I recently received an email inquiry from the people who manage speaking engagements for Tony Uphoff, the CEO of TechWeb, a United Business Media company (includes CMP, PR Newswire, etc.).  They heard about Inverge: the interactive convergence conference from a colleague in New York and after reading all about the event they saw it as a great speaking opportunity for Tony.

After reviewing it, Tony agreed and we have confirmed him as a keynote presenter at Inverge 2008 on Sept. 4+5 in Portland, Oregon. This is great industry recognition for this relatively new conference.

Tony has the distinction of having run three of the top five B2B media brands in history during the peak of their reach, revenues and profits:  InformationWeek, The Hollywood Reporter and PC Week.  His breadth of experience, knowledge and insights in the space where media, entertainment and technology converge is a perfect fit for what Inverge is about and he’ll bring a lot to the table for Inverge attendees. 

TechWeb brands range from global face-to-face events Interop, Web 2.0 Summit, Black Hat and VoiceCon; online resources such as the TechWeb Network, Light Reading, Dark Reading, Intelligent Enterprise, Byte & Switch, InformationWeek.com, bMighty and Financial Technology brands; and the market leading, award-winning InformationWeek magazine.

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One could argue that mobile phones represent the best current example of an invergence device.  So it has been a goal of mine to find a good presenter from Nokia, the world’s leading mobile phone producer and 5th most valued brand, to speak at the Inverge conference about the future of mobile phones as it relates to interactive convergence.

I’m happy to report that the goal has been achieved and that Nokia’s Karl Long has confirmed as a presenter.

Karl is the Product Manager for Ovi, Nokia’s relatively new portal for all Nokia data and content services (ovi means “door” in Finnish).  His role also makes him responsible for mobile games at Nokia.

Karl writes a blog about about the intersection of marketing, social media and customer experience at ExperienceCurve.com.

I am really looking forward to what Karl has to say at Inverge.

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Got some great news today from JupiterResearch President David Schatsky.   He confirmed that David Card, VP & Research Director at JupiterResearch, is available to present at Inverge 2008.

David’s research focus is the media and music industries, with particular emphasis on cross-media programming, social media, audience segmentation – including teens – and online portals and networks.  This is a great addition to the program.

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I invited Scott Kveton, chairman of the OpenID Foundation and VP of Open Platforms at Vidoop, to speak at Inverge 2008 about the convergence of social Web apps, authentication systems and data and he graciously accepted.  I look forward to his talk because there is a bunch of activity in this space and it will affect us all.

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Ed Lantz is an expert and visionary in immersive art and entertainment.  I had a great conversation with him recently about how the computer is breaking out of the box to surround us.  This is a great fit for our conference on interactive convergence.  I think what Ed has to say and the work he has done will make a fascinating presentation at Inverge 2008 so I booked him as a presenter.

Ed is the President & CTO of Vortex Immersion Media and the Founder & Chair of the Harmony Channel.

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