joel was head of business development for Yahoo! Games, where he was responsible building numerous products, including Yahoo! Games Downloads, Games on Demand, and Video Games.  Before that, Joel worked business development at Simutronics, a games company that was doing massively multiplayer games before they were cool. Joel graduated with a bachelor’s degree in economics from University of Maryland.

Lars Buttler is a Founder and the CEO of Trion World Network, Inc., the publisher and developer of games and original entertainment for the connected world. Trion provides groundbreaking new capabilities and content to revolutionize global entertainment by combining the best elements of online, gaming, and traditional media. Prior to founding Trion, Buttler was the Vice President for Global Online at Electronic Arts, the world’s largest independent developer and publisher of interactive entertainment software.  Buttler led EA’s strategy for online games and services and ran EA’s Online Studio, home to the pioneering Ultima Online MMOG franchise.  Before EA, Buttler served as Vice President for Leveraged Buyouts at the Carlyle Group, the premier global private equity firm, focusing on large-scale investments in entertainment, media, and telecommunications. He holds a Ph.D. in Engineering from Dortmund University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and earned an M.B.A from Harvard Business School.

Tim brings a combination of operational, technical and international business experience to Norwest Venture Partners. Tim focuses on investments in wireless and digital media as well as business development initiatives in Asia-Pacific. Tim has recently invested in and joined the board of directors of 3Jam, Brite Semiconductor and Lumos Labs. He led NVP’s investment in PCH International and also works with the boards of deCarta, Double Fusion and Veveo. 

Prior to joining NVP in 2006, Tim was a principal at Gabriel Venture Partners where he was actively involved in over a dozen wireless-related deals. Tim built Gabriel’s wireless sector practice and helped establish business development capabilities through strong, strategic relationships across the wireless value chain, particularly in Asia-Pacific.

One of the first-generation video game design graduates from USC School of
Cinematic Arts, creator behind the multi award-winning indie game Cloud,
flOw and Flower, co-founder of thatgamecompany, Jenova Chen is dedicated to
expanding the emotional spectrum of video games and making them available
for a much wider audience. Born and raised in Shanghai China, Jenova ventured to the US in 2003. One of his greatest dreams is to bring the best messages to the video game world.
Like what Hayao Miyazaki did to anime, Jenova wants to be one of the heroes who help to mature video games into a form of art and play that can be appreciated and enjoyed by every human being.

As CEO and Founder of Outspark, Susan Choe draws upon her more than 12 years
of international business management in the video game, internet and
financial services industries.  She leads Outspark’s efforts to transform
the traditional gaming model in North America by combining various aspects
of different business segments including portal/community activity,
multiplayer online games and entertainment services into a single online
destination.  Prior to founding Outspark, Choe most recently served as COO
at NHN USA, where she led the US game market entry for Asia’s flagship game
portal, NHN/Hangame. Choe also served in many capacities at Yahoo! including
director of international operations where she supported Yahoo’s 25
international operations.  In addition, she served as international director
of Yahoo! Games, where she defined and implemented the company’s premium
games growth strategy.

N’Gai Croal is a videogame design consultant. Prior to that, he served as the senior writer for technology at Newsweek, where he wrote about consumer technology since joining Newsweek in 1995. In 2006, he launched Level Up, a videogame blog hosted by Newsweek that quickly became an industry must-read. He continues to write a monthly column called Playing In the Dark for the acclaimed U.K. magazine Edge.  N’Gai currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Shawn Fanning is the General Manager at Rupture.  Rupture is Shawn’s latest project, where he takes his experience developing Napster, the first popular peer-to-peer filesharing platform which he created in 1998, and incorporates it into gaming.  Shawn began his career by working as an intern during the summers at his uncle’s internet company, Chess.net and during this work, he wrote the code for Napster, a program that could provide an easy way to download music.  The system launched in early 1999.  Later he appeared on the cover of Wiredmagazine and rose to fame. Soon after, however, Napster was the target of several music industry-backed lawsuits, which ultimately ended up causing the cessation of the service. In 2003, Fanning opened a new company, Snocap and in December 2006, Fanning developed Rupture, which was acquired by Electronic Arts in 2008.

