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.

Share This

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.

Share This

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.

Share This

Share This

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

Share This

Joshua Green, who runs the Convergence Culture Consortium at MIT, was an audience favorite last year, with 93% of the audience rating his presentation as either “Great” or “Good”.

Joshua says ”We have much new work I can report on” at Inverge 2008 on Sept. 4+5 this year.  I can’t wait.

Below is a clip from Joshua’s presentation last year at Inverge 2007. You can view the rest of the presentation on Joshua’s blog.

Share This

I met with Cheryl Birch, who gave me a tour of their facility (see below for photos) and then sat down for a great discussion with Bill Swartout, Dirctor of Technology and employee #1 at the ICT.  Bill has a facinating background and we discovered that in different ways we both shared a transition from entertainment to computer science and then back to entertainment-related technology in our careers.

I’m happy to report that after this conversation Bill and I both decided that it would be great to have him as a presenter at Inverge 2008 to talk about the convergence of physical + virtual.

As a fan of Star Trek (a great example of a transmedia property) it was fun for me to visit the ICT because one vision that drives some of their research is how to eventually make something like Star Trek’s holodeck a reality.  Also, their offices were designed by Herman Zimmerman, production designer for several incarnations of Star Trek on TV and film.  With all the oak and metal, it was sort of like the Nike World Campus meets Star Trek: The Next Generation’s briefing room.

Bill oversees various projects at the ICT including virtual humans, virtual worlds, immersion, games and simulations.  They have also collaborated with Hollywood visual effects supervisors on such groundbreaking movies at The Matrix and SpiderMan 2.

Here are some photos I took on my visit:

Virtual human research

Conference room designed by Star Trek production designer Herman Zimmerman

A place to relax after staring at pixels for too long.  Notice any resemblance to Ten-Forward?

Bill Swartout, Director of Technology at the USC ICT and scheduled Inverge 2008 presenter

Share This

Marc Scarpa–who I connected with through Alison Savitch and Elaine Spooner with the Producers Guild of America New Media Council–is a is a veteran director and producer of live interactive media. His most recent directing credits include, MySpace LIVE! a seven hour live High definition transmission on MySpace that celebrated community through
individual expression.   He also several acts appearing on the LiveNation Verizon VCAST Mobile performance series.

Paul Matthaeus is the founder and Chief Creative Officer of DIGITALKITCHEN, an agency based in NYC, Chicago and Seattle.  Paul developed the innovative Brand Theatre(TM) concept that sits at the convergence of advertising, content and interactivity.

Paul’s clients include AT&T, Coca-Cola, Dell, Foster’s, HP and Home Depot.

Share This

Andy oversees worldwide operations for Disney Consumer Products, the division that is responsible for toys, interactive games, electronics, books, fine art, apparel, etc.

I look forward to hearing Andy discuss how invergence affects these various products lines, especially how the convergence of virtual and physical is impacting games, toys and electronics.

To say up-t0-date on Inverge 2008 as we book additional speakers and registration opens, subscribe to our email list at www.inverge.com.

Share This

Share This