I received an email today confirming that one of the highest rated presenters at last year’s Inverge conference is returning to present at Inverge 2008.

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.

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I recently spent some time at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies in Marina Del Rey.  This is a group of very smart people working on some very cool invergence projects!

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

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We recently added 2 exciting speakers to the Inverge 2008 roster.   Both are national leaders in their respective field and have done pioneering invergence work.

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.

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Yesterday we confirmed Andy Mooney, Chairman of Consumer Products at The Walt Disney Company, as a speaker at Inverge 2008 on Sept. 4 & 5 in Portland, OR.

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.

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In a recent blog post, Joshua Green, MIT Convergence Culture Consortium researcher (and InVerge 2007 speaker) has some recommended alternate viewing during the dry season of the WGA strike:  footage from his Inverge 2007 talk and an interview during InVerge with fellow speaker Mark Deuze.

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