Dennis (a.k.a. Thresh) was previously a die-hard PC gamer as the world champion of Doom, Doom 2, Quake, and Quake 2 and was called the “Michael Jordan of Videogames” by the Wall St. Journal. These days, you’re more likely to find him playing Guitar Hero , Starcraft, Bejeweled 2, and Desktop Tower Defense. Dennis founded Raptr out of his frustration of not being able to easily keep track of his friends playing across so many platforms. Prior to Raptr, Dennis co-founded three successful startups: Xfire, Lithium, and Gamers.com.

Jameson Hsu is Chief Mochi and co-founder of Mochi Media. Prior to founding Mochi Media, Jameson co-founded the award winning interactive design firm WDDG where he led partnerships with major brands such as Kraft, HP, Burger King and many more. Jameson has been focused on gaming and interactive advertising for over 10 years, working closely with Flash developers, industry leading artists, advertising agencies, and Fortune 500 clients to develop innovative marketing and communication solutions.

Geoff Keighley has spent more than half his life covering the videogame business as a journalist, television host, and producer. Today he serve as both host and executive producer of Spike’s GTTV with Geoff Keighley, the #1 rated videogame show, and has an overarching talent and production deal with MTV Networks Entertainment Group. His on-camera work includes GameStop TV in more than 5,000 retail locations around the country, and GameTrailers popular roundtable talk show The Bonus Round. His print journalism in publications such as Entertainment Weekly and Business 2.0 led him to be named one of the top 30 journalists under 30 by NewsBios.com in 2004.  He is also the co-chairmen of the Game Critics Awards, an independent group of journalists who award the annual Best of E3 and Game of the Year awards.

Nick Fortugno is Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Rebel Monkey, Inc. — a NYC-based casual game entertainment company. CampFu, Rebel Monkey’s forthcoming casual MMO, is being made available to the public in February 2009. Built on top of Rebel Monkey’s own multiplayer gaming platform, CampFu is all about co-op games for casual players. Before Rebel Monkey, Fortugno was the Director of Game Design at gameLab, where he was a designer, writer and project manager on dozens of commercial and serious games, and served as lead designer on the downloadable blockbuster Diner Dash and the award-winning serious game Ayiti: The Cost of Life. Nick teaches game design and interactive narrative design at Parsons The New School of Design, and has participated in the construction of the school’s game design curriculum. Nick is also a co-founder of the Come Out and Play street games festival hosted in New York City and Amsterdam since 2006.

Mark is a serial entrepreneur who has founded and sold 3 companies. He started GameDaily and grew it to be one of the largest independent consumer and b2b games content destination and ad networks. It was acquired by AOL in 2006 and Mark served as Publisher of GameDaily at AOL through 2007. Previously, he founded and grew Gigex, the leading free download service for game demos and V-Cast, Inc, a provider of Internet push delivery content which was acquired by Verizon Wireless. He spent 6 years in Europe where he was Managing Director of Teleworld, a division of Philips Media, that developed and operated interactive television entertainment and transaction services with MTV Europe, RTL and other major European broadcasters. Mark’s first venture was launching Sweden’s first chain of cookie stores. In 2008, he co-founded strategic consulting firm, Worlds and Games LLC, focusing on games, community, ads, and virtual worlds growth strategies and tactics. He is currently coaching CEOs and senior executives building their businesses.

Eric is a 30-year veteran of the game industry, serving in capacities ranging from game designer to executive. Since 2002, Eric is or has been a board member of, advisor or consultant to over 25 companies, from seed-stage to public, in the game, virtual world, consumer online, wireless data, and monetization sectors; and to two US venture capital firms. Previously, Eric was co-founder and president of Unplugged Games and of Crossover Technologies, the consumer online pioneer; and president of West End Games, an adventure game company. He also has been a board member for the New York New Media Association and NYU’s Center for Advanced Digital Applications.

His award-winning games include Paranoia, Tales of the Arabian Nights, The Tom Peters Business School in a Box, and MadMaze, the first online game to draw one million players.

