Always Top-Table Speakers at IMMERSION

Matthew Jeffrey - Electronic Arts

Gina Fegan - South East Media Network

Justin Bovington - CEO, Rivers Run Red

Justin Bovington has been instrumental in developing some of the world's major virtual brand launches. His company, Rivers Run Red, is one of the most sought-after creative marketing agencies in Europe, with clients including Adidas, Disney, vodafone, EMI, BBC and Carat. The virtual development division of Rivers Run Red was the first agency to create an in-world presence within the virtual world platform Second Life.

David Burden - Daden Ltd

David Burden started his career in army communications managing a range of mobile and wireless systems in a variety of challenging situations. After being "demobbed" in 1990, David joined Ascom, the Swiss telecoms company, and then Aseriti, the 70m turnover IT arm of Severn Trent plc. During the Dot Com boom David founded a wireless data company developing both WAP and Voice XML systems, as well as founding the Midlands chapter of the First Tuesday Networking organisation. David founded Daden, an Information 2.0 Consultancy in 1994.

David has been involved in virtual worlds since the mid 1990s, having created early spaces using VRML and played in several early 3D communal worlds. David's first virtual home was at Retsmah Crossing in Alpha World and he spent much of the early naughties hoverboarding off the slopes of There's giant Volcano. David has been in Second Life since its inception where his real-life and SL business Daden Limited helps businesses and organisations explore the social and commercial potential of virtual worlds. David also has a keen interest in artificial intelligence and Daden have an AI platform for use both in SL and on the web.

Dave Taylor MSc MBCS—Imperial College, London

Dave (SL Davee Commerce) is a Virtual Worlds Project Leader for the Department of Biosurgery and Surgical Technology at Imperial College, London. He previously initiated and ran the UK National Physical Laboratory's Virtual Worlds business, and is a founder of the SciLands, a Second Life continent for Science and Technology. His new media projects include 'Second Health', a virtual hospital to engage clinician and patient communities (http://www.secondhealth.org.uk) In previous lives Dave has been Vice President of Global Web for a leading multinational and managed Letraset's European Software business, working with Adobe Systems, Pixar and Apple Computer in the 80's and 90's. Dave has a BSc in Mathematics and an MSc in Experimental Psychology. Blog: http://www.nanodave.com Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/nanodave 

Rob Edmonds - SRI Consulting

Rob Edmonds has worked as a writer, analyst and consultant at SRI Consulting Business Intelligence (SRIC-BI) for over 10 years. He is joint founder of the Virtual Worlds@Work Consortium that SRIC-BI launched in 2007 to help companies explore and exploit new virtual worlds opportunities and now writes many of the Consortium’s publications. Rob has presented at virtual worlds and eLearning workshops and conferences around the world and written numerous reports on topics including eLearning, artificial intelligence, Web services, handheld devices and pervasive computing. Before joining SRIC-BI, Rob worked at IBM Global Services.

Ian Hughes – Feeding Edge

A former IBM Consulting IT Specialist who has worked on leading edge emerging technologies for the past 17 years, he is a Metaverse specialist having led IBM into the metaverse for the past few years understanding the social, business and technical implications.

Kevin Williams, KWP Consulting

Kevin Williams founded KWP Limited as an international consulting operation, assisting clients in the amusement and attractions industry to apply cutting-edge new technologies. KWP advises a wide list of clients and is also contributing editor of the international Out-of-Home entertainment industries leading subscription information eNewsletter service - The Stinger Report (www.thestingerreport.com).

Kevin was involved with the launch of immersive entertainment systems, initially through Thomson Entertainment and the world’s first arcade simulator, and then in the field of virtual reality with the UK’s leading software house Division Limited. He has been an Imagineer for The Walt Disney Company, specifically tasked on their emergence into the Location Based-Entertainment (LBE) field with DisneyQuest; managed projects as an executive for Angel Studios and established an amusement division for European consumer software publisher Infogrames (INSKOR Entertainment Ltd).