Bing was Chief Creative Officer of Electronic Arts from 1998 to 2008, after heading EA marketing and product development off and on since EA’s founding. He joined EA in 1982 and helped write the founding business plan that attracted KPCB as an initial investor. Bing has driven EA’s branding strategy with EA Sports, EA’s pricing strategy for package goods and online games, and has contributed design and marketing on many EA franchises including John Madden Football, The Sims, Sim City, Need for Speed, Tiger Woods Golf, Club Pogo and Command and Conquer. Bing has been a director at Amazon since 2003, and was a founding director of Audible, Inc. In addition to Amazon, Bing serves as a director for Mevio, ng:moco, Inc. and Zynga.  He is also a trustee of the Urban School of San Francisco, and serves on the Yale President’s Advisory Council. Gordon earned an M.B.A. degree from Stanford University, and a B.A. degree from Yale University.

Graham Hopper joined Disney Interactive Studios in October 2002 and as executive vice president and general manager, he oversees product development, manufacturing, licensing, marketing and sales for the interactive entertainment affiliate of The Walt Disney Company. Under Hopper’s leadership, Disney Interactive Studios has substantially grown its video game publishing operations by expanding its handheld video game business, maximizing its Disney branded content and developing new and emerging intellectual properties worldwide.

He is a board member of the video game industry’s Entertainment Software Association (ESA) and the Entertainment Software Review Board (ESRB). Prior to joining Disney Interactive Studios, Hopper served as senior vice president, Global Business Development, for Disney Consumer Products (DCP). He also held other key executive positions for DCP in the United States and Europe and was extensively involved in the growth of Disney businesses in Japan.

Richard manages AMD’s worldwide developer relations engineering group which works with PC games developers to help them get the very best from AMD’s GPUs.  More than 13 years in the PC graphics hardware business mean that Richard is uniquely able to comment on trends in PC graphics architecture.

Mitch Lasky has spent more than two decades in the mobile gaming, new media and interactive entertainment business.  Prior to joining Benchmark Capital, Mitch served as executive vice president of Mobile and Online at Electronic Arts.   Previously, he was chairman and chief executive officer of JAMDAT Mobile, Inc, the leading global publisher of wireless entertainment applications, which was acquired by EA in 2005.
 
Prior to JAMDAT, Mitch served as general manager of eCompanies Wireless LLC, an Internet business incubator. He also spent five years at Activision, most recently serving as executive vice president of Worldwide Studios. In that role he was responsible for product development, business development and global operations. Earlier in his career, Mitch practiced law, worked at the Walt Disney Company and started a massively multiplayer online game company.

Elan started his career at the Microsoft Game Studio where he was a Lead Designer for the Xbox launch portfolio.  Next, he co-founded and served as the Vice President of Design for 42 Entertainment (the company behind I Love Bees, The Vanishing Point, Nine Inch Nails: Year Zero, and The Dark Knight.)  He was also the Co-Founder of EDOC Laundry, and most recently the Co-Founder and Chief Designer at Fourth Wall Studios.

Jeremy Liew invests primarily in the Internet and mobile sectors, with a particular interest in social media, commerce, gaming and methods for increasing monetization. He joined Lightspeed in early 2006. Previously, Jeremy was with AOL, first as SVP of Corporate Development and Chief of Staff to the CEO and then as General Manager of Netscape. Jeremy started working in the consumer Internet industry as an early employee of CitySearch in 1996, where he held a variety of sales management, operational and business development roles. He was also a management consultant at McKinsey & Company. Jeremy holds an MBA from Stanford and a BA/BSc from the Australian National University in Linguistics and Pure Mathematics.

Jamil works in service of the game industry.  At Electronic Arts, he is the Outreach Director, Business Development for EA Partners, connecting the best independent visionary game creators with the industry-leading production and commercial power of EA.  Previously, he was for several years the Executive Director of the Game Developers Conference, the world’s largest professionals-only event in the game industry, where he managed the financial and creative direction of this multi-million dollar learning/inspiring/networking show.  Prior to that, he was Editor-in-Chief of Game Developer magazine, the leading B2B publication in the game space.  Jamil is currently serving on the Board of Directors for the charity organization One Big Game and the International Game Developers Association, as well as various game industry event advisory boards, including GamesBeat.  He is also working on getting his first science fiction novel published.

Evan, along with his slightly older twin brother, was born in 1972 in Brooklyn, New York. After a culturally arid existence in the ‘burbs, he escaped to New York University’s journalism program. Countless ramen meals later, he wound up at Teen People magazine, where he helped to initiate the magazine’s videogame and tech coverage. Since then, he has gone on to write about videogames, technology, comic books and pop culture for Entertainment Weekly, Essence, AOL, the Washington Post, Stuff and Complex. Evan has a B.A. from New York University, majored in Political Science with a minor in Journalism and Africana Studies. Evan considers himself lucky enough to be a professional nerd, making a living writing about all the obsessions he was teased about. Now former jocks beg him for free videogames.

Jason Oberfest serves as Vice President of Business Development for MySpace. In this role, Jason is responsible for structuring and negotiating deals to drive revenue and support the launch of innovative new products. Jason is also the General Manager of MySpaceID and oversees the commercial programs that are offered to the developer community as part of the MySpace Open Platform and MySpaceID.

Prior to MySpace, Jason served as Managing Director of Business Development and Product Management for Los Angeles Times Interactive and from 1999-2005 Jason served as Vice President of Strategic Planning at Blast Radius, an interactive agency.

Mr. Pachter is an analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities providing coverage of the Entertainment Software Publishing and Retail and Movies and Entertainment sectors. Previously, Mr. Pachter spent two years as the Director of Research at Wedbush Morgan Securities. Before joining Wedbush Morgan Securities, Mr. Pachter worked as a Director at Management Resource Center, a middlemarket investment bank. Prior to that, Mr. Pachter spent 15 years in various financial and management positions at Atlantic Richfield Company, most recently as Director of Strategic Planning. Mr. Pachter brings over 20 years of experience as a finance professional to Wedbush Morgan Securities.

Mr. Pachter holds an M.B.A. from the Anderson School at the University of  California at Los Angeles, a juris doctor from Pepperdine University, an LL.M. in Taxation from the University of Florida, and a bachelor’s in Political Science from California State University, Northridge.

Rajat Paharia is the founder and Chief Product Officer of Bunchball, creators of Nitro - the platform that’s driving user engagement on sites across the internet. Nitro distills concepts from behavioral economics and game design into a web service that major media companies, social networks, ISPs, and others are using to drive user behavior and increase engagement on their web sites.

Rajat’s skill set combines a unique understanding of technology and design that stems from a four year career at design firm IDEO where he was co-director of the Software Experiences Practice. While there he worked with clients including AT&T Wireless, Avaya, Microsoft, McDonald’s, HP and Philips. Before IDEO, Rajat worked at Philips Consumer Electronics, IBM Research and ViewStar. He has a Masters degree in Computer Science from Stanford University, with a focus on Human Computer Interaction, and an undergraduate degree from the University of California Berkeley.

Susan Panico leads the team responsible for creating a dynamic hub for online and digital entertainment delivery services for the company.  In her role as senior director, Susan oversees the network business strategy, operations, content strategy and marketing across PlayStation Network services, including the PlayStation Store and PlayStation Home. Panico has played an integral role in launching several groundbreaking services for PlayStation Network most recently, the video delivery service and the company’s first virtual and social gaming community, PlayStation Home. Panico is also responsible for building PlayStation Network’s community to more than 9 million users in North America.

Mark Pincus is a leading Internet entrepreneur, having founded and established four successful companies.  His latest venture Zynga marries his knowledge of social networks with his desire to create the next mass market video game phenomenon. Zynga has received $39 million in funding and has 5.5 million daily active users playing their social games.

Mark founded Tribe Networks, one of the first social networks in 2003.  Prior to Tribe, he was the founder and CEO of SupportSoft (Nasdaq: SPRT), the world’s leading provider of support automation software.  Prior to SupportSoft, Mark co-founded Freeloader, the first consumer push information service.