Ron Edwards, MD Ambient Performance

Ambient Performance is a catalyst for results-based learning innovation, specializing in mobile learning, performance support and game technology applications. Ron has over fourteen years of experience in corporate training and several game-based projects in development. His approach to mobile learning and gaming are enabling organizations to bring fun and anywhere, anytime engagement to performance development and education.

Ambient Performance is the European distributor of Forterra Systems immersive 3D virtual environment for live training and collaboration.

Speakers have included:

KEYNOTE - Lord Puttnam of Queensgate

Lord David Puttnam worked for ten years in the advertising industry and spent thirty years as an independent film producer. His films include Local Hero, Chariots of Fire, Midnight Express and Bugsy Malone. He was Chair and Chief Executive Officer of Columbia Pictures from 1986 to 1988, was Vice President and Chair of Trustees at BAFTA from 1994 to 2004 and served as a nonexecutive of Anglia Television for 17 years.

Lord Puttnam retired from film production in 1998 and now focuses on his work in education. In July 2002, he was appointed President of UNICEF UK, and has since played a role in promoting UNICEF's advocacy, awareness and fundraising objectives. He is a non-executive Director of Channel 4, and was awarded a CBE in 1982, received a Knighthood in 1995 and was appointed to the House of Lords in 1997.

CONFERENCE CHAIR - Simon Le Jeune – Red Carpet Consulting

A multi award winning commercial development and marketing expert Simon has been a speaker at various conferences on games and education and building Britain’s brainpower as well as serving on various steering groups he was also the founder of the Governments award winning “Computer Club for Girls” project finally attracting £8.5 Million in Government funding. He is currently developing a new Education concept for the developing world as well as an Olympic legacy project. He has recently been appointed as an e-learning, games and education advisor to the National Association of Gifted Children.

Steve Prentice - VP & Gartner Fellow

Stephen Prentice is a distinguished analyst and chief of research for cross-research projects and special research themes at Gartner. He takes a specific interest in the long-term future of technology - looking at the intersection of technology, business and society. Current research interests include the consumerization of IT and the growth of virtual worlds and social networking and their impact on businesses.

Kevin Corti - PIXELearning

Kevin has been working in the technology-based learning space for over a decade. He established Netucate Online, an eLearning development studio, in 1997 which later became part of the Einstein Group Plc (a digital TV broadcaster & video-based CPD provider) whereupon he was employed to run the group’s eLearning division; Einstein Learning. He has been a gamer since the late 70s and it was in the late 90s that he first started to experiment with using computer games to enhance eLearning. In 2002 he co-founded PIXELearning which specialises in applying games and simulations for business education and corporate training. PIXELearning has since turned over close to £1million, has several blue chip clients, including Coca Cola, a major US retail banking chain and a US ‘Big 4’ accountancy firm, and has invested over £400k in the development of LearningBeans® the company’s proprietary online business simulation engine.

Dylan Nagel - Paladin Studios

Dylan is Vice President of Business Development. His responsibilities include consultancy, account management, product management and sales. He is the conduit between clients and the production team, ensuring optimal understanding.

With a Master's Degree in Archeology, Dylan is trained in examining human behavior from many different perspectives.

As a true digital native, Dylan has been playing and creating computer games from a young age. His expert knowledge in the fields of entertainment games, virtual worlds and serious games are put to good use during consultancy sessions as well as public presentations at seminars and conventions.

Derk de Geus - Paladin Studios

Derk blends creativity with strategic thinking and entrepreneurship. In his current position as CEO, he makes sure that the core values and commercial health of Paladin are preserved and developed.

Derk has been an entrepreneur nearly all his life. At art school he fell in love with 3D animation and programming. This set the stage for several freelance projects and a job as 3D developer. In this phase he met Dylan, with whom he picked up several freelance projects and later founded Paladin Studios.