Shervin Pishevar is the CEO and co-founder of Social Gaming Network (SGN), which he helped incubate from within Webs Inc. Since its inception in September 2007, SGN has grown to more than a billion page views per month and more than 50 million users across all major social networks. In the last four months, Shervin conceived of a way to leverage the iPhone’s accelerometer technology to launch a series of sports games, including iBowl, iGolf, iBaseball and is just about to launch iBasketball.

He has held leadership roles with some of the world’s most successful technology firms including Intel (key marketing roles) and Apple (Product Marketing Director for Macintosh). Mr. Rizzo was Vice President of Global Market Planning for Oracle and has held CEO- or VP-level positions with a wide range of consumer technology, new media, software and semiconductor companies, including Weitek (the first 3D graphics technology for PC gaming), Cahoots (a precursor of Skype) and Tripath Technology (consumer audio electronics). As founder and CEO of the strategic consulting firm Catapult Partners, he advised leading companies such as nVidia, Hewlett Packard and Goal.com and is a board advisor to Klicksports, Moxair and ioCast. Mr. Rizzo holds a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

Janice Roberts taps her vast experience as a global communications executive and a veteran early-stage entrepreneur to focus on Mayfield’s investments in networking components and systems, mobile communications and consumer-oriented companies. Janice serves on the boards of companies including Quickoffice, Pixim, PlayFirst, Sennari, and Ubicom. Janice’s notable investments include Convedia (acquired by RadiSys); Mobile 365 (acquired by Sybase); and Peribit Networks (acquired by Juniper Networks). Prior to joining Mayfield, Janice built a successful early-stage investment portfolio as president of 3Com Ventures. She also led 3Com’s global marketing and business development operation and ran a number of the company’s new business initiatives, including the highly successful Palm Computing subsidiary. Previously, Janice was managing director and president of BICC Data Networks LTD., which was acquired by 3Com in 1992. Janice holds an honors degree in commerce (economics and finance) from the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom..

Ira Rubenstein has built a career on identifying and implementing new marketing and distribution opportunities for entertainment across a wide array of platforms.   In his role at Marvel Rubenstein is responsible for the company’s Global digital strategy and implementation for all of Marvel’s properties across digital and games channels.  Prior to Marvel, Rubenstein spent 12 years with Sony, most recently as executive vice president of Sony Pictures Digital where he was responsible for overseeing the division’s production efforts to extend Sony Pictures properties into the digital marketplace through SonyPictures.com, mobile games and personalization products, casual games, and innovative strategic partnerships.  Rubenstein managed the digital growth of the studio’s most important brands including Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! - leading the expansion of these properties into broadband, interactive television, mobile, and the PSP and PS3 platforms.

Rubenstein was recently included on the highly regarded “Digital 50″ list, a distinction given to fifty new media innovators by The Producers Guild of America’s New Media Council. Recognition for his work also includes Webby Awards, a Mobie award for games, a Gold Clio and several Key Art Awards.

Gregg holds responsibility for Nokia’s global third party games publishing business. He is responsible for driving business opportunities for 3rd party publishers through Nokia platforms and channels.  Gregg has held senior marketing, software development, and sales positions within multiple interactive software and consumer products companies. His background includes launching LEGOs North American Media Division in 1997, where he was Director of Interactive Publishing. He has also served as Director of Consumer Products for the National Football League, where he managed interactive products, including the NFLs video game properties. Gregg joined Nokia in 2003.

You might think Curt Schilling’s biggest calling in life has been Major League Baseball, but the three-time World Series champion and six-time MLB All-Star is equally passionate about video games. When he’s not on the mound breaking curses, you can often find Curt playing an MMO on his laptop. It’s something he’s been doing since he was a teenager. Curt became involved on the business end of the industry over a decade ago in a relationship with Sony Online Entertainment. In 2003 and 2004 Curt served as the official spokesperson for the 3DO Company’s High Heat Baseball. Curt brought this love for gaming to life with the inception of 38 Studios in 2006.

In addition to this industry experience, Curt brings another unique perspective to the table: he has the instinct to recognize talent and lead a championship team. Curt and his wife Shonda are passionate philanthropists and have raised over $10 million to fight ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease), through Curt’s Pitch for ALS, as well as encouraging awareness for sun protection through the SHADE Foundation. Respected worldwide for his dedication to winning and his commitment to philanthropic causes, Curt is assembling a team to create something extraordinary with 38 Studios’ premier title.

A 13-year veteran of the gaming media, Peer Schneider is the SVP of Content & Publisher of IGN Entertainment’s network of websites. Born and raised in Germany, Peer lived in Japan for many years, where he studied at Tokyo’s Sophia University and worked on projects for a variety of media companies, including Sony Music and MTV. After moving to the United States, he spent two years at the Graduate School of Journalism at Berkeley in 1997, then joined publisher Imagine Media (now Future Networks) as the editor-in-chief of N64.com. Two years later, Peer took on the role of editorial manager and has been responsible for new site launches and the overall direction of IGN.com, GameSpy, TeamXbox and other sites in the IGN family ever since. He is a founding member of Snowball.com, which later changed its name to IGN Entertainment and is now part of Fox Interactive Media. Peer was voted one of the top 10 media influencers on the Internet by Adweek Magazine.

Kristian is the CEO and co-founder of Playfish, one of the largest and fastest growing social games companies. Prior to Playfish Kristian served as Managing Director of Europe of Glu Mobile (Nasdaq: GLUU), and was a co-founder of Glu Mobile Europe (Macrospace Ltd) in 2001. During his tenure at Glu, Kristian led the rapid growth of Glu’s European business, the creation and distribution of 40+ mobile titles, as well as being a contributor to the company’s successful IPO in Q1 2007. He holds an MSc from London School of Economics and an MA (Cantab) in Economics from Cambridge University.

Adam Sessler is a respected veteran of the gaming industry and the talented Host and Managing Editor of G4’s “X-Play,” the most watched videogame series on television. Throughout his more than ten-year career in videogame-related television, Sessler has conducted interviews with the industry’s biggest luminaries, secured an unprecedented number of exclusives and broken numerous news stories on the show. He can often be seen speaking out against censorship and misrepresentation of games in the mainstream press, fearlessly taking on industry critics like Jack Thompson.  In 2006, he was named one of the top 50 games journalists by Next Generation Magazine and today, he regularly lends his expertise to CNN, MSNBC, AP, Maxim Radio, and a broad range of videogame media across all platforms.

John Smedley is President of Sony Online Entertainment. Mr. Smedley is responsible for the company’s overall vision and growth, as well as management of SOE’s hundreds of employees. Mr. Smedley has over a decade’s worth of experience in the interactive entertainment industry, including positions with ATG, Knight Technologies and five years with 989 Studios as Director of Development. Mr. Smedley was instrumental in the creation and development of the original EverQuest and was co-founder of Verant Interactive, Inc., which became Sony Online Entertainment Inc. (SOE) after it was purchased by Sony Pictures Entertainment in 2000. Under his leadership, Sony Online Entertainment has grown from a small developer with a single online PC game to an industry leader with hundreds of thousands of subscribers and multiple titles published on the PC, PlayStation 2, PSP, wireless and handheld platforms.

Randy has been with Intel for 13 years and has spent most of his time working with PC gaming industry.  Randy is responsible for managing director of Intel’s worldwide go to market strategies for consumer desktop and notebook gaming platforms.  In 2008 Randy became the first President of the newly formed PC Gaming Alliance.  The PC Gaming Alliance mission is to become the authoritative voice of PC gaming world-wide. The PC Gaming Alliance conducts research and promotes the PC as a gaming platform.  Randy is also the President of the Recreational Intel Gaming Group (RiGG), a non-profit club, that conducts seventeen medium to large “LANFEST” gaming events per year.

Since joining Trinity Ventures in 1996, Gus Tai has specialized in funding early stage companies pioneering new market categories. He particularly enjoys getting involved at the time of company formation, working with founders to help build the team and refine the business model. Prior to Trinity Ventures, Gus began his operational career in engineering management at Digital Equipment Corporation. He also worked at Bain & Company, consulting to technology firms on new product development and business strategy. Gus is a Director of the MIT Club of Northern California and the Chinese Software Professionals Association. 
 
Gus focuses on consumer services and consumer enabling technologies, and maintains an interest in enterprise software.  In the consumer services space, Gus led Trinity’s investment in Blue Nile (NASDAQ: Nile), Hidden City Games, eSurance (acquired by White Mountains Insurance: WTM), mSpot, Photobucket (acquired by Fox Interactive Media:  NWS), PlayFirst, Trion World Network and Wetpaint.

For the past 20 years, Chris Taylor has been one of the game industry’s most imaginative and dynamic visionaries. The creator of the first true next-generation RTS game, Total Annihilation, Taylor enjoys an industry-wide reputation as an innovator who is able to push both technology and gameplay to their limits.

Taylor founded Gas Powered Games in 1998, where he currently serves as the CEO and Creative Director. To date, GPG has released Dungeon Siege, Dungeon Siege II, Dungeon Siege II: Broken World and oversaw the development of Dungeon Siege: Throne of Agony for the PSP. In 2007, the company released its critically acclaimed RTS game, Supreme Commander and its expansion, Forged Alliance. In 2009, GPG will launch the innovative action/RTS game Demigod. GPG also has a number of unannounced projects in development.

Min-Liang Tan is the Creative Director and CEO of Razer where he directs and oversees the design and development of all Razer products. Razer, a globally renowned brand for gaming peripherals, pioneered the high precision gaming hardware industry with its ground breaking work in human-computer interface technologies. Min-Liang and his team conceptualize and design products for gamers by integrating cutting-edge technology with ergonomics and aesthetics to revolutionize gameplay mechanics. Razer is currently an industry leader in the gaming peripheral space with patents to numerous innovations developed by its in-house R&D team.

Alex Terry is the President and CEO of NeoEdge, a digital media company that enhances casual games with advertising, analytics and community enablement features.  Mr. Terry is responsible for steering the company’s global vision, driving growth, fostering innovation and overseeing the strategic direction and executive management team of NeoEdge. 

Mr. Terry joined NeoEdge from Time Warner, where he was Vice President and General Manager of AOL’s Voice Services division.  He successfully built, launched, and achieved profitability for AOL’s portfolio of Voice businesses. Prior to AOL, Mr. Terry was Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of ThinkLink® (acquired by Microsoft).  An early Internet pioneer, Alex was Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of RockWeb™, an online music company with Grammy award winning and independent clients. Mr. Terry also spent several years developing scalable full-text search and digital imaging systems.

Williams manages the company’s dedicated games sites, subscription game services, game licensing and self-publishing businesses. Online services in his group include AddictingGames.com, Shockwave, NickArcade, and educational games site MyNoggin and related premium services. He also works in partnership with Nickelodeon’s Consumer Products division to increase the company’s retail games business around hit franchises like SpongeBob SquarePants and iCarly and newer, original properties like Shockwave’s Carrie the Caregiver.

Previously as Senior Vice President of Shockwave and AddictingGames, Williams led AddictingGames to become the number-one independent gaming site for teens since February 2007, grew its library to more than 3,000 games and has overseen annual revenue growth rates on the combined sites of more than 30% for four consecutive years. AddictingGames and Shockwave are top 10 games sites in the US and host hundreds of the web’s most popular online and downloadable games and creativity applications.

Michel Tombroff oversees the overall management of Softkinetic and brings more then 17 years of experience in the software industry to his current role. Prior to joining Softkinetic, Tombroff served as vice president at Mathon Systems, the information risk management company. His past experiences include an illustrious seven years at TIBCO Software as vice president of sales. Tombroff spent eight years at Chorus Systems, a real-time operating systems company that was eventually acquired by Sun Microsystems in 1996, where he served as director of engineering for four years before he was promoted to director of business development.

Susan Wu is currently the CEO of gaming startup ohai. She was previously a principal at silicon valley venture fund Charles River Ventures where she focused on social media and consumer Internet investments.  She has 12 years of operating experience working with early stage technology ventures. Susan was 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 ever since.