In his day-to-day work, Derk works with clients, stakeholders, partners, as well as the marketing, sales, operations and development teams. He is responsible for forging and maintaining strategic partnerships, and is the public face of the company together with Dylan. Derk has given several keynote presentations on serious games, technology and trends of the games industry.

Margaret Robertson

A historian by training, Margaret Robertson has written for many specialist magazines, mainstream publications like FHM, T3 and the BBC, and four years wrote for, and ultimately edited, Edge, the world’s most respected videogame magazine. She has also helped programme both the Edinburgh and GameCity games festivals, and is a regular conference speaker. Now, as a consultant, she advises companies like EA, Sony and Channel 4 on game design and industry trends

Lizzie Jackson - University of Westminster

After a long career in radio production at the BBC and as Managing Director of Soundbite Productions Limited, Lizzie returned to the BBC to launch and manage the Corporation's social media on www.bbc.co.uk. She then worked across the BBC overseeing their internet safety initiatives. Producers in her teams were nominated for the Guardian Unlimited 'Race in the Media Award' and The Internet Service Provider's Association award for safety on the internet. Lizzie is now a researcher at the University of Westminster, specialising in participatory and social media. Her current project examines public service virtual environments for children and adults (funded by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council); she is also completing doctoral research on the facilitation of public service participatory media. Lizzie was named 'One of the 100 Innovators of the UK Internet Decade' by NOP World and e-consultancy.com in October, 2004. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) in 2007.

Dan Clapson - Incredible Sims

Dan Clapson has a unique career path spanning more than 25 years in technology. His first commercial venture in 1983, at the tender age of 13, was programming a video game for Atari. He continued in the 1980's and 90's to develop many popular video games, including Back to the Future II and Cool Spot.

In 2006 Dan founded Incredible Box, a software development team that create cutting edge software. His team develop advanced software applications including video games, serious games, GPS systems, railway safety management and stock exchange screen dealing systems.

In 2007 Dan founded Incredible Sims, a serious games company that produce outstanding simulators using video game techniques. Incredible Sims specialise in the creation of realistic 3D environments, using their purpose built Incredible Sims Toolkit.

Gilbert Reveillon - Director Strategic Marketing, LaSer (Lafayette Services)

Gilbert was Managing Director Europe for EuropebyAir.com an online travel supplier based in Paris. He has worked for EVIAN (Danon Group); was Marketing Manager for the high speed train Eurostar and Virgin Executive Aviation. He created the 2008 IntraVerse awards. The awards ceremony took place in real-life and Second Life in 2007 in the presence of several blue chip company directors. Philip Rosedale, founder of Linden Labs, was Chairman of the ceremony. Google provided the Intraverse trophies.

Kam Star, PlayGen

Dubbed the "intrepid game developer", he works with cutting edge 3d interactive media, developing learning environments and applications. He has been involved in the development of projects for a host of blue chip and internationally renowned organisations such as the BBC, Cadburys, UNESCO, McKinsey, Oxford and Cambridge Universities, The Royal Air Force and US Air Force Europe.

Kevin Farrar - IBM UK & Ireland

In his role as Skills Leader for IBM in the UK & Ireland, Kevin Farrar has responsibility for IBM's skills collaboration programmes with universities and IT professionals already in industry: the IBM Academic Initiative and IBM developerWorks. Through these programmes IBM is working with thousands of academics, students and IT professionals around the world to help them develop the open-standards skills they’ll need to compete in the ever-changing technology workplace.

• Jim Purbrick, Linden Lab
• Clare Rees, Linden Lab

Kevin McNulty - President, Coole Immersive (formerly known as Terris-Hill Productions) & Founding Member of Serious Games Association Canada

Kevin is a founding partner of Coole Immersive, a recognized leader in the field of Serious Games, and has spoken at conferences in Canada, the U.S. and the Middle East. Coole Immersive, Inc develops serious games for the Oil & Gas and Mining industries.

Donald Clark

Donald Clark was CEO and one of the original founders of Epic Group plc, which established itself as the leading company in the UK e-learning market. It was floated on the Stock Market in 1996 and sold in 2005. Describing himself as ‘free from the tyranny of employment’, he is now a board member of Ufi (learndirect), LINE Communications, Caspian Learning, Brighton Festival, and a school governor. He has produced over 40 papers, dozens of book reviews and many articles on e-learning. He is a regular speaker at national and international conferences and has won Best Speaker awards at several conferences.

John Nordlinger - Program Manager, Microsoft Research

John has been a Principal Engineer with Digital Equipment Corporation and Technical Director at Oracle and lead the Microsoft SQL Server enterprise effort when joining Microsoft a number of years later.

Since joining Microsoft Research, John has worked with Academic Institutions in the Northeast and India. He produces The MSR gaming kit and, manages the MSR initiative on gaming in CS. John serves as co-chair for the annual GDCSE game cruise and the related Call for Papers. John's current focus is games for learning. He hopes to collaborate with others on developing a game to help younger students with algebra and geometry and older students with the GRE.

Professor Alan Hatcher - CEO, Homeland Security Group

Alan is a specialist in Global Security and Counter Terrorism. He has developed specialist skills across a wide range of security related areas. Alan has an exceptional ability to cross boundaries between cultural and political beliefs and has an established track record in the management of complex and dangerous tasks.

Claus Nehmzow - Method

Claus is MD of Method, a leading consultancy in training and visualisation digital content for major corporations. Previously he headed up PA Consulting's thinking in business applications of participatory media and virtual world like Second Life. He has almost twenty-five years experience in technology and strategy consulting as well as operational management experience.

Claus has broad international experience in global business development and consulting as well as from having lived for many years each in Germany, Switzerland, USA, and the UK. Claus was COO/ International Business Development director at mobile startup Shazam, Managing Director of Viant Germany, an Internet consultancy, Partner and Vice President at Booz-Allen & Hamilton in London and New York, Senior Manager at accenture/Andersen Consulting.

Gobion Rowlands - Chairman & CO-founder, Red Redemption

Gobion co-founded Red Redemption in 2000. Having designed his first game at age 10, Gobion has never lost his passion for games projects, and his extensive background in games design and project management (with brief foray into forensic psychology) gives him a unique insight into games and learning. Gobion was recently made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in recognition for his achievements in Climate Change and Education.

Red Redemption developed the Climate Challenge game with the BBC that has had 2 million plays, won a European Green IT Award and is based on the real climate change data via a partnership with the Oxford University Environmental Change Institute and a team of advisors, many of whom are on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The company has just been announced as 2009 Candidate Tech Pioneers with the World Economic Forum. The games portfolio includes: Operation: Climate Control game which won two Defra Climate Challenge awards, and the Trouble Shooter game for EDF Energy and are currently in the process of developing some commercial games.

Dan Hon - CEO, Six to Start

One of the UK's first bloggers, Dan's interests range from gaming to storytelling to cross-media entertainment. Dan has over 7 years experience of producing mashed-up content for major companies and co-founded Six to Start to take this experience to a wider audience, including Channel 4 Education. He has been COO of Mind Candy, the company behind the hugely successful Perspex City ARG; worked with Elan lee at Microsoft Games Studios to develop an internal successor to The Beast (the first alternate reality game) and is a qualified technology/intellectual property lawyer.

Paul Miller - CEO, School of Everything

Paul is a writer, consultant and entrepreneur, living and working in London. He is co-Founder of start-up School of Everything, writes about innovation, new forms of organisation and environmental sustainability and is an Associate of the think tank Demos.

Paul has advised a large number of organisations, including Orange, Scope, the Cabinet Office, BT, Scottish Power, IDEO, Channel Four and the Department for Education and Skills. He has written for FT magazine, The Guardian and Green Futures magazine.

Frank Jennings - Associate Solicitor, Technology Group and Head of the Commercial Team, DMH Stallard

Frank joined the firm in 2007 and has over more than 10 years experience of the technology sector having previously worked at Psygnosis (a subsidiary of Sony) and in the technology and commercial team of a large law firm in London. Frank has a Masters degree in technology law and IP, is a panellist for World Copyright Law Report and is a member of Society for Computers and Law

Martin Mackain Bremner - Defence Academy UK

James Kinross - Surgeon, Imperial College

Dr Pamela M Kato - Senior Research Scientist of Gaming with the Patient Safety Center at the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands & Founding President of HopeLab

Dr. Kato is currently Senior Research Scientist of Gaming with the Patient Safety Center at the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands. She is currently working on developing a serious game simulation to teach medical residents about patient safety. Kato was formerly with HopeLab in the United States where she was instrumental in the development and testing of Re-Mission, a PC game designed to promote medical compliance for young cancer patients. A Harvard- and Stanford-trained psychologist, she led the groundbreaking scientific outcomes study of the game which will be published in August this year in the journal, Pediatrics. Kato is an internationally recognized leader in the field of health psychology and video games.

About the Organiser Chair: Martine Parry

Following graduation in Physics from Kings College, London University, Martine spent 8 years in the AI industry, 2 as a Software Research Engineer in computer vision systems with GEC and the remainder with various leading visualisation & simulation tools and service organisations, developing business across sectors including defence, energy, telecommunications, health and finance.

Since 1994 she has worked with leading software house Admiral Computing (merged with LogicaCMG) and within the learning, CGI and games sectors. She founded Apply Group Ltd, a leading business consultancy, in order to continue this work and produce cutting-edge conferences that have included Games Developers Conference Europe and the CGI Festival in 2004 – and the Tiga Funding Lunches.

Christian Renaud - formerly of Cisco Systems Inc.

Christian is the Senior Manager of Business Development for the Cisco Technology Center. Technology Center acts as ‘intrapreneurs’ for the efforts of Cisco’s Corporate Development organization, providing business rationale and market insight for determining future Cisco emerging technologies. The Technology Center is Cisco’s corporate incubator chartered with identifying emerging markets and technologies and developing them into new revenue streams for the company.

Nader Nanjiani - Cisco Systems Inc.

Nader has worked in the area of rich media and marketing for more than a decade. Currently working as Marketing Manager for Unified Communications, Nader has launched a series of Cisco games to boost customer participation and dialog around specific technologies. He also co-authored the title “The Business Case for E-learning” published by Cisco Press in 2004.

Jennifer McNamara, BreakAway Ltd

Jennifer McNamara is the Director of Strategic Partnerships at BreakAway, Ltd. In this role, she supports customers in creating their own serious games and simulations for experimentation and training using mosbe™ – BreakAway’s simulation development platform.

Working closely with customers provides Jennifer with an insider’s view of their needs and experiences and the demands they place upon the available game and simulation technologies – as well as an understanding of how applied technologies can solve mission-critical problems. A professional background in cognitive and human factors psychology, intelligent training, and agent-based system development inspires her interest in providing advanced, tools-based approaches to simulation development. Prior to joining BreakAway, Jennifer worked at CHI Systems, Inc., where she developed advanced training games and simulations and decision support systems for customers throughout the United States Department of Defense – most recently developing training for Close Air Support team coordination using verbally interactive agents under the DARPA DARWARS Training Superiority program. Jennifer holds a B.S. in Cognitive Psychology from Drexel University and a M.Ed. in Instructional Systems Design and Development from The Pennsylvania State University.

Professor Bob Stone, Birmingham University

Professor Robert J. Stone
BSc (Hons), MSc, C.Psychol, AFBPsS, FErgS, Eur.Erg, FIoN, FVRS

Bob Stone is Director of the Human Interface Technologies Team within the Department of Electronic, Electrical & Computer Engineering at the University of Birmingham, UK. He graduated from University College London in 1979 with a BSc in Psychology, and in 1981 with an MSc in Ergonomics (Human Factors), and currently holds the position of Royal Academy of Engineering Integrated Professor (Systems Engineering) at the University of Plymouth. In 1996, he became an Academician of the Russian International Higher Education Academy of Sciences (Moscow) and an Honorary Cossack in 2003.

Bob’s applied R&D efforts since 1998 have concentrated on human-centred training/task analyses and simulator content definition for the UK’s Armed Forces (close-range naval weapons, submarine training/rescue and helicopter voice marshalling), civilian and military surgery and unmanned vehicles. He is Research Director of the UK’s Human factors Integration Defence Technology Centre and is also on the Advisory Group and Evaluation Metrics Team for the US serious gaming project Pulse!! – an Office of Naval Research-funded serious gaming initiative led by Texas A&M University Corpus Christi which aims to develop a sophisticated medical trainer for battlefield scenario and terrorist incident management.

Gavin Dudeney, The Consultants-E

Gavin co-runs an online training and development consultancy specialising in Moodle and Second Life services. Author of The Internet & The Language Classroom (Cambridge University Press, 200), and How to Teach with Technology ( Pearson Longman 2007) his current research interests are Communities of Practice and the application of MUVEs in education and training. The Consultants-E manage the EduNation island sim in Second Life.

Thomas Bidaux, NCSoft

Widely recognised as one Europe’s leading figures in the development and execution of online games from his time at Wanadoo when he led the team that launched Dark Age of Camelot, Thomas was one of the original four who set up NCsoft Europe in September 2004. Just over a year later and with more than 80 staff in the Brighton office, Thomas’ role at NCsoft is to manage the product development teams as well as researching and acquiring new titles.

Thijs Bosma - Zlong Games, China

Thijs is International Sales Manager at Zlong Games, a game development company based in Shanghai that develops serious games for western multinational clients.

Prior to working at Zlong Games, Thijs was responsible for the Artificial Intelligence behind Eccky, a virtual MSN Messenger product developed by Media Republic and Microsoft.

Rohit Talwar, Fast Future Ltd

Profiled as one the world’s ten leading future watchers by the Independent newspaper, Rohit Talwar is an award winning speaker and global futurist who specialises in exploring the future of China. He is regular visitor to Asia – exploring the latest trends and developments - in the last 18 months he has visited China, India, Korea, Singapore, Pakistan, Malaysia, Thailand, Dubai and the Phillipines. Rohit is actively involved in the development of media, animation and gaming ventures in China. He has recently published a global study on the Future of China’s Economy. Rohit is the CEO of Fast Future which provides advisory support to the leaders of new ventures in Asia and the Joint CEO of Global Futures and Foresight – a think tank which specialises in researching the future development of global economies, global markets and global issues.

Mal Baines

Mal enjoyed a 25+ year career with Xerox Corporation, working across Western Europe, Middle East, Africa, Malaysia and China - and was one of a small team of senior executives who went into China to set up a direct sales and service operation for Xerox and lived in China for over 2 years. This was successfully completed in the time frame with some 350 employees operating in three of China’s major cities by April 1998. From the end of 1998 to early 2000 Mal was engaged in developing a training strategy designed to deliver training services to around 25,000 employees across Western Europe. Since 2000, Mal has provided independent consultancy to a range of companies including China-based organisations: RenMin University and TCL Mobile Phones - and has also introduced UK companies TACK Training and Video Arts into China. Both of these companies now enjoy on-going revenues from China.

David Wortley, Director Serious Games Institute

David Wortley is Director of the Serious Games Institute (SGI) at Coventry University and responsible its development as a centre of excellence for serious games applications. Working with as a public/private partnership, the SGI aspires to be a focal point for games based learning, simulation and immersive 3D virtual environments.

Figures & Feedback from ASG 2009

"There was a lot of great content"

"You brought people together who had the vital assets of vision and a desire to innovate but combined with practical experience and understanding of the *real* issues faced by *real* developers situated within industry."

Association Partners